Overview
Praise for Powerful Teacher Education"This book is evidence-based, readable, and the mostpowerful case to date for the essential role of excellent teacher preparation in the reform of the nation's schools. Reflecting onpersonal experience, analyzing previous research, carefully examiningthe practices of excellent institutions, and observing practices in countries with high-performing students, Darling-Hammond offers a series of affordable and practical proposals to make excellent teacher preparation the norm. Teacher educators and teachers will learn about effective practices, but federal and state policymakers will find the solution that they have been so desperately seeking for the nation's school ills."
—Arthur E. Wise, president,National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
"Powerful Teacher Education provides the professional communitywith a very important framework for analysis and examples of whatmust become the reality for all teacher education candidates. Powerful Teacher Education produces teachers who can serve all learners."
—Sharon Robinson, president,the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
"If there is any doubt whether teacher education matters, this volume clears it up powerfully and convincingly. It matters, and itmatters in significant ways. By helping us see what quality teacher education looks like in action, Darling-Hammond and her collaborating authors paint a clear road map to excellence. Now we must muster the political will to make this kind of preparation a reality for all who would teach."
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, president,the American Educational Research Association andprofessor of education, University of Wisconsin
Synopsis
Powerful Teacher Education describes the strategies, goals, content, and processes of seven highly successful and long-standing teacher education programs - Alverno College, Bank Street College, Trinity University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Southern Maine, University of Virginia, and Wheelock College. All these colleges and universities have succeeded in preparing teachers to teach diverse learners to achieve high levels of performance and understanding. In discussing the common features of these programs, Linda Darling-Hammond shows what outstanding teacher education models do and how they do it, and what their graduates accomplish as a result. Powerful Teacher Education also examines the policies, organizational features, resources, and relationships that have enabled these programs to succeed.