ABSTRACT

The current wave of skepticism about the effects of teacher education is not new. Almost since its inception, the need for, and value of, teacher education has been doubted by nonteacher educators. Some of these doubts stem from beliefs that teachers are born rather than made, some from beliefs that the practice of teaching is not particularly difficult, some from beliefs that teaching can only be learned in the doing. For their part, teacher educators have conducted research on the effectiveness of their efforts, in part to learn how to improve their practices, but also in part to defend themselves from external skeptics.