This essay documents a few key examples of the critical pedagogy and curriculum that the authors employ to challenge pre-service and in-service teachers to consider the concrete and theoretical contexts of taking on a social-activist-teacher persona. Their vision of social justice is rooted firmly in the critical tradition, as it is anchored in…

According to the national study conducted by Cochran-Smith & Fries (2005), the majority of teacher candidates in the U.S. are White middle-class women. While those from the U.S. who become TESOL teachers are also primarily White middle-class women, given the global demand for English, there is also a sizable number of TESOL teachers from…

Critical educators, particularly Critical Race pedagogues, critique colorblind ideology as tantamount to racism because it serves to maintain racial inequality. King (1991), for example, refers to colorblindness as "dysconscious racism" since colorblind ideology sustains and justifies the culture of power. As an attempt to unpack the colorblind…

The history of normal school education remains an area of study that has attracted relatively little attention from educational historians in recent years, although a growing body of literature is emerging. Nonetheless, early normal schools in New England and the Midwest have received greater attention than those established in the Southwest.…

In this article, the authors explore a number of questions about the type and impact of service learning activities in the preparation programs for preservice teachers. They ask "what kinds of experiences are likely to benefit preservice teachers' understanding of collaborative partnerships?" and "what might they learn from preservice teachers'…

It is often noted that the vast majority of students in pre-service teacher preparation programs may be poorly equipped to teach in urban schools because, in great part, they are disproportionately White, female and middle-class (Darling-Hammond, 1997 and 2001; Delpit, 1995; Sleeter, 2001). Typically, these students arrive at the university with…

The author posits that testing teacher quality will not improve education unless people realize how current means of teacher testing could eliminate from teacher preparation the utopian elements that foundations courses present through material from authors such as Maxine Greene, Samuel Bowles, and Herbert Gintis. He presents a history of the…

Explores the limitations of strict adherence to standards, critiquing the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium's "Model Standards for Beginning Teacher Licensing and Development" and suggesting that it emphasizes instrumental thinking (focused on the means to particular ends) rather than an ethical orientation. The paper…

Explored differences in how mother-students and traditional-aged, non-mother preservice teachers transitioned into classroom settings. Interview and observation data indicated that the overlap and influence between the dual roles of mothering and preservice teaching affected mother-students' transitions. Their maternal perspectives were…

Introduces a theme issue which examines specific professional preparation programs in field-based sites as well as student experiences in those programs. Each paper critically examines how revised social foundations standards inform and are evident in these programs. The papers all describe particular practices situated in specific programmatic…

Explores how social foundations might inform the core required educational psychology course in teacher education, describing undergraduate students' common perceptions of social foundations as required but insignificant, illustrating how this might occur in educational psychology as students are engaged in the normative and critical perspectives…

Describes a 5th-year teacher education program created by social foundations faculty in partnership with inner city schools, arguing that as state and national movements favor broader performance-based standards over social foundations, social foundations faculty cannot rely on state regulations to safeguard their courses. The partnership…

Describes a site-based, rural teacher education program for Navajo students (the Pinon Partnership Program) which infused foundations throughout the program and used the Council of Learned Societies in Education's (CLSE) Social Foundations standards as its framework. Specific examples of how the six CLSE principles played out in the author's…

Traces the development, by foundations faculty, of a Master of Education program, based in social foundations content and knowledge, discussing successes, tensions, and dilemmas they faced and explaining how foundational perspectives shaped the content of the curriculum they developed and how their perspectives illuminated the processes by which…

Notes the need to rethink the importance of foundational courses in teacher education, critiquing important issues for practice; describing one foundations course; highlighting the need to examine what teachers are doing when they teach teachers; and drawing on Maxine Greene's philosophy to detail the quest to prepare teachers who can build a more…