This article offers a critique of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) related to the implications for teachers in educational improvement. Through an analysis of the NCLB legislation and accompanying policy tools that support it, the authors explore three images or central common conceptions symbolic of basic attitudes and orientations about teachers and…

Unlearning racism involves examining racist assumptions that are embedded in courses and curricula, acknowledging complicity in maintaining existing systems of privilege and oppression, and addressing failure to produce change. Narrative is an effective way to examine experience; it provides an alternative to traditional academic discourse. (SK)

Teacher-written texts are used to demonstrate that the knowledge base for teaching should include the perspective of the teacher researcher, whose questions and methods are embedded in classroom practice and who should be a primary source of knowledge about teaching. (SK)

Student teachers can learn to reform teaching by working with experienced teachers struggling to be reformers. Two approaches are (1) critical dissonance, or incongruity between what students learn in college and what they experience in student teaching; and (2) collaborative resonance, or intensifying the influences of both experiences by linking…

Suggests that teacher educators need to examine how they and their students approach the discourse of race and how they might be conveying contradictory messages about teaching students of different backgrounds. Cautions teacher educators to undertake a critical interrogation of preservice pedagogy. (SK)