In a country like South Africa, as in many other countries around the world, there is an imperative to prepare student teachers for a wide variety of social contexts, as part of breaking the cycle of disadvantage for poor learners. This article explores the challenge of placing student teachers for their field experience in schools that differ…

Schools are becoming culturally and linguistically diverse. This means that pre-service teachers should be exposed to methods that prepare them for diverse classrooms. This article outlines a service-learning checklist that is practical and authentic to use in working with diverse communities. Faculty can adopt the checklist when infusing…

This paper reports on findings from an exploratory study carried out in Portugal and Sweden, concerning student teacher recruitment to Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes. It addresses issues such as the motivations and expectations of the student teachers regarding the teaching profession. Drawing upon existing related literature, a…

In this paper, I analyse the history of teacher education in Australia from 1974 to the current policy moment in which questions are increasingly being asked about the quality of teaching and teacher education. Teacher education is, and has been, a highly scrutinised domain in Australia. Since the 1970s, we have seen more than 100 reviews of…

Taking the form of a personal essay, the author describes developments within teacher education in the USA over a 40-year period, since the founding of "JET." Beginning with his work within teacher education as a graduate student and moving across time, he describes major movements in teacher education, discusses several of the most…

In this paper, I will discuss how to enhance Japanese teacher education. After sketching teacher education from the mid-1940s to the 1960s, I sum up the main topics people discussed through each decade of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. Illustrating some of the current topics of teacher education in the first decade of the new century, I discuss what…

This paper reviews the long attempt to transform teacher education in Thailand. Although a brief summary of educational systems and models of teacher preparation from 1892 to 1973 has been provided, the prime focus of the paper is on presenting changes in teacher education from 1974 to the present day, against the backdrop of key political and…

This paper traces the key periods, players and events which have contributed to the shaping of the current landscape of teacher education in Scotland. Starting with the Wheatley Report and the formation of the General Teaching Council (Scotland) in the 1960s through to the most recent Donaldson Review of Teacher Education, we examine ebb and flow…

This article examines the relationship between pre-service teacher education (ITE) for primary schooling and primary teaching in England between 1974 and 2014, and explores the "fitness of purpose" of the current system of preparing teachers for the classrooms of the twenty-first century. Our historical analysis suggests that, despite 40…

The Chinese Government has conducted a series of top-down reforms of teacher education over the past several decades. The reforms have established a relatively stable teacher education system, regulated teacher education programmes and curricula, and provided opportunities for in-service teachers to be trained and to upgrade their educational…

New Zealand teacher education has been profoundly affected by major social and economic changes since 1974. From a separate sector controlled by the Department of Education, it has moved through deregulation to largely university provision with research imperatives for staff. Programme scope has broadened to embrace early childhood and the…

This paper discusses changes over the last 40 years in teacher education in the USA that have resulted in two very different strategies for improving the preparation of teachers and in substantial inequities in the distribution of the teaching force. The strengths and limitations of promoting greater deregulation and privatisation versus investing…

This article sets out to identify and discuss the changes that have taken place in Finnish teacher education during the last 40 years (1974-2014). A brief history of teacher education in Finland is presented, followed by the goals and aims of current research-based teacher education in Finland. Finally, the major changes in Finnish teacher…

This paper will focus on the shifts in discourses about teacher education and teacher voice within the South African research and policy environment over the last four decades. The alignment of the political and educational agenda in providing resistance to the apartheid system culminated in 1994, the start of the new democracy. The preceding…

Over the last 40 years, teacher education in England has been the focus of a stream of "reforms" with the ultimate aim of placing provision into schools, the justification for such a radical policy being that higher education is alleged to be failing to provide good quality teachers thereby compromising the social and economic…