This paper focuses on a cohort of B.Ed. students' understandings about social difference and social justice as recorded in their professional journals in the first semester of third year. It shows that their reasons for choosing teaching as a career, reflections on their school experiences and discussions about future students are grounded in the…

Utopianism, which is a distinctive vocabulary of hope, teaches us that society, including its physical sites of social and political practice, are both imagined and made and that we can accordingly believe they can be reimagined and remade. This paper exemplifies how exercises of the utopian imagination within teacher education curricula are able…

The research question for this paper is: How can we mobilise robust hope in the analysis of teacher education policy? Specifically, this paper asks how a robust hope framework might speak to the "Top of the Class," a report into teacher education by the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Vocational Training.

This article is concerned with the sustainability of the employment of qualified teachers in the Australian long day care sector in the light of the dual pressures of poor pay and conditions, relative to schools, and the commercialisation of the sector and consequent vested interests in containing staffing costs. Eschewing the usual, narrow focus…

Robust hope aims to contribute to educational praxis. In Australia, what counts as teacher education is currently determined at the individual State and Territory level. Yet the demand side of teacher education is determined by responses to the effects of global marketplace forces that impact on changes to local communities. This article…

This paper argues that the increasing diversity of multicultural Australia is now troubling teacher education due to the under-representation of world English speaking (WES) student teachers of minority immigrant backgrounds. This is now a concern of national significance to education policy-makers and researchers. This paper summarises key…

Drawing on a school ethnography and the voices of graduate students, this paper explores the concept of robust hope with reference to the ideal of social justice in education policy and practice. Although the arguments to support a commitment to social justice in education systems, schools and teacher education programs, are often…

This article analyzes how Sharon, a student teacher, negotiated the different conceptions of teaching that provided the expectations for good instruction in her university and the site of her student teaching and how her effort to reconcile the different belief systems affected her identity as a teacher. The key settings of Sharon's experience…

Given the increasing diversity of our classrooms, a lack of multicultural competence can exacerbate the difficulties that novice teachers have with classroom management. Definitions and expectations of appropriate behavior are culturally influenced, and conflicts are likely to occur when teachers and students come from different cultural…

This study examined 28 preservice teachers' interpretations of a 9-hour, field-based reading block. Qualitative analyses of varied data sources, including surveys, journals, and interviews, revealed that during the block experience the students (a) became more prepared and confident to teach children who experience reading difficulties, (b)…

During the past decade, the arts have been increasingly included in professional development programs for general education teachers in the United States. Little is known, however, about teachers' attitudes toward the arts in education or the applications of arts processes in their teaching practice. In this mixed-methods study, data collected…

Beginning teachers in Northern Ireland and the United States conducted structured inquiry projects in which they investigated elementary children's understanding of history and social studies. Interviews with the teachers and analysis of their written assignments indicate that these investigations challenged their beliefs about children's prior…

This article describes a systematic overhaul of a teacher preparation program and presents outcomes based on studies of the program's effectiveness in improving the knowledge and skills of teacher educators--university and PK-12 based--related to technology, diversity, and democratic education. The renewal program was peer designed and implemented…

The main objective of this article is to describe and evaluate one of the activities, the "cultural portfolio", that I use in my teacher education classroom to help my disproportionately White student teachers reflect on the public cultural scripts--ways of thinking, feeling, believing, and acting--that shape their practices. First, I frame the…

This 18-month ethnographic study provides a snapshot of teachers' use of space and voice as they work in a newly formed Professional Development School (PDS) committed to shared responsibility for teacher education and developing a culture of simultaneous renewal through inquiry. The study identified the tensions produced when a PDS functions…