The Phoenix Agenda: Essential Reform in Teacher Education

-All of us are familiar with the an-cient story of the Phoenix and its symbolism of rebirth from a desper-ate situation. No field could better use the magical properties of the Phoenix than teacher education. The field is not just surrounded by critics, it is inhabited by them. Its graduates, current students, fac-ulty, and administrators generate at least as much fury toward it as do the politicians, pundits, and serious scholars who reside outside it. Com-plaints about teacher education are wondrous in their variety and dev-astating in their implications. Its students are inferior. Its academic components are too brief and too weak. It is too theoretical and irrele-vant to the real world of the schools. It is excessively devoted to peda-gogy. It gives too little attention to teaching and practical matters. It squelches the creativity of its stu-dents. It resists innovation. Its graduates resist innovation. It is susceptible to faddism. Paradoxically, the convergence of criticism, the serious proposals for reform, and the recent accumula-tion of research on teaching and teacher education may have brought us to the point where we can engage in the systematic renovation of the conduct of teacher training, includ-ing its governance, procedures for ensuring its continuing renewal, and its structure, substance, and process.