Teacher educators as reformers: competing agendas

Most of today’s reforms of initial teacher education programs, policies, and practices have positioned teachers and teacher educators as the objects, rather than the agents of reform. In contrast, this article focuses on teacher educators as reformers by analyzing three approaches to reform that are initiated, developed, and promoted by teacher educators themselves: entrepreneurial reform, managerial reform, and democratic reform. The article concentrates primarily on teacher educators as reformers in the US, but also includes examples from other countries. For each approach, the article considers: who the teacher educator reformers are and how they are positioned; how they construct the 'problem' of teacher education; what reforms they advocate as the 'solution'; and, how these are related to larger policy and political agendas. The article argues that this kind of analysis is critical to understanding the current discourse of reform and the competing agendas that dominate the politics of teacher education.