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Through our shared interest in articulating a knowledge base for teacher education, we believe a deeper examination of the "work" of teacher educators would contribute to a fuller understanding of who teacher educators are and the work they do. Recognizing how context and positionality influence conceptions of teacher education and with a desire to refine our own understandings of the work of teacher educators, we engaged in a collaborative self-study to examine the work of 12 university-based teacher educators in the United States. Through our analysis of one day in our work, we identified three key functions that transcend our positions and, at the same time, are essential, even core, aspects of the work that we enact daily. These functions of Design, Leadership and Advocacy are all framed by the educative purpose of the work of teacher educators. These functions are overlapping and highlight the movement and energy among the functions and collective purpose for teacher educator work. An underlying thread of connectivity, building and maintaining growth-oriented relationships through positionality, communication, and interaction weaves throughout the functions, and we found our community of practice developed throughout the collaborative self-study was a key aspect of connectivity and collaboration in our work as teacher educators. Identifying the key educative functions across our work enabled us to codify a shared language and challenge the assumption that there is no knowledge base in teacher education as an enterprise. We believe our examination of our work informs future inquiry into collective teacher educator practice.

This essay by Dirck Roosevelt and Jim Garrison seeks to reclaim the lost soul of teaching by examining distortions wrought upon or threatening it by practice-based teacher education (PBTE) and like developments. The notion that teaching centers upon mastery of "core" practices understood as routinely skilled performance is inadequate to the almost intractable complexity of teaching. After critiquing PBTE and associated forces, especially the performance assessment edTPA™, Roosevelt and Garrison turn to John Dewey's notion of the teacher as "inspirer and director of soul-life." Among other important attributes involved in forming the soul of inspirational teaching, the authors discuss moral perception of the needs, desires, and interests of unique individuals participating in specific situations, and also moral imagination, which allows teachers to see beyond the actual to conceive better possibilities. Roosevelt and Garrison conclude with depictions of two student-teachers, one troubled by her inability to hear the souls of students and another experiencing the loss of his teaching soul.

Prospective teachers are often found to have difficulty focusing their attention on students in sustained and constructive ways. Instead, in what is sometimes understood as a developmental matter, beginners may seem highly concerned with their own feelings and needs. This article offers a contrary finding. It examines two cases of prospective teachers' provision of sustained, generative attention not to self, but to other--to the child. An enabling structure appears to be "Child Study." Drawing on Dewey and Benjamin, the "aesthetic impulse" is offered as an analytic construct useful in understanding how this pedagogical focus on the other may be elicited. (Contains 10 footnotes.)

In this article, the authors explore the ideas that revolve around improving the quality of the teacher workforce through the pursuit of two related goals: (1) teachers who are hired by school districts will have as beginning professionals the acquired knowledge, habits of mind, and skills necessary to meet the needs of the students within the particular contexts of the schools in which they teach; and (2) teachers will have dispositions and ways of thinking that will allow them to continue to develop their understandings and skills such that they continually improve their practice. The authors discuss two types of approaches to meeting these goals: (1) regulatory; and (2) educative. The authors also discuss the fundamental considerations of the nature of good and effective teaching. They then place their discussion within the policy context of teaching and teacher education and describe how that context has changed over the last number of years. They follow this with descriptions of the various forms of regulatory activities and types of preservice teacher education, and an account of recent research on certification and the effects of teacher preparation. Finally, they present their conclusions on the topic. (Contains 23 notes.)

Examines how works of art can function as media of deep communication between individuals otherwise separated by walls. Highlights poetry reading and writing in a fourth-grade classroom to show how public school classrooms can become places where children exercise real choice over the disposition of their intellectual energies and where children are engaged in creating democratic culture. (SM)

Discusses issues surrounding teacher preparation and the improvement of teacher education in the United States. Characterizations of teaching; Teacher licensing and certification; Research and assessment of teacher preparation.

Proposes a mode of reading of children's writing as fiction, in teaching. Why images of violence and abandonment causes concern; Examination of a quote written by one of the author's students; Discussion on the role of teachers.