The Marginalization of Teacher Education: Who We Are, How We Got Here, How We Fit in the Big Picture, and What We Might Do about It.

My purpose here is to share several thoughts with you. I will explore the concept of marginalization, and explain why I believe it applies very appropriately to the field of teacher education and our own organization. I will emphasize the importance of knowing our history, and ask why it is that history is not a more central part of teacher education. To start things off, I will provide a brief history of the California Council on Teacher Education, which I will argue is a prime example of marginalization. With that notion in place, I will seek to show how our history mirrors many of the broader patterns of the history of American education, an equally appropriate portrayal of marginalization. In these ways, hopefully, what I have to say will illuminate who we are, how we got here, and how we fit, or don't fit, in the big picture. With those problematics in place, I will then share what I believe is a critical recognition of a central problem of our marginalization and what we must try to do about it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]