Learning to Teach in an Era of Privatization

In an age of consumer choice, decentralization, and deregulation in education, policymakers often demonstrate surprisingly little awareness of how popular reforms impact teaching and teacher education. This raises a number of questions: To what extent has the push for privatization and marketization of education shaped how we recruit and train the next generation of teachers? What are they taught and why? How do such policies impact the dispositions of colleges of education and alternative teacher certification organizations? In this book, well-regarded scholars help readers develop a more robust understanding of the nature of teacher preparation, as well as an in-depth grasp of how these policies, practices, and ideologies have taken root domestically and internationally.

Book Features:

• An in-depth examination of the impact of market-based reforms on both teaching and teacher preparation.
• Contributions from respected scholars with a long history of preparing K–12 teachers.
• A focus on teacher preparation in the United States, along with a much-needed international perspective.
• Covers new ground by blending important public and academic conversations about privatization and teacher training.

Christopher A. Lubienski is a professor of education policy at Indiana University. T. Jameson Brewer is an assistant professor of social foundations of education at the University of North Georgia.

“This book will help readers consider the possibilities of democratic visions in the teaching profession and in public education, particularly in this time of intense political polarization when critical citizen engagement with our public institutions and policies is deeply needed.” —Janelle Scott, University of California, Berkeley

“In recent years, a great deal of the public discourse about education has focused on recruiting and retaining highly qualified, effective classroom teachers. Schools serving majority minority and low-socioeconomic populations perpetually face this issue due to working conditions and characteristics of those neighborhoods. This volume makes explicit that the “education reform” movement has reframed the discussion to ignore the environmental conditions and refocused it on test-based student achievement and market-based approaches for education—including private management and privatization. The chapters in this book make clear that the ongoing policy disconnects cannot be ignored and that now is the time to elevate the teaching profession for students who have faced historical inequities, not dismantle it.”
—Julian Vasquez Heilig, dean, University of Kentucky College of Education

“Public teaching and teacher education in the U.S. and in many other parts of the world are under assault by concerted efforts to deregulate and marketize them. This collection of essays examines the consequences of these privatization efforts in the U.S., Chile, and Singapore and should be required reading for those wanting to understand their complexity and consequences for teaching and teacher education today.”
—Ken Zeichner, Boeing Professor of Teacher Education, University of Washington

Contents

Foreword: Teachers on the Move Janelle Scott  vii

Introduction: Teaching as a Profession in an Age of Privatization: Issues, Advocacy, and Approaches  1
T. Jameson Brewer and Christopher A. Lubienski

Part I: Dispositions, Ideology, and Philosophy Driving Educational Reforms

1.  Countering the Continued Corporate Assault on Schools: Endorsing Public Education, Ethical Altruism, and Critical Policy Studies  17
Deron Boyles

2.  Common Core Creativity: What Are Preservice Teachers Learning?  43
Christopher H. Tienken and Dario Sforza

3.  Toward the End of Teacher Education? edTPA as the Next Guardian Sentinel of Teacher Certification  67
Westry Whitaker and Jim Burns

Part II: Impacts on Teacher Preparation and the Teaching Profession

4.  Impacting Education Through Privatized Graduate Schools: Strategic Fields, Charter Networks, and the Relay Graduate School of Education  91
Jamie C. Atkinson and Brian W. Dotts

5.  Canaries in the Classroom: The Teaching Profession in Trouble  113
Anthony Cody

6.  Teacher Preparation in Singapore: Lessons on Neoliberalism  127
Priya Goel La Londe and Warren Mark Liew

7.  Teaching Toward Which Ends? Residency Candidates Navigating Competing Programmatic Aims  149
Hilary Conklin, Lauren Gatti, and Kavita Kapadia Matsko

8.  The Inequitable Impact of Privatization and Marketization of Initial Teacher Preparation in Chile  171
Carmen Montecinos and M. Beatriz Fernández

9.  Teach For America, the Education Entrepreneur Network, and the Reshaping of Teacher Preparation  189
Kerry Kretchmar, Beth Sondel, and Joseph Ferrare

10.  Academic Achievement of Students Taught by Teachers from Differing Preparation Programs  213
Denise K. Whitford, Dake Zhang, and Antonis Katsiyannis

About the Editors and Contributors  229

Index  231

2020 AESA Critics’ Choice Book Award