Walking the Road

In this skillfully written and incisive book, Marilyn Cochran-Smith guides the reader through the conflicting visions and ideologies surrounding the education of teachers for a diverse democratic society. Mapping the way to reconceptualizing teacher education today, this volume:

• Spells out, in detail, the problem of teacher preparation and why it needs to be understood as both a learning and a political problem.
• Explores an urban teaching program and how its participants came to understand race, diversity, and multicultural issues as part of the larger process of learning to teach.
• Explains why “unlearning” is an unavoidable part of the journey to teaching and teacher education for social justice.
• Uncovers political agendas and their serious implications for the teaching profession itself.
• Offers a much-needed framework for understanding and sorting out the multiple meanings of concepts related to multicultural issues and social justice in teacher education policy.

Marilyn Cochran-Smith is Professor of Education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College and President of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for 2004–05.

“Our profession is at a critical crossroad….We must accept Cochran-Smith’s challenge to speak loudly and articulately for social justice and democracy. Could our society face a more urgent or compelling issue?”
—From the Foreword by Jacqueline Jordan Irvine

"This volume represents not only the best of Cochran-Smith, it represents the best of teacher education. These essays are hard-hitting yet lyrical, provocative yet poetic, theoretically sophisticated yet practically useful. Teacher education is in good hands.”
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin–Madison

“Cochran-Smith invites us to follow her courageous path of conceptualizing and practicing social justice in teacher education. Wisely framing her work as solving both a "learning problem" and a "political problem," she makes brilliantly clear why today's intense struggle over the definition of teacher quality is no less than a struggle over the soul of public education.”
Jeannie Oakes, Presidential Professor and Director, UCLA's Institute for Democracy Education and Access

Marilyn Cochran-Smith won the 2018 AERA Division K Legacy Award