The recent landscape of teacher education: critical points and possible conjectures

Some educators claim that teacher education borrows so heavily from other disciplines that it does not constitute a field of study in its own right. I argue to the contrary, suggesting that the chronic discrepancy between institutional regard for the role of educator 'teacher' and 'scholar'-a constant impediment to the development of teacher education as a field of study-has diminished in recent years to such an extent that the two are coming together in unprecedented and productive ways. To support this argument, I chart key landmarks in the recent history of teacher education that, taken together, highlight the significance of this change. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.