Book Review: The Struggle for the Soul of Teacher Education

Abstract

The onslaught of neoliberal forces currently reshaping public education in the U.S. similarly extends to teacher education. In The Struggle for the Soul of Teacher Education, Kenneth Zeichner, along with others who co-author specific chapters, explores this changing landscape of teacher education and draws attention to the contradictions and false claims of reformers seeking to deregulate and privatize teacher education. He proposes that university-based teacher education programs confront the weaknesses in their preparation of educators and dismantle the current knowledge hierarchy that devalues community-based knowledge while privileging that of university teacher educators. Throughout The Struggle for the Soul of Teacher Education, Zeichner avoids lambasting neoliberal reformers and prefers to methodically discredit their claims of efficacy and equity. Though this creates a rational response to these opponents of university-based teacher education, Zeichner could demonstrate more solidarity with university-based teacher educators and help them strengthen coursework rather than lean towards neoliberal reformers' claims of the worthlessness of education courses.To support his objectives, Zeichner organizes The Struggle for the Soul of Teacher Education into two sections after his introduction. The first five chapters show how market-based ideas have quickly become an antagonizing and persistent force in teacher education. In Chapter 1, he describes the emergence of alternative options to university-based teacher education programs driven by market-based ideas, such as Relay Graduate School for Education, and the tensions that presently exist between the two, such as their vision for teacher preparation. Generally, university-based teacher education programs understand their purpose as creating teachers-as-professionals who "have extensive knowledge about the social and political contexts in which they work" (p. 29) while many alternative programs, guided by their teacher-as-technician view, believe that teachers simply need to accumulate the right teaching skills. In Chapter 2, Zeichner examines the numerous ways business strategies are increasingly applied to teacher education, including greater accountability and federal support of alternative teacher education programs while simultaneously underfunding university-based teacher education programs.In Chapter 3, Zeichner focuses on venture philanthropy in teacher education and the New Schools Venture Fund, which, he argues, seeks to dismantle university-based teacher education by repeating unfair claims about university-based teacher education and touting its efforts as innovative, among other means. He expands on this latter pattern in Chapter 4, describing how neoliberal reformers misuse research to support their aims and have thus created a new discourse in which university-based teacher education is mediocre at best and failing our children at worst. He concludes this discussion of the depth of market-based reforms in teacher education in Chapter 5 by analyz...