This post is a paper I presented as part of a panel on the politics of teacher education at the annual meeting of the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) in 2005. It was published that same year in the Journal of Teacher Education. Here's a link to the original. The paper draws … Continue reading Life on the Margins — Why Teacher Ed Has So Little Impact on Ed Policy
This post is a short piece I wrote in 2011 for a special issue of the journal Teacher Education and Practice on "Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Scholarship." My one take is that research in education is not necessarily well positioned to enhance education; on the contrary, it often does more harm than good. See … Continue reading Do No Harm: Reflections on the Impact of Educational Research
Professionals, by definition, are more skilled than amateurs in any given field, but they both experience failure. And to an average observer, they appear to fail in similar ways. The practitioner is moving along nicely in carrying out his or her craft -- and then suddenly it all falls apart. The golf ball flies off … Continue reading Panicking vs. Choking: The Different Ways that Amateurs and Professionals Fail
In this piece, I explore a major problem I have with recent educational policy discourse -- the way we have turned teachers from the heroes of the public school story to its villains. If students are failing, we now hear, it is the fault of teachers. This targeting of teachers employs a new form of … Continue reading Targeting Teachers
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 