Serving too many masters: The proliferation of ill-conceived and contradictory policies and practices in teacher education

In this article, the authors illustrate how teacher educators are caught in a world of ill-conceived and often contradictory policies and practices. They provide exemplars of the contradictory demands that emanate from both outside and inside of the academy, including unilateral legislative mandates for curriculum coverage, restrictive university regulations, and the growing consumer orientation of the higher education marketplace. The authors then focus on the issue of professional standards and discuss how extreme teacher shortages influence how quality-control practices in teacher preparation are conceptualized and implemented. Finally, with exemplars from the field of special education, they conclude with several suggestions for next steps. Teacher educators get no respect. Although the researchers among us have substantiated the benefits of what we do (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 1996), often in terms of K-12 student outcomes, these findings do not seem to have convinced anyone else. One consequence of our inability to persuade others of the importance o