JTE

Abstract

It is my great pleasure to greet you as you open this inaugural issue of the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE), under the new editorial leadership of Pennsylvania State University. JTE is a source of great pride to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)--our sole journal, published in partnership with an editorial team from a member institution and with SAGE Publications, Inc. I would first like to congratulate Dean David Monk, Professor Stephanie Knight, and the talented faculty team at Penn State's College of Education for their winning proposal to assume editorial responsibility of the journal's content for the next 3 years. Their leadership will offer a broad-based, forward-thinking view of educator preparation that is essential in this time of fast-paced change. We look forward to enhancing the AACTE dissemination and professional development activities as research in our field illuminates new possibilities and promising practices. Since its beginning in 1950, JTE has acquired an impressive reputation among professional journals, now ranked in the top 25 education and education research journals. (1) Its purpose is to identify and showcase cutting-edge work in the field--that work which moves our profession forward in teaching those who will become education professionals. As we prepare for another year of significant opportunities and challenges in educator preparation, there has never been a more urgent time to employ JTE's extraordinary professional reputation to help us advance our practice and achieve higher levels of candidate capacity. Questions, both new and old, arise daily, on issues such as program admission standards, the value of a master's degree, effective ways to teach culturally and linguistically diverse learners, and the optimal length of clinical practice. Thus far, consensus on these questions has been elusive. A report released recently by the National Research Council (2010) concluded, There is little definitive evidence that particular approaches to teacher preparation yield teachers whose students are more successful than others (p. 62). The profession is increasingly challenged to do more, and often, with less. Today's classrooms include a wider range of learner characteristics than ever, and preparation programs must produce candidates who can make the curriculum accessible to every learner in their classrooms and achieve tangible results. We must hasten the day when consensus on matters of program quality and efficacy is research-based, clearly stated, and widely practiced. Our profession has openly accepted this challenge to reform and create a future that is quite unlike any that was previously experienced in educational service. …