Policy research in education takes many forms. Individual journals can be dominated by some particular model of policy research, but the field as a whole is much more varied. The range of philosophical issues entangled with education policy research is also broad. Issues in ethics and political theory have application both to judgments about the value of policies and to decisions about how policy researchers should fit within the political process. This chapter introduces some of the philosophical issues in education policy research. It discusses philosophical issues within two branches of philosophy-epistemology and political theory. Organizational studies highlight claims about reasons for action, such as assertions about what those formulating a policy hoped it would accomplish and how others believe they were affected by the policy. Critical theorists could never be faulted for pandered to policymakers. They are intentionally oppositional. As a result, they are unlikely to shape policy by direct work with policymakers.

Recent results of national and international assessments of student achievement often trigger media and policy comments to the effect that efforts to improve education in the United States are “disappointing” (e.g., Goldstein, 2019). The disappointment comes in part from high, probably unrealistic, claims about how fast change happens. As a case in point, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) called for all students to be proficient within a dozen years, an aspiration that researchers have called unrealistic (Linn et al., 2002). From another perspective, the modest gains on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) should be seen in the context of decades in which financial incentives to enter and stay in teaching have declined (Allegretto & Mishel, 2018), with accompanying declines in students entering teacher preparation programs (Partelow, 2019). Moreover, given the challenges of health care, nutrition, and poverty, it is unrealistic to expect the educational system in general, or teacher education in particular, to lift student achievement dramatically. One pessimistic takeaway might nonetheless be that the achievement results are evidence that teacher educators are not improving their programs, perhaps because they do not know how to make productive changes. This dour assessment ignores the wealth of knowledge, published in journals such as this one. Some of that knowledge has found its way into teacher preparation programs and efforts to support practicing teachers. As scholars of teacher education, we need to continue to build our knowledge base, and use that knowledge base to make changes and evaluate the results. Although the changes that come may be gradual, we should keep in mind that although slow progress is to be expected, that progress represents a glass half full, not half empty. Remember, A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) claimed that we were falling behind, with economic collapse imminent. While economic, social, and educational progress in the United States in the past three decades may be less than we hoped for, the current situation is better than A Nation at Risk led us to expect. As editors of the Journal of Teacher Education, we believe that, as a field, substantial work is being done in ways that are responsive to the challenges facing the field. Progress in elevating student scores on achievement tests has been frustratingly slow, but we are making progress in generating knowledge that can support teacher educators in educating teachers who can address these complex issues. Below we consider four areas that drive change in teacher education and briefly and selectively summarize the state of our understanding of each of them. The areas are knowing your students, content and pedagogy, data and assessment literacy, and field-based experience.

The genesis of this issue is in large part an outgrowth of the organizing efforts of the leaders of AACTE’s Diversified Teaching Workforce (DTW) Topical Action Group (TAG). The DTW TAG held its first meeting at the 2015 AACTE Annual Conference, and subcommittees were formed to address recruitment, research, mentorship, professional development, and advocacy. At the 2016 AACTE Annual Conference, the DTW TAG presented a research panel that explored various facets of research needed across the teacher development continuum for Teachers of Color (TOCs; please see Editors’ note regarding definition). Based on the need for more research scholarship, DTW team leaders Drs. Conra Gist, Margarita Bianco, and Marvin Lynn proposed a theme issue to the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) editors focused on developing a diversified teaching workforce in the United States and the implications for teacher education. Three of the five articles in this issue (those authored by Bristol & Goings; Gist, Bianco, & Lynn; and Kohli) are among the many efforts resulting from this group’s work and were accepted for publication after proceeding through the regular review process. The remaining two articles were selected because they are aligned with this same issue: one (by Acosta) is focused on the paradox of pedagogical excellence among exemplary Black women educators, and the other (Jackson & Knight-Manuel) on pedagogical tools and practices utilized by TOCs to support Black and Brown students’ navigation of the college knowledge and access process. Collectively, these articles provide deeper insights into factors associated with recruiting and retaining TOCs in U.S. schools and ways to enact critical change in teacher education programs, teacher professional development, and educational policy making. We see insights from these articles as useful for considering diversifying the teacher workforce across North America and as being insightful for international contexts where student demographics are increasingly diverse and teacher workforces are racially and ethnically homogeneous. Teacher diversity is not a new topic in teacher education. However, as teacher education programs experience heightened pressure to develop rigorous routines and practices to establish professional consensus, the project of ensuring structural access to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the teaching workforce, along with equitable, meaningful, and transformative learning opportunities for culturally diverse students, must be centered as a key issue in current debates taking place in the field. Given the important difference TOCs can make in all students’ learning and schooling experiences (Bond, Quintero, Casey, & Di Carlo, 2015; CarverThomas, 2018), particularly for racially and ethnically diverse students, and the persistent teacher shortages in areas where the percentage of these students are highest, ensuring a more diversified teaching workforce is critical for our profession. In this editorial, we urge teacher educators, educational researchers, and educational policy makers to more deeply consider the challenges associated with racially and ethnically diversifying the teaching workforce. Specifically, we want stakeholders to consider how the narrative that has been constructed regarding the underrepresentation of TOCs in U.S. schools suppresses an explicit examination of and response to how (a) historical and contemporary legislation and policy create(d) a pushout and keepout process for recruiting and retaining TOCs; (b) the often toxic environmental and operational conditions for TOCs in their preparation programs and workplaces have negative implications for teacher retention and attrition; and (c) Students of Color and White students are miseducated (Woodson, 1937) due to the 812418 JTEXXX10.1177/0022487118812418Journal of Teacher EducationCarter Andrews et al. editorial2018

As STEM education matures, the field will profit from tools that support teacher growth and that support rich instruction. A central design issue concerns domain specificity. Can generic classroom observation tools suffice, or will the field need tools tailored to STEM content and processes? If the latter, how much will specifics matter? This article begins by proposing desiderata for frameworks and rubrics used for observations of classroom practice. It then addresses questions of domain specificity by focusing on the similarities, differences, and affordances of three observational frameworks widely used in mathematics classrooms: Framework for Teaching, Mathematical Quality of Instruction, and Teaching for Robust Understanding. It describes the ways that each framework assesses selected instances of mathematics instruction, documenting the ways in which the three frameworks agree and differ. Specifically, these widely used frameworks disagree on what counts as high quality instruction: questions of whether a framework valorizes orderly classrooms or the messiness that often accompanies inquiry, and which aspects of disciplinary thinking are credited, are consequential. This observation has significant implications for tool choice, given that these and other observation tools are widely used for professional development and for teacher evaluations.

We write this editorial at a time when the political polarization in the United States and elsewhere leaves very little room for having complex and reasoned discussions that help establish trust in a diverse democracy. This is most recently evidenced by opposing views on gun control. As Hess and McAvoy (2015) state, “polarization causes distrust, and distrust causes polarization” (p. 8, citing research by McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2006). Moreover, the current polarization creates a culture where coming to a compromise that all can accept is seen as a loss for both sides, rather than as a victory for all. Reactions to recent episodes of school violence are, sadly, reflections of this growing polarization. This editorial is a continuation of conversations related to critical democracy and educational justice that have been expressed in several of our editorials (e.g., Carter Andrews, Richmond, & Floden, 2018; Richmond, Floden, Bartell, & Petchauer, 2017). These topics have continued salience given the recent school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and have led us to recognize the need to address critical democracy and educational justice in a more substantive way in the pages of the journal. We acknowledge that, unfortunately, school shootings are not a new phenomenon; yet, the Parkland tragedy has garnered national attention in ways that are elevating not only conversations about gun control and school safety but also other divisive issues such as free speech, environmental policy, and school choice. For these conversations to be productive and lead to democratic decisions, students must learn how to deliberate, work to understand others’ viewpoints, evaluate arguments and evidence in support of each point of view, and engage with others to reach decisions. We believe that teacher preparation programs have a moral obligation to ensure that future teachers understand how to cultivate school and classroom culture and climate that emanate humanity, dignity, and respect for all, and to ensure that teachers can support students’ ability to engage in discussions with those who hold opposing views. In this editorial, we outline three gap areas that currently exist in many teacher preparation programs. These areas are framed by three overarching questions that teacher educators and K-12 educators are asking in these challenging times: (a) How can we ensure student safety in learning environments? (b) How do we help preservice teachers (PSTs) and K-12 students develop foundational skills for critically discussing and analyzing controversial and sensitive topics? (c) How do teacher educators and teachers support students in justice movements and advocacy work that reflect the social justice mindsets and dispositions they aim to enact? We acknowledge that these questions are not easily addressed by program changes or curriculum reform. Collective structural change is required to achieve the type of transformative educational justice to which we aspire. Currently many teacher education programs are not designed with a curricular focus on issues of school safety, youth advocacy and resistance, trauma response, and cultivating teachers’ skills for facilitating conversations related to controversial and/or sensitive topics. Furthermore, many teacher educators are ill-equipped to facilitate dialogues in their classrooms on such topics, which can have implications for maintaining affirming, inclusive, and safe classrooms. Below we describe each of the gap areas facing teacher education programs and offer ways forward for teacher educators and practicing teachers as we collectively work to effectively educate all students in the current national and global sociopolitical climate.

In the past decade, most states have made substantial changes in the expectations they have for K-12 student learning. While the political debates around the have led to some modifications in what states initially adopted, it remains the case that most state standards have shifted toward something like the Common Core State Standards (CCSS; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010) for mathematics and for English Language Arts, toward the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for science (NGSS Lead States, 2013), and toward the C3 Framework for Social Studies Standards (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013) for social studies. As editors of the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE), we called for papers that would speak to how teacher educators should respond to these changes in K-12 content standards. Five of the articles in this issue were submitted specifically in response to this call. We have included two additional articles that, though not directly addressed to the call, are focused on issues that align with changes needed as a result of the adoption of these standards. We see two broad themes in this group of articles. First, teacher educators must look carefully at the new standards, with a critical eye on changes that must be made, not simply in professional development opportunities they provide to but in course- and field-oriented work within their own teacher preparation programs. Second, to enact effective instructional changes, will also need support from other stakeholders, most notably parents and school leaders. The differences between the newer standards and their predecessors are not simply the addition or deletion of topics. These new standards reflect a trend of several decades and highlight a push for deeper student understanding of key concepts and of the foundations of disciplinary knowledge. For example, K-12 students are expected to be able to defend statements they make, using reasons that are appropriate for the subject area and grade level; science students are asked to make claims based on evidence they have collected; mathematics students must explain how they arrived at the solution to a problem; and students discussing a short story should be able to say what they think a passage of dialogue reveals about a character's personality and how the structure and nuance of the text supports their conjecture. Helping prepare for new content standards should not be simply about changing the topics in the disciplinary courses take to align with the list of topics in a state curriculum. Teachers also need to learn how to organize their classroom instruction so that students are called on to explain their reasoning, to challenge the arguments made by their peers, and even to press the teacher for a stronger rationale. Fortunately, recent research on teaching and learning provides approaches that can be incorporated into teacher preparation programs to prepare educators to meet these expectations. Because of the emphasis on justification and evidence in the new standards, it is increasingly important for to learn about methods of inquiry in the subjects they teach. Scholars have long been pressing teacher educators to be sure that teachers' knowledge of subject matter includes knowledge of the ways claims are justified as well as a deep understanding of the facts, concepts, and theories. For example, in Shulman's (1986) classic essay that launched work on pedagogical content knowledge, he said, teachers must not only be capable of defining for students the accepted truths of a domain. They must also be able to explain why a particular proposition is deemed warranted ... (p. 9). Although teacher educators often build material on methods of inquiry into their programs, studies such as the one included here on history often show that much work still needs to be done. …

The set of papers in this issue of Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) is particularly timely, as it represents research that speaks directly to current issues of importance to diverse teacher education stakeholders. These stakeholders include, among others, university leaders, teacher educators, teacher preparation and professional development program designers, and policy makers. These papers touch on policies and practices intended to increase the quality of the teaching force, presenting evidence and analyses and highlighting the consequences of decisions about the design of systems for initial and continuing education of teachers. The collection is also significant in spanning the continuum of issues in teacher education, from assessments used for admission and graduation, to the nature and quality of professional support for beginning and experienced educators. The papers also represent a range of methodological approaches--quantitative, qualitative, and conceptual. In this editorial, we will consider the highlights and significance of each of these papers in turn. Evaluation of the quality of teacher preparation programs has long been an important policy topic. The United States, along with many other countries, has multiple systems for evaluating programs, with varying purposes, methods, and audiences (Feuer, Floden, Chudowsky, & Ahn, 2013). National systems of program accreditation have gained prominence, especially as many states have begun to require national accreditation. As two competing systems merged to form the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), a new set of standards were established. Key questions for policy and practice are what these standards should be and what evidence supports them. For the new CAEP standards, much debate has focused on what admission requirements should be for educator preparation programs. On its face, it seems reasonable to insist that programs restrict entry to those students likely to become high-quality teachers. An unintended consequence of using measures such as scores on college entry exams, however, may be the disproportionate effect on minority-serving institutions of higher education and the reduction in the numbers of graduates of color, just as the nation is calling for more teachers from underrepresented groups. Decisions about whether high entrance standards are, on balance, desirable should be informed by evidence on whether meeting such an entrance requirement is indeed necessary for becoming a high-quality teacher. Program representatives might also argue that, when they admit students with low college entry exam scores, they recognize that they will need to address weaknesses in content knowledge, and that they are committed to removing such weaknesses before recommending candidates for certification. What would be the problem, they might say, with admitting students with low entry scores, provided that they ensure that they have the necessary knowledge and skills before they are certified? The paper by Evans in this issue of the journal provides evidence to inform this debate about the CAEP standard concerning admissions requirements. Her paper addresses the degree to which measures used in making admissions decisions are predictive of prospective teachers' success, finding little evidence for some measures, but moderate predictive power for graduate grade point average (GPA). Another of her analyses reveals that setting high admission standards would have significant impact on enrollments in minority-serving programs, raising critical questions about their longterm sustainability. Current demands in the field require attention not only to program admission requirements but also to assessments candidates must undergo at the end of their program. The recent move toward performance assessments as uniform exit requirements has the potential to shift priorities away from what teachers know on paper-and-pencil licensure exams toward how they enact practices in context. …

The recognition that knowledge alone is insufficient as a foundation for effective teaching has led in recent years to a call for significant and programmatic investment in the support of teaching practices which will support the learning of students (Ball & Forzani, 2011; Grossman et al., 2009; McDonald, Kazemi, & Kavanagh, 2013). While a focus on “core,” “high leverage,” or “ambitious” teaching practices is instructive (see, for example, the works of Lampert et al., 2013; Windschitl, Thompson, & Braaten, 2011), much less attention has been paid toward how educators might be more inclusive with respect to such practices. Indeed, it could be claimed that the focus on core practices has been at the cost of attention to practices that are powerful in their capacity to support learning by helping students feel connected to the spaces where learning is taking place, to ideas or principles that lie at the heart of a discipline, and to their own developing identities as learners. These practices arise from a commitment to value the cultural backgrounds of learners and to not only leverage but to highlight culturally bound lived experiences. They also collectively reflect what Gloria Ladson-Billings proposed as culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), a concept which Django Paris has more recently expanded to culturally sustaining pedagogy, a pedagogy that “ . . . seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (Paris, 2012, p. 95). The work highlighted in the articles in this issue of Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) all speak to the importance of these inclusive practices as they are supported and shaped in different contexts, from our university teacher preparation classrooms to classrooms in K-12 schools. The Native American community has worked with states like Washington and Oregon to create curriculum materials relevant to American Indian/Alaskan Native students (AI/ AN). Such materials are primarily aimed at giving students an understanding of history and society that more accurately reflects events as seen from the perspective of Native populations. Less has been done to produce materials that combine core teaching practices in reading, mathematics, and science with pedagogical practices that take account of cultural differences between AI/AN students and those from other cultural groups. Similarly, professional development for teachers working with Native students often focuses on making connections to families and communities, rather than exploring how core teaching practices can link to teaching students from a variety of cultures. The article by Vincent, Tobin, and Van Ryzin in this issue draws on the National Indian Education Study (NIES) to describe the extent to which AI/AN students experienced reading and mathematics instruction that integrates Native Language and Culture (NLC) into instruction. The NIES also permitted the authors to describe how many AI/AN students were taught by teachers who had taken advantage of opportunities to learn ways to integrate NLC into their teaching. Because the NIES is done as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), it supports inferences that are nationally representative. The authors found that more than half of AI/AN students in the United States are taught by teachers who have taken advantage of NLC-oriented professional development less than 3 times in the past 2 years. The most common experience for AI/AN students is that their teacher integrates material related to AI/AN issues only once during the year, perhaps as part of a holiday lesson, rather than as a regular part of reading or mathematics instruction. Students in schools with high concentration of AI/AN students were more likely to experience the curricular integration, as were those whose teachers were themselves AI/AN or fluent in AI/AN language. Further analysis of such nationally representative data, for AI/AN and other cultural groups, will provide a baseline picture of the current connections—or the extent of disconnect—between core practices and culturally relevant pedagogy in both professional development and teaching practice. The article by Greg Vass, also in this issue, reminds us that what is critical is not only how much and how integrated elements of culturally responsive or sustaining teaching practices are in our teacher preparation programs; the actual implementation of such practices is shaped in significant ways by interactions with the experienced teachers with whom our candidates work, even when those candidates are 732950 JTEXXX10.1177/0022487117732950Journal of Teacher EducationRichmond et al. editorial2017

We are excited to assume leadership of the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE). Our team at Michigan State University (MSU) is committed to carrying on the outstanding stewardship of the previous editors at Pennsylvania State University (PSU). We recognize that American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)--and by extension, JTE--represents a diverse group of professionals invested in the preparation and continued support of educators; these are the same professionals who can have a significant voice in discussions and decision making around issues of teacher preparation, teacher quality, and continued professional support for educators. In recent years, for example, the journal has served as a scholarly platform for the dissemination of rigorous investigations of issues related to teacher education program design and evaluation, and the preparation of teachers who can effectively address the needs of marginalized youth, their families, and communities. Our current vision for the journal's direction over the next 3 years focuses on four areas that we believe will further solidify JTE's position as the leading voice on teacher education and teacher preparation in the 21st century. These areas include the journal's reach, diversity of contributors and perspectives, the relevance of the scholarship represented in the journal, and nurturing of junior scholars in the area of scholarly work and publication. Below we briefly describe our intentions and the work that we have begun in each of these areas. Reach The MSU Editorial Team plans to situate JTE as an even more significant voice in teacher education, on both the national and international stages. To this end, we actively seek a geographically broader pool of authors in relevant fields to submit papers that are research based or are conceptual/theoretical in their orientation. One planned mechanism for doing so is to reach out via JTE Special Issues, "Chats With JTE Editors" conference sessions, communication with scholars and practitioners who are actively contributing in identified fields, and through mechanisms and resources that SAGE and AACTE already have in place. The MSU College of Education has created a JTE Blog which will serve as an additional venue for recruiting national and international scholars in fields that can inform teacher education. We are also in the process of making abstracts of all published articles available online in widely spoken languages, a reflection of our commitment to reach more scholars and practitioners worldwide. Diversity It is our conviction that addressing issues of diversity calls for consideration of a variety of genres and scholarly perspectives. To this end, our intent is to use several strategies. First, we will bring to JTE a wide array of articles--in terms of focus, context, and methodology--that examine the issues and challenges associated with teacher education nationally and globally. Second, we have identified a diverse group of scholars for the editorial review board who bring varied and overlapping areas of expertise. The new composition of the editorial review board allows for multiplicity of methodological approaches, and professional, domestic, and international experiences for examining issues in teacher education and development. Third, we will target challenges related to equity and access with respect to learning to teach within specific subject matter disciplines. Increased attention to these issues will inform the research community, practitioners, and policy makers. Examples include how well future teachers are prepared to teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects to children whose native language is not English or who come from significant poverty; what countries might learn from the specific strategies of other nations with respect to improving teacher preparation for student success; and the impact of new learning standards on teacher preparation and professional development. …

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of problem-based learning on improving the medical educational environment. Materials and Methods: All relevant studies on problem-based learning and the medical educational environment were searched for in PubMed, the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) catalogue, Google Scholar, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and WanFang Data (WF) databases for material dating from 1969 to May 2015 without any language limitation. Six randomized controlled trials of problem-based learning compared to traditional lecture-based learning were included. The Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to assess the quality of the included studies. Review Manager (Revman) version 5.3 software was used for data analysis. The effect size of the improvement on the medical educational environment was calculated as the mean difference and 95% confidence interval. Heterogeneity was evaluated with Cochrane's χ2 test and I2. Publication bias was assessed by funnel plot, Begg's rank correlation test, and Egg's linear regression test. Results: The six included studies were at low risk of bias in all domains except for three that were at high risk of bias in the domain of allocation concealment. The pooled effect size showed that problem-based learning was better than lecture-based learning in improving the medical educational environment, as measured by the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM), with statistically significant differences. No significant publication bias was observed. The sensitivity analysis showed that the result was reliable. Conclusions: This study showed that problem-based learning was able to improve the medical educational environment as measured by DREEM. However, further studies with larger sample sizes and high-quality data are needed.

Numerous researchers have suggested that there are multiple mathematical knowledge and skill areas needed by teachers in order for them to be effective teachers of mathematics: knowledge of the mathematics that are the goals of instruction, advanced mathematics beyond the instructional material, and mathematical knowledge that is specific to what is needed to teach students. The research reported here is about the development of a test of teachers' knowledge in these three areas related to the teaching of algebra. The test development process is described and the results of several analyses are reported that had the goal of checking whether valid inferences can be made about the hypothesized components of teacher knowledge.