Understanding “Core Practices” and “Practice-Based” Teacher Education: Learning From the Past

Source: Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), September/October 2014, p. 357-368.

This paper investigates what can be learned by comparing and contrasting teacher education focused on core practices with other approaches that might also be called “practice-based,” including those dating back to the 19th century.
It focuses on three important periods in the history of teacher education: the heyday of the normal schools in the late 1800s, the period of scientific efficiency in the 1920s and 1930s, and the era of competency-based teacher education in the 1960s and 1970s.