In this article, the author investigates how collaborative teacher research can reposition teachers to be powerful stakeholders and policymakers rather than skilled technicians and implementers. The author concludes that teacher certification programs should implement the standards and assessments their districts provide them. Furthermore, certification programs should seek to establish opportunities for teacher research with experienced teacher mentors, administrators, and academics.

The main purpose of the present research is to investigate the perceptions of the student teachers regarding mentor roles and create a reliable Mentor Teacher Role Inventory (MTRI) for a distance English Teacher Training context. The analysis shows that the MTRI is a very valid and reliable instrument. The author concludes that an imperative implication of the present study is that a reliable and valid Mentor Teacher Role Inventory is constructed. The analysis of the MTRI yielded mentor dimensions similar to those reported in previous literature increasing the confidence in the stability of these mentor roles.

This article presents findings from an instrumental case study. The purpose of the instrumental case study was to examine the impact of high-stakes standards-based accountability reform on preservice teachers and what this means for teacher education. The data reveal that these candidates learned in their teacher education program that they had to incorporate Texas’s mandated curriculum into their teaching. However, their field experiences taught them that knowing how to teach the mandated curriculum and putting that knowledge into practice is a difficult task to undertake.

In this article, the author argued that the democratic promise of a just and equitable society embodied in the reforms is important; yet the particular principles about school knowledge historically classify and order reflection and action to shape and fashion what is possible and “reasonable” for participation. The notion of alchemy directed attention to the principles that translate and order what is taught. In this sense, the very system of reason that organizes school subjects is the political of schooling.

In this article, the author reflects on his last 15 years of experience as an environmental education researcher and teacher education faculty member. Through the personal reflections of narrative inquiry, the author observes and interprets the changes he has witnessed and participated in at the state, university, college, and department level, and also on the bureaucratic forces. The author argues that such changes can begin with sustainability-responsive course revisions, and can connect to more significant changes in college and state programs and policies.

In this article, the authors describe the strategic response of one teacher education program to the challenges of implementing a set of new high-stakes state teaching performance assessment policies. These state policy mandates were perceived by faculty and staff to intrude strongly on the integrity of local program values and practices. In a strategic effort to negotiate the tension between these perceptions and the institutional necessity of implementing the new policies, the authors developed an approach to policy implementation aimed at shifting the discourse of implementation from a focus on compliance to a focus on inquiry.