Chapter 4: Addressing the Problem of Teacher Educator Development: Teacher Education as a Doctoral Minor Course of Study

Since the emergence of formal teacher education in the early 20^th century, the work of preparing teachers has been studied, critiqued, and scrutinized. Society and the education community have described several problems with teacher education (Cochran-Smith, 2004). Some see teacher education as a learning problem that demands teacher educators design social, organizational, and intellectual context that help candidates function as decision makers (Grossman et al., 2008; Hammerness, 2006). Others consider teacher education a policy problem, which require teacher educators to respond to institutional and state policies (e.g., licensure exams, course requirements, alternative pathways) that lead to desired outcomes (Cohen-Vogel, 2005). Most recently, teacher education has been framed as an equity problem (Cuenca & Nichols, 2019), which requires teacher educators to consider the design of programs where community knowledge, the needs and strengths of indigenous candidates and candidates of color are valued and accentuated to hopefully minimize teacher quality disparities in schools (Fenwick, 2022; Jacobs & Burns, 2021; Zeichner et al., 2015).