Chapter 1: The Preparation of Teachers for the Profession in Early Childhood Education

Public critiques of teachers and teacher education as well as scholarly debates within the profession have long existed in the educational scene. For approximately five years, these highly politicized battles about teacher education have been confounded by torrid media commentaries, public discourse harassments, and charges by legislative reformers at the state and federal levels (Cochran-Smith, 2001a, 2001b; Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001). Michael Apple (1990) insists that:

Schools, colleges, and departments of education are initially challenged to adapt their teacher preparation program for all levels (e.g., elementary, secondary, early childhood) for their National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) accreditation. Each teacher preparation program develops its own conceptual framework based on its belief system or “conceptual orientation” (Feiman-Nemser, 1990), which “constitutes a source of ideas and practices” (p. 277) that oversees the preparation of teachers and other school personnel. In preparing for a NCATE accreditation, the program develops a unified conceptual framework that synthesizes the different thoughts of its faculty (Peca & Isham, 2001).