Chapter 6: Moving Forward: Recommendations for Teacher Preparation in the Twenty-First Century United States

In this final chapter, we survey current conditions and concerns in US teacher education and offer recommendations for policy and practice given its history of purpose and promise. We conduct this analysis in a time of great challenges that are both daunting and propitious. In the twenty-first century United States we are facing the pressures of new waves of immigrants and refugees; medical, social, economic, and educational crises brought on by the COVID pandemic; environmental crises related to climate change; and threats to our unity and our government principles and institutions fanned by a dangerous fomenting of political dissension. The fact that these challenges are shared by people all over the world means that our institutions – including public education and the preparation of our teachers – are directly affected by what happens elsewhere, and the reverse is also true.