Teacher education debate generally starts with its four main underlying constructs. These are diversification and selectivity; subject matter and pedagogy; university and multiple sites; and regulation and deregulation (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001; Darling-Hammond, 2005). One important striking point in teacher education is the discussion between the deregulationists and professionalists. Deregulationists in one side defend consistent to the market-based reforms in order to simplify the requirements of studying in an education school and they suggest that educations schools should be like charter or private schools (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001). With this point of view, teacher education can be referred as ‘training’ rather than ‘education’ (Furlong, 2002, p.23). On the other hand, professionalists have the idea that teacher education should be regulated through the control over both input and output variables of teacher preparation (Cochran-Smith, 2005). This simultaneous tendency to reshape teacher education causes a contradiction defined as ‘tightly regulated deregulation’ (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Cochran-Smith,2005). A major teacher education movement took place in Turkey in 1982 and all teacher education institutions have been a part of universities offering 4-year programs. Since then, many changes have been made in Turkish teacher education system. Some implementations were canceled and revisited over time, addressing that rationales and needs were not stated and analyzed deeply. With this point of view, this research aims to investigate what changes have been done in terms of teacher education system and what kinds of actions were performed related in order to develop teacher education since 1982, and the reasons and results of these actions in the case of mathematics teacher education. Specifically, the following research questions are sought through the perspectives of teacher educators: What were the existing needs for the mathematics teacher education reforms? What were the reasons for these reforms? How successful were these reforms? How did they satisfy the existing needs of teacher education in Turkey? How these findings will shape the future reforms in teacher education?

The data of this study were collected through interviews and documents. Interviews were conducted with teacher educators who have been involved in reform movements and who have implemented the various reforms in teacher education programs. Interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed through inductive coding. The perspectives of the participants were detected, compared and summarized. Curriculum documents and teacher education related documents from the Ministry of National Education and from the universities since 1982 were investigated in order to understand whether the philosophies and policy ideas were reflected on the documents. This analysis helped in understanding the structures of the programs and participants’ perspectives.

Initial findings showed that the needs for teacher education reforms in Turkey might not be evidence-based but experience-based. Participants had contradictory views about the load of the content courses in the mathematics teacher education curriculum. While some participants prioritized practice in teacher education, others addressed content knowledge more, which was parallel to the international discourse in teacher education. This debate was reflected on the teacher education curriculum through different tracks of mathematics teacher education. Specialization tracks for elementary and secondary mathematics education were not always supported. Overall, the initial findings addressed that mathematics teacher education in Turkey lacks a philosophical background and collaboration among the parties that should be involved in developing teacher education policies. It is expected the further analysis will present more in-depth understanding of mathematics teacher education policy and offer a rationale for the future teacher education reform movements. Implications will be addressed in detail.