National governments and international organizations have made expanding access to well-prepared, effective teachers a central focus in national educational reforms (Akiba 2013).  The U.N Sustainable Development Goal #4 makes providing students with access to highly-trained, professional teachers a global priority.  Teacher education is now often scrutinized by national policy makers who often look to other nations for models that can be replicated e.g. (Sahlberg 2011).  Yet, in the end, such policy borrowing often fails to achieve the goal of profound change in teacher education.  Reform efforts are typically stymied by deeply institutionalized national differences in national public school organization, university structure, or cultures of instructional practice (Baker and LeTendre 2005; Tahirsylaj, Brezicha et al. 2015) In addition, the politicized nature of teacher educational reform (Tatto and Menter 2019), and the complex forces that affect teacher education policy debates (Wang, Odell et al. 2010; Earley, Imig et al. 2011) often means that the reforms must be sufficiently robust to survive contentious and rapidly changing political environments.

In this session scholars from Norway, Sweden and Hungary will present papers that document changes in teacher education in that originated from collaboration with the iSTEP (Inquiry into the Stanford Teacher Education Program) Institute. They will show how the iSTEP Institute served as a reform catalyst that embedded and transformed key institutional components (universities, classrooms and school governance) of teacher education in each nation. The analysis from these three nations provides a new approach to transforming educational institutions in order to reform and improve teacher education.  Each of the three national case studies demonstrates the diversity of national educational environments in which the iSTEP Institute network has spread. They show how local actors used the network to transform heterogenous sets of institutions and allowed the core principles to be effectively instantiated in teacher preparation and professional development. Within each national case study, the authors address key points regarding the restructuring of teacher education, the influence of national political contexts around teacher reform, and the unintended issues that arose in adapting the program.

            In addition to the three national case studies, one paper will provide background on how the iSTEP Institute was designed.  This includes a foundation of key principles of powerful and effective teacher preparation developed over several decades by scholars such as Darling-Hammond (Darling-Hammond 1997; Darling-Hammond 2012; Shulman 1986) and others (Ladson-Billings 1995; Oakes, Lipton et al. 2018).  During meetings and workshops of the  iSTEP Institute participants explored the knowledge base of effective teacher preparation in their nations, including the key design features, while simultaneously utilizing the in-situ practices of the Stanford Teacher Education Participants were encouraged to consider the application of the fundamental theory- and research-based propositions to their own local, regional, and national contexts.  For the teams from Norway, Sweden and Hungary, this inquiry and collaborative reflection resulted in the development of a set of norms and processes for transforming teacher preparation in their home institutions. They identified organizational linkages in anticipation of the need for local accommodations, while preserving core processes of change based on a shared value orientation around educational equity. This unique functioning of the iSTEP Institute stimulated us to refine the theory of a reform catalyst.  Theory-driven transformation in teacher education is not new (see McLaughlin and Mitra 2001) but a true catalysts imbeds and transforms.  Rather than requiring fidelity to the diffusing innovation (see (Rogers 1995), the network supports ongoing research that allows the innovation to evolve and to produce the kinds of visible improvements so critical to engaging teachers in change efforts (Hattie 2012).

Åstrand, B. (2017). Swedish teacher education and the issue of fragmentation: Conditions for the struggle over academic rigour and professional relevance. In Hudson, B. (Ed.), Overcoming fragmentation in Teacher Education Policy and Practice (pp. 101-152). Cambridge University Press.