OBJECTIVE

The objective of this paper is to report an analysis of the issue of pedagogical innovation in the context of initial teacher education. Writing from outside Europe, the author seeks to invite responses concerning the importance attached to this issue by teacher educators in Europe.

ANALYTIC RESEARCH QUESTION

Does an analysis of the importance of pedagogical innovation for the improvement of initial teacher education resonate with teacher educators in Europe?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

For decades we have heard about the gap between theory and practice in learning to teach but we have made very little progress in reducing that gap. There have been important suggestions directed specifically to those of us who teach in initial teacher education programs, as in the work of Korthagen et al. (2001), who contrasted theory with Theory, Darling-Hammond (2006), who illustrated the importance of coherence in exemplary teacher education programs, and Loughran (2006, 2010), who stresses the importance of pedagogy for the teaching outcomes we seek.. There is also important literature directed at improving pedagogical approaches in primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education. Bain (2004) illustrates the critical importance of the teacher-student relationship at tertiary level. Hattie (2012) emphasizes the importance of teachers’ mind frames as he presents empirical evidence about the relative impact of different pedagogies. Duhigg (2012) provides cogent insights into the complexity of changing habits, habits that would include the professional patterns apparent in the behaviour of teachers. Lortie’s (1975) analysis of the apprenticeship of observation explains how those learning to teach already have deeply engrained habits before they enter a program of initial teacher education. Knight (2004) and many others have emphasized the importance of identifying and analyzing explicitly the importance of students’ prior knowledge.

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