Tensions and paradoxes in teaching: implications for teacher education

This paper focuses on the tensions and paradoxes in teaching. At present time, teacher education has the obligation to prepare teachers for diverse student populations, living in a highly varied context. This situation creates several competing expectations of the meaning of teacher education. For instance, preparing for professional autonomy in a world of externally imposed educational policy. The tension between achieving immediate results and success in external exams versus the need to prepare students in an era of migration and growing multiculturalismin school contexts is addressed. It is argued that a common knowledge base is a necessary response to growing multiculturalism while simultaneously leaving space in the curriculum for multicultural aspects of the student population. These double requirements have implications for teacher education which are discussed in the last section of the paper.Financial Support by CIEC (Research Centre on Child Studies, IE, UMinho; FCT R&D unit 317, Portugal) by the Strategic Project UID/CED/00317/2013, with financial support of National Funds through the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) and co-financed by European Regional Development Funds (FEDER) through the COMPETE 2020 - Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program (POCI) with the reference POCI-01-0145-FEDER-00756

Ben-Peretz, Miriam, Policy-Making in Education: A Holistic Approach in Response to Global Changes. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.

Gives background of current global changes in demographics, economics, information transfer, and the environment that educational policy-makers must take into account; relates three domains (curriculum, teaching, teacher education) to policy-making in education; describes the author\u27s experiences in education policy-making in Israel along with other examples; presents principles of policy-making in education and proposes a practical four-phase model of policy-making in education

Ben-Peretz, Miriam, The Concept of Curriculum Potential, Curriculum Theory Network, 5(No. 2, 1975), 151-159.

Explores the idea of intentions in curriculum development and the potential of curriculum material; analyzes the factors that shape the potential of curriculum materials and their use in curriculum implementation and evaluation

Ben-Peretz, Miriam, Curriculum Potential, 1246-1248 in T. Husen and T. N. Postlethwaite, eds., International Encyclopedia of Education . New York: Pergamon, 1984.

Discusses how the curriculum potential of scholarly materials and materials developed for school use may be deliberated to provide clues to using them with children; brief reference is also made to teacher education materials

Ben-Peretz, Miriam, Curriculum Development, pp. 256-260 in Marvin C. Alkin, ed., Encyclopedia of Educational Research, 6th ed. New York: Macmillan, 1992.*

Summarizes three models of curriculum development, who should participate in the process, and the relation between society and the curriculum

Ben-Peretz, Miriam, Curriculum Theory and Practice in Teacher Education Programs, pp. 9-27 in Lilian G. Katz and James D. Raths, eds., Advances in Teacher Education: Volume I . Norwood, NJ: ABLEX, 1984.

Presents components of curriculum theory and practice for teachers in preparation programs

Ben-Peretz, Miriam, Curriculum Inquiry: Commonplace Topics, pp. 227-229 in Torsten Husen and Thomas N. Postlethwaite, eds., International Encyclopedia of Education, Supplement Volume One. New York: Pergamon, 1988.

Discusses Schwab\u27s notion of commonplaces and their role and relationships in curriculum deliberation

Ben-Peretz, Miriam, Curriculum Analysis as a Tool of Evaluation, pp. 295-307 in Arieh Lewy, and David Nevo, eds., Evaluation Roles in Education . London: Gordon and Breach, 1981.

Urges use of materials analysis techniques to evaluate curriculum

Lewy, Arieh, and Miriam Ben-Peretz, Curriculum-Specific Evaluation Criteria, pp. 1359-1366 in Torsten Husen and Thomas N. Postlethwaite, eds., The International Encyclopedia of Education, 2d ed. New York: Pergamon, 1994.*

Reviews criteria for curriculum evaluation (balance, relevance, potential)