Teacher Education and Teachers’ Colleges

This chapter traces the history and historiography of teacher education from a global perspective, provides a list of key themes in the historical study of teacher formation, and concludes with promising directions for future research. Attention is paid to both Western forms of teacher education, such as the normal school and teachers’ college, and pre-modern and non-Western varieties of educator formation. While early histories of teacher education often told celebratory stories of teachers and the institutions that trained them, historical work of the 1960s to the 1980s brought a new focus on race, class, gender, and social history, while histories of the 1990s and early 2000s built on these earlier themes while also centering transnational and postcolonial dynamics. While there are many exciting opportunities for historians in this field, the close relationship to policy also poses unique challenges. Historians of teacher education would do well to continue internationalizing their scholarship and taking heed of innovations in methods, sources, and their role in teacher preparation.