Introduction: The Roles of Teacher Educators, Supervisors, and Mentors in Professionalizing Teacher Education

Some routes to becoming a teacher are simple and short in duration, with minimal attention paid to the components that contribute high quality teacher preparation; others are rigorous and engage students in university coursework focused on educational foundations, literacy and content area methods, formative assessment, adapted instruction for bilingual youth and children with special needs, learning theories in practice, deep reflections on student learning, extensive classroom experiences under the tutelage of experienced teachers, and apprenticed student teaching. What is fascinating about this study is that it is one of the very few that looks at the professional development of teacher educators, asking questions about what kinds of transformations participants experience as they move from a traditional to an new teacher education program, and the contexts in which the changes occurred.