Good Teaching, Good Teacher Education, and the Education of the Teacher’s Eye

Although there is a strong consensus that teachers matter, there are also a number of developments that point in the direction of a future for education where teachers are no longer really needed. There is, of course, the ongoing but as yet not entirely fulfilled promise that at some point technology will be able to do a better job than teachers – which immediately raises the question what the “job” of teachers is and what it would mean to do that job better. And there are countries that have gone so far with the micromanagement of education – through tough inspection regimes, narrow definitions of progress, and teaching scripts that simply tell teachers what they should do to make the education “machine” work – that teachers begin to matter less and less. Looking at these developments, we might say that the real choice we are beginning to face is whether we want education in which teachers play a key role or whether we do not really care whether education takes place with or without...