networks, local institutions, and individuals. Collaborative and reflective inquiry
brings about learning (understanding what the concept is and why it is important, as
well as considering whether we know enough); creates a new language and defi-
nitions for the specific field of study to serve in cross-national, cross-cultural
communication; and develops collaborative capacity building, thus enabling indi-
viduals and institutions to play an active role in education and policy development
and implementation. This approach, therefore, helps to create spaces for what I term
the“collaborative construction”and“collaborative contextualization”of policy-
usable knowledge.
In the rest of this chapter, I illustrate the application of this model to the
international study of teacher education. While my foundational experiences began
in Sri Lanka (see Fig.42.1) and in Mexico (see Tatto 2001 for a summary of these
experiences), I have chosen a large comparative study carried in collaboration with
17 countries between 2006 and 2013 to illustrate my approach to research.
42.1 Views on the Knowledge Teachers Need
to Be Able to Teach Well
Beginning in the 1980s, there was a transformation in the dominant theories of
teaching and teacher learning away from transmission views and toward a more
cognitive, constructivist, or situated-learning orientation (e.g., Schön 1987 ). In the
late 1990s and early 2000s, changing conceptions of what it meant to know and of
what knowledge was valued in teaching had led to questions about the worth of
traditional teacher education programs and about how to reform them (Day et al.
2000 ; Stuart and Tatto 2000 ). Internationally, there were debates about these issues
as well (e.g., UNESCO 1996 ). New definitions of“good teaching” included
knowing and managing disciplinary content, helping pupils develop intellectual
tools, and making them aware of their own intellectual capacities during learning.
The international and comparative research literature suggested that quality teachers
may evolve from different models of teacher education and development including
those based on spiritual, moral, and aesthetic conceptions of good teaching with a
focus on learning (LeTendre and Rohlen 1999 ; Avalos 2000 ), and sensitive to the
political aspects of teachers’lives (Liston and Zeichner 1991 ). Others called for
attention to schools’culture as a key factor expected to facilitate self-regulatory
processes to, in turn, influence effective teaching (Fuller and Clarke 1994 ); yet
others took a more relativistic position, affirming that definitions of quality teaching
and learning were very diverse and highly dependent on school context (Rust and
Dalin 1990 ). In sum, while thefield seemed open to considering alternative views
on the knowledge needed for teaching and to modifying teacher education and
development accordingly, few of these notions were sustained by convincing
empirical evidence.
42 The Role of Comparative and International Research... 623