THE PERSISTENT RELATIONAL DISCONNECT OF TEACHER EDUCATION: Reimagining Teacher Education Pedagogy as Feminists

The crucial tensions that emerge in a pedagogy of teacher education â" the theory/practice gap, the struggles to represent the rich complexities of practice, the challenge to teachâ relational practice, and the preparation of a largely white, female teaching force for diverse communities and populations often seem more elusive despite decades of research, and tinkering in innovation. The intractableness of these tensions is, in large part, emergent from the ways the pedagogy of teacher education is situated within the neoliberal agenda of the university, centered on patriarchal academic notions that favor individualistic, hierarchical, and logical ways of knowing with little, if any, attention to the limitations of such ways of being. As decades-long doctoral faculty in teacher education and teacher development, we take up and model a feminist teacher education pedagogy to prepare teacher educators to navigate these critical tensions in their work with the next generations of teachers.