This paper focuses on different ways of conceiving and carrying out teacher preparation. It examines some of the ideas that Americans have had about how teachers should be prepared and offers some frameworks for looking at distinctive approaches and alternatives. The paper also discusses the state of the art concerning programs of initial teacher preparation and indicates where conceptual, empirical and practical work is needed. The organization of this paper reflects a basic distinction in the professional literature and public debate. In discussing needed changes in teacher preparation, people tend to emphasize either structural or conceptual issues. Many of the current reforms, for example, call for adding a fifth year, increasing the amount of field experiences, limiting the number of credit hours in education, creating alternative routes to teaching by providing on-the-job training for liberal arts graduates. Tied to policy mandates and questions of supply and demand, these structural alternatives reflect political and economic considerations more than clear thinking about what teachers need to know or how they can be helped to learn that. At the same time, one can hardly pick up a professional journal or attend a professional meeting these days without encountering the terms "reflective teaching and teacher education." Fifteen years ago, the same would have been true of the terms "competency-based " or "performance-based " teacher education. These conceptual alternatives reflect different views of teaching and learning to teach and suggest different orientations to the preparation of teachers. Distinguishing between structural alternatives and conceptual orientations prov des a way to highlight some of the major efforts that have dotted the teacher education landscape. At the same time, the need for such a strategy underscores the immature state of a field in which different forms of teacher preparation are only loosely tied to explicit traditions of thought, and conceptual
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