Editorial

One of the debates in teacher education concerns the extent to which teacher educators are perceived as relevant and credible by their pre-service students. While on the face of it, this seems an odd concern given that teacher educators are drawn from the ranks of teachers, there was nevertheless widespread concern about such issues during the 1970s (see, for example, Lortie, 1975), the 1980s (see, for example, Board of Teacher Education 1984, 1985) and the 1990s (see, for example, Turney & Wright, 1990). Indeed, it was this concern that motivated politicians in the UK and in Australia to call for work experience for teacher educators (see Hatton, 1994). While `work experience’ may be a questionable solution to the problems of relevance and credibility, it is arguably the case that education faculties have taken for granted the capacities of teacher educators to be able to offer useful and helpful critiques of student teachers’ practice while on practicum. This is highlighted in `Caution: classroom under observation’ , contributed by Peter Sullivan, Judith Mousley and Ann Gervasoni, who suggest that teacher educators `see’ and critique lessons in very contradictory ways. That there should be competing de® nitions of what counts as good practice should come as no surprise. What is frightening, however, is when one preferred version is promoted without debate as the best version, especially in an unequal power relationship. It is this concern which prompts Sullivan et al. to argue for a course of action which `opens up opportunities for discussing the strengths and limitations of different teaching actions, the intentions and assumptions of student teachers and the perspectives of observers’ . In this way, they hope to make more overt the creative and contested nature of teaching. The debate about the relevance and credibility of teacher educators notwithstanding, many teacher educators prove themselves through their practice to be concerned with issues of relevance and the like. For example, this issue highlights two articles in which teacher educators utilise technologies to assist them to ® nd ways in which student teachers might engage in productive discussions about their theory and practice. One example of this is provided by Sue Graham and Christina Thornley in `Connecting classrooms in pre-service education: conversations for learning’ . These New Zealand teacher educators encourage `frequent dialogue through fax, audio conference and email between student teachers based in the university and children and teachers in classrooms’ to enable them both to access `the thinking of children and teachers’ and to provide `additional opportunities to theorise their practice and practice their theory’ . In an Australian example, Dianne Bloom® eld in `Voices on the Web: student teachers negotiating identity’ provides a bulletin board facility to student teachers on practicum. These students occupy a marginal and potentially isolated position since they are studying by distance or external mode. In this article, the provision of a bulletin board on the Web is assessed for its capacity to provide students `with a new notion of learning community or a site for a critical or resistant dialogue’ . In addition, Bloom® eld considers implications for broader issues concerning student `voice’ and subjectives. Kwok-Wai Chan and Robert Elliott, in `Exploratory study of epistemological beliefs of Hong Kong teacher education students: resolving conceptual and empirical issues’ , explore the epistemological belief dimensions held by Hong Kong teacher education