The Research Base for Teacher Education: Metaphors We Live (and Die) By.

One of the most pressing issues in teacher education today is the vigorous controversy among policy makers and others about whether or not there is a research base that justifies particular practices related to the preparation, certification, recruitment, retention, and entry routes of teachers. What people mean when they talk about "the research base" and/or "the evidence" for teacher education, however, is not always made explicit, and in fact, there are a number of different images or metaphors for "research" that are prevalent in the discourse. In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) suggested that images and metaphors are not at all the trivial bits of everyday language that some people believe them to be, but they are instead powerful forces in the construction and maintenance of the world views by which we live (and die). They suggested that, Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish--a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language ... We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life ... If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual systems are largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do everyday is very much a matter of metaphor. (p. 3) Lakoff and Johnson argued further that metaphors guide future actions which, in turn, fit the initial metaphors and thus make experience coherent. There are several distinct guiding metaphors for research underlying current discussions about the research base for teacher education. Research as weapon. In some of the most highly politicized discourse, research has been used as a weapon in the battle between professionalization and deregulation reform agendas for teacher education. The weapon metaphor calls to mind images of fighting, attacks and counterattacks, winners, losers, and casualties; it also suggests the absence of compromise and consensus building. When research is a weapon, the battle is about whether or not there is solid research evidence that teacher preparation and certification are positively correlated with K-12 students' achievement. Waged through publicly disseminated syntheses of previous research, the battle has grown increasingly fierce and in some instances ad hominem--with some critiques seemingly intended more to discredit opposing researchers than to debate research findings. The best examples of research as weapon are the Teachers College Record exchange between Linda Darling-Hammond (2000) and Dale Ballou/Michael Podgursky (2000); the report-rejoinder-rebuttal between the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (Darling-Hammond, 2001) and the Abell Foundation (200la; 200lb); and the excoriating critiques of researchers in favor of professionalization that have been published in Chester Finn's new magazine, Education Next. When research is a weapon, it is not farfetched to suggest that the battle is about life and death for collegiate teacher preparation and also--ultimately--about whose children have the right to fully licensed teachers. Research as report card. Research is also portrayed as a mechanism for the public grading of teacher-preparation institutions and states. The report card metaphor conveys images of oversight and supervision--teacher and child, passing and failing, and reports filled with As, Bs, Fs and a required parent's signature. The obvious example here is the federal Title II Report Card, which provides annual information for every state and teacher-preparation institution about the performance on teacher tests of all candidates certified by that state. The ostensible purpose is to guide consumers' choices in the teacher-preparation marketplace. When Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced the report card web site, he stated, "Our goal is to assure that all teaching programs are working to train our future teachers in the most effective methods according to evidence-based research" (http:// www. …