The current effort to reconceptualize teacher education on the Bloomington campus began in January 1995. Faculty members, graduate students, undergraduates, P-12 teachers, and others were encouraged to begin this effort not by asking what should be kept, removed, or modified with respect to current programs, but to answer two more fundamental conceptual questions: 1) What should teacher education at Indiana University, Bloomington be committed to and, 2) based on the articulation of that commitment, What should our programs look like? From these questions, and others that followed from them we began the process of rethinking teacher education at IUB.

A series of open forums, School-wide retreats, small group discussions, and other events took place over the next several years and led to the articulation of a new direction for teacher education and a new conceptual framework (see Files in Document Room for minutes and reports from these meetings). That framework has been central to the creation of revised and innovative programs. The activities leading to these outcomes were initially overseen by an ad hoc Teacher Education Steering Committee (TESC). The TESC, in total, included 29 members that represented stakeholders from the entire teacher education community (P-12 teachers and administrators, faculty from Education and other parts of Indiana University, and undergraduate and graduate students).

As conversations within the TESC and in other forums continued, a consensus gradually emerged around the major commitments, ideas, and values that would undergird teacher education at IUB. These are embodied in six principles and their implications. Ideas regarding what our conceptual framework might entail were widely shared and discussed (and coordinated through the Teacher Education Steering Committee) during the spring of 1995, the fall of 1995, and the spring of 1996. During a School-wide retreat in February 1996, we began the more specific work of outlining subsequent steps to be taken to continue the process of creating revised programs, and a timetable for that undertaking. At its February 13, 1996 meeting, the Teacher Education Council (TEC), IUB's teacher education governance body, discussed the activities that had transpired and reviewed the six principles and voted to adopt the six principles as the conceptual framework for teacher education. The members of the Council also included a stipulation that all our programs be inquiry-driven, and that all programs be required to provide evidence of specific ways that candidates engage in forms of inquiry-based learning over the course of their teacher preparation.

In a field with as much philosophical diversity as teacher education, the creation of a shared vision for a program's conceptual framework represents a daunting task. Through a careful, deliberative process, consensus regarding the core values that form the basis for the teacher education curriculum at IUB has been achieved. Through its on-going review of teacher education programs and courses, the TEC continues to evaluate the adequacy of the six principles and make recommendations for changes and refinements of the principles.