Teacher education reform initiatives: The case of Mexico

The lack of systematic knowledge about the effectiveness of old and new teacher education approaches in Mexico complicates policy making and threatens to weaken the quality of education teachers receive. Yet evaluative studies that comparatively assess the merits of past and current approaches to educate teachers are non-existing. Currently, Mexican education authorities while recognizing the need to develop comprehensive information systems to make informed decisions regarding teacher education, are not willing-in part because of limited resources and in part because of the complex political ethos surrounding teachers-to undertake an empirical study to assess teacher education approaches in Mexico. In this paper we develop an alternative way to comparatively assess the merits of teacher education based on document analysis and interviews that may provide valuable preliminary information and may help set the basis for future empirical studies. Two research questions guide our analysis: (1) What are the structure and programmatic character of teacher education in Mexico? and (2) How does this structure seem to contribute to developing the professional knowledge and abilities teachers need in order to effectively teach? After developing a framework for analysis we suggest plausible policy alternatives to increase teacher education’s contributions to teachers’ professional knowledge and skills. The results of our analysis make evident the need to develop evaluative studies that comparatively assess the merits of past and current teacher preparation approaches in order to develop sound teacher education policy in Mexico.