Improving the use of evidence in teacher preparation is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities for our field. The chapters in this volume explore how data availability, quality, and use within and across preparation programs shed light on the structures, policies, and practices associated with high quality teacher preparation. Chapter authors take on critical questions about the connection between what takes place during teacher preparation and subsequent outcomes for teachers and students - which has remained a black box for too long. Despite a long history of teacher preparation in the U.S. and a considerable investment in preservice and in-service training, much is still to be learned about how pre-service preparation impacts teacher effectiveness. A strong empirical basis that informs how specific aspects of and approaches to teacher preparation relate to outcomes for graduates and their preK-12 student outcomes will provide a foundation for improved teaching and learning. Our book responds to stakeholders' collective responsibility to students and teachers to act more deliberately. Issues of data availability and quality, the uses of data for improvement, priorities for future research, and opportunities to promote evidence use in teacher preparation are discussed throughout the volume to inspire collective action to push the field towards more use of evidence. Chapters present research that uses a variety of research designs, methodologies, and data sources to explore important questions about the relationship between teacher preparation inputs and outcomes.

As Steven Meyers writes, an odyssey need not involve a long journey, simply a profound one. First drawn to Lime Creek for its fly fishing, this stream serves as Meyers’s muse in seven transcendent essays that explore journeys in the discovery of self, of home, and what it means to be human. The essays also explore loss and grief, of finding healing in the powerful presence of nature and in the awareness and experience of natural cycles. The tender eloquence of his writing and his compassion for all living things make for a contemplation of place in the tradition of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Desert Solitaire.

Improving the use of evidence in teacher preparation is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities for our field. The chapters in this volume explore how data availability, quality, and use within and across preparation programs shed light on the structures, policies, and practices associated with high quality teacher preparation. Chapter authors take on critical questions about the connection between what takes place during teacher preparation and subsequent outcomes for teachers and students - which has remained a black box for too long. Despite a long history of teacher preparation in the U.S. and a considerable investment in preservice and in-service training, much is still to be learned about how pre-service preparation impacts teacher effectiveness. A strong empirical basis that informs how specific aspects of and approaches to teacher preparation relate to outcomes for graduates and their preK-12 student outcomes will provide a foundation for improved teaching and learning. Our book responds to stakeholders' collective responsibility to students and teachers to act more deliberately. Issues of data availability and quality, the uses of data for improvement, priorities for future research, and opportunities to promote evidence use in teacher preparation are discussed throughout the volume to inspire collective action to push the field towards more use of evidence. Chapters present research that uses a variety of research designs, methodologies, and data sources to explore important questions about the relationship between teacher preparation inputs and outcomes.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is increasingly used to civilize grassroots disabled persons' organizations (DPOs) around the world. The international disability rights movement actively promotes the CRPD's key norm that disabled persons mobilize in support of their rights under the Convention. The unintended consequence of these activities, however, is that local groups focused on social support and service provision, rather than disability-rights advocacy, are targeted for change. While the resources provided by international actors to grassroots organizations provide new opportunities, they also create barriers to local groups' ability to promote full civic participation of their members in the local community. Through a detailed account of grassroots DPOs in Nicaragua, Civilizing Disability Society demonstrates how local organizations navigate pressures from abroad as they attempt to concretely address the health, education and economic needs of their members at home.