An Exploration Of The Development Of New Graduate Schools Of Education（nGSEs） In The United States-From The Perspective Of Organizational Legitimacy

In the globalized knowledge society,teacher education has attracted more and more attention,improving the quality of teacher education and innovating teacher preparation models have become the core concerns of researchers in various countries.Although the United States has long focused on teacher education reform,it still faces a severe shortage of teachers and a mediocre quality of teachers in basic education.In this context,the highly controversial teacher training organization,new Graduate Schools of Education（n GSEs）have entered the U.S.teacher education field and become the new provider of teacher preparation and certification.As higher education institutions that can independently grant master’s degrees,n GSEs have broken the monopoly of traditional education colleges in universities on teacher education at the graduate-level and have provided much-needed teachers for basic education in the United States.At the same time,n GSEs focused on the development of practical teaching skills for pre-service teachers and revolutionized the teacher education curriculum in the United States.This thesis selects four typical n GSEs,adopts the theoretical perspective of organizational legitimacy,draws on Cochran-Smith’s explanatory framework,combines the literature research method,case study method,semi-structured interview method and comparative analysis method,to analyze the logic of organizational legitimacy constructs and teacher education practices in the emergence and development of n GSEs.To this end,this thesis reveals the teacher education model of n GSEs represented by the case study in four dimensions: institutional contexts,missions and visions,learning to teach,and funding models,and compares the similarities and differences of teacher education practices among different n GSEs.On the basis of case study,the semi-structured interview method is further combined with the organizational legitimacy theory to analyze the multiple interaction between the n GSEs and the external environment such as the policy systems,social norms,and stakeholders’ demands in three dimensions: regulative legitimacy,normative legitimacy,and cognitive legitimacy,and to conduct an in-depth analysis of how the acquisition and status of organizational legitimacy of n GSEs are.The study found that the severe teacher shortages,the turn toward clinical practice and educational equity reform,as well as the role of the logic of market consumption in teacher education under the neoliberal policy paradigm jointly constitute the context for the construction of organizational legitimacy of n GSEs.In terms of teacher education practices,all n GSEs are characterized by the adoption of a residency model focused on clinical practice,the cultivation of a future teaching faculty that can respond to the needs of diverse student groups,the setting of higher levels of admission and selection standards,and the provision of multiple financial support and preferential policies to teacher candidates as nonprofit organizations.However,although both belong to the category of n GSEs,different schools have adopted different organizational forms and pedagogical practices to prepare different future teachers due to the differences in institutional contexts,missions and values,and therefore different schools have acquired different organizational legitimacy in their development.Overall,this study concludes that the n GSEs have acquired a solid foundation of regulative legitimacy and a relatively stable foundation of normative legitimacy,but there are “cognitive contradictions” in the dimension of cognitive legitimacy,which are positive internally but negative externally of the field.Finally,this study argues that the teacher education practices of n GSEs reflect the behavioral logic of clinical practice turn,educational equity turn,and performance orientation,while the logic of organizational legitimacy construction reflects the growing influence and voice of two types of subjects,non-governmental organizations and teacher educators,in the field of teacher education reform.Based on this,this study concludes by suggesting implications for teacher education reform in China.At the level of teacher education practice reform,efforts were made to improve the integration of teacher education and clinical practice,and increase teacher education’s concern for educational equity.At the level of teacher education governance reform,efforts were made to create a flexible and pluralistic accreditation environment,create an external quality assurance system for teacher education,and guide the collaborative participation of multiple subjects in teacher education evaluation.