What kind of teacher do we want? What kind of teacher training is best? How can one improve the status of the profession of teaching and attract suitable candidates? What should the status of teaching colleges be? How can one strengthen the cooperation between the teacher-training institutions and the schools? How should teachers be encouraged to develop and supported at the start of their careers and throughout their professional lives? Should we create alternative paths in addition to the traditional teacher training, and if so, what kind? What kind of training do teachers in informal education need? These are some of the questions dealt with in The Crisis in Teacher Education: Reasons, Problems, and Possible Solutions.

The teaching profession has been in a continuing state of severe crisis, which has become even worse recently, in the age of a market economy and globalization: It is difficult to attract suitable candidates, and there is no agreement on the correct kind of training; moreover, many of the graduates of the teacher-training courses do not engage in the profession at all or abandon it after a brief trial. The papers in the book, by leading academics and educators in the field of teaching in Israel, portray the local crisis in light of what is happening elsewhere in the world, analyze the reasons for it, and propose ways of grappling with it.

The book is aimed at public leaders and at leaders in education in the hope of making them aware of the gravity of the situation and of spurring them to act to fix it. It is also aimed at teachers in all branches of the education system to encourage them to improve to the best of their ability, and at the general public, which understands that teaching and proper education deserve a central place in the public discourse and in action to advance society.