In Teachers' Workplace, Rosenholtz presents evidence suggesting that teachers' attitudes and behaviors are direct results of the social organization of their workplace. She describes low- consensus schools, where the many uncertainties in classroom teaching lead to isolation and pluralism, and high-consensus schools, where teachers solve problems collaboratively and, in the process, define common goals and desirable teaching methods. In The Professors of Teaching, education faculty emerge as a highly fragmented, pluralistic group, strikingly similar to the teachers Rosenholtz describes in low-consensus schools. Although some degree of pluralism is inherent in the nature of the professoriate, teacher education as a professional field may be unique in its extreme ill-structuredness. Teacher educators, like K-12 teachers in low-consensus schools, may be driven by the uncertainties of their work to the same coping mechanisms: isola tion and self-defensiveness. The task of restructuring teacher education appears to entail trans forming colleges of education into high-consensus schools. The deeply problematic nature of such a transformation is discussed.
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