In reading both I sensed on one level your students had many of the same
frustrations prior to your class that the article discusses. I know until
recently in our SOE constructivism was seen in an holier than though way
which was above critique. The way of thinking it embraced was not
challenged in any way. One student I know said, that we were never
allowed to be critical of DAP or constructivism. Any way of thinking,
which is now Vygotsky, should never be above critique.
In general I think SOE in particular are very conservative organizations.
More Vygotskian, comparative type research did not start being brought into
the SOE until a few years ago. Critical thought is not necessarily valued
because what you are often learning, reading etc. is the professors
ideological preference and very often their books. When a paradigm shift
like constructivism initially occurs a university invests capital in that
particular ideology and that makes critique and other ideas coming in less
likely. So, rather than SOE being seen as liberal, I would argue they are
pretty conservative and resistant to change, for better or worse.
What caught my attention and pissed me off was the assertion of the "stupid
teachers". I would like feedback because those that get into our SOE even
with its emphasis on getting those into education who haven't received the
highest grade has the highest per student GPA out of any school or
department in the whole University. Newsgroups and articles point to the
low standards of teacher education, but from my experience their the ones
with the highest GPA.
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Eugene Matusov <ematusov who-is-at UDel.Edu>
To: XMCA <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Cc: Tony Whitson <twhitson who-is-at UDel.Edu>; John St. Julien <stjulien@UDel.Edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 1999 1:36 PM
Subject: FW: teacher ed critique
Hello everybody--
Below is another interesting article and food for thought. There is a
critique of/attack on liberal School of Education programs of preparing
elementary school teachers.
At the end of my classes I ask my students (both undergraduate and
graduate)
to write what, from their point of view, they have learned in my class (if
anything). Like all other my class assignments, except the final project,
it is not graded assignment (called "mini-project" in the syllabus).
Several of my undergraduate students of their teaching method course with
teaching practicum experience -- preservice teachers -- wrote something
like
that (which, in my view, can be relevant to the article below),
"I think that it is very interesting that we saw the difference between
public schools and Montessori schooling. I feel that Montessori schools
allows the children to be more in control of what they learn. These makes
the children more interested and therefore more motivated. I like the idea
of asking the children what they want to learn. Public schools never give
children the opportunity to provide input on what they are going to study.
I
know that this way of constructing a classroom is unrealistic in a public
school, because of accountability and standards. We should still give the
students a voice in their own education."
"Before this semester we had only talked about constructivism and
traditional teachers, this semester we got to see it and decide what we
wanted to be. I think that before this semester I thought that I wanted to
be a constructivist teacher. After this semester I have decided that is
almost impossible in todays schools. I now know that I want to be somewhere
in the middle of the two."
"Learning instructional strategies is important for have a civil classroom.
I realize now how a constructivist classroom can work. I was brought up in
the traditional setting, but after learning more about problem-based
learning and constructivism, I tend to believe that the traditional should
be changed. I believe that there can be a successful medium."
"One thing that has always bothered me about school has been the
competitiveness that is embedded within education. There is enough
competition in or hierarchical society that there is no reason why we
should
be labeling kids and placing them into their positions this early on.
Grades
should not be the basis of the way we educate children and assess their
learning on tests. I'm glad we got to learn about more authentic
assessments
and ways of making our classrooms a community where students work with and
help one another."
"I have learned the great importance of considering student's interests in
planning activities. Many teachers take for granted that what they say goes
and that their students have to participate in whatever they plan for them.
What many don't realize is that if students are not interested in what the
teacher is saying or doing, if the teacher does not make directions clear,
and if the teacher does not consider his students' needs and outside
factors, the students will not learn a thing regardless of what is going on
in the classroom. Students will only pay attention and really learn and
retain anything if their teacher works to create relevance for them in the
classroom and keeps their interests peaked."
"There are two more pieces of knowledge that will be invaluable to me in my
future. I learned that there are an infinite number of activities that
teach
the same concepts and skills. Before this year, I had the notion that there
are a few best ways to teach one concept or skill. Now, I know many lessons
are valid and good depending on my students, and I know how to evaluate and
compose a lesson that will teach the concepts and skills that I want my
students to learn. Finally, one more fact that I had never really thought
of
before was that making my lessons interesting for my students will be a
large part of my classroom management. If my students are interested in a
lesson, they are much less likely to act inappropriately. This fact will
encourage me to develop intriguing lessons for my students."
I'd like to know what you think about the article below in the context of
the students' voices (selected by me),
Eugene
----------------------
Eugene Matusov
School of Education
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
Office (302) 831-1266
Fax (302) 831-4445
email ematusov who-is-at udel.edu
Website http://ematusov.eds.udel.edu/
-------------------------
------------------------
Features Archive - Respond to this Article
May 1999 - Volume 31 Issue 5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-----
Method Madness
Why are public school teachers so poorly trained?
by Carol Innerst
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
----
With a new semester just getting underway, Paula Kelberman's first order
to her class of prospective elementary school teachers at East Stroudsberg
University in Pennsylvania was to rearrange the tables in the classroom.
They were lined up in rows. She wanted them in a "U" shape because rows
are "boring" and too "traditional." Rows also apparently promote
individualism, which would-be teachers learn is bad, rather than
cooperation, which encourages students to talk and work together. "This is
not a course that will tax you in terms of reading," the professor
continued. "I'm not as interested in your grade as I am interested in your
ability to explain your own process. The final product will not be as
important as the effort, the process you put into it."
These techniques - stressing how rather than what to teach - are common in
the 1,300 colleges and universities responsible for training our future
teachers. Educators have complained for decades about the failure of
teacher ed programs to offer teachers any substantial training in subject
matter. But despite a spate of reports and recommendations and flurries of
activity in the name of teacher education reform, little has changed in
the way most teacher training institutions go about their business. Most
still attract students of average or below average intellectual ability.
Most still make it easy for students to get into teacher education
programs, often after they have failed coursework in another discipline.
And most still view their role, and the primary role of the teachers they
train, as change agents whose mission is to work toward social justice and
equity in the classroom rather than academic achievement. The 1993 mission
statement of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education
explains: "First and foremost, quality teacher education [programs] must
be places of active conscience. The professional commitment to social
justice, and the ethics of equity and diversity in the American culture
must be palpable."
Social justice and equity are commendable goals for society, and no one
could quarrel with the need for conscientious teachers who know how to
create a harmonious classroom atmosphere. Moreover, some pedagogical
training is clearly necessary, especially for teaching younger children
(if you doubt it, try spending a day as a substitute third-grade teacher).
But the foundation for learning is built in the elementary years and too
often, the basics of teaching kids to read, write, and compute lose out to
educational fads that focus on building self-esteem and discouraging
competition.
For instance, in an effort to avoid competition and hierarchy, ed schools
promote something called "cooperative learning" - putting students of
varying abilities to work together on a project. Cooperative learning can
be an excellent educational technique in some circumstances. But when used
exclusively - as it often is - it enforces a lowest common denominator on
the group and holds individuals back. Prospective teachers are subjected
to large doses of cooperative learning as well, as professors model the
desired teaching techniques. Other current teaching fads include
"developmentally appropriate" learning, which posits that education is a
natural unfolding that occurs at different times for different children
and discourages teaching them to read and write before they are "ready."
E.D. Hirsch, the education critic and author of The Schools We Need and
Why We Don't Have Them, testified before Congress that "this doctrine is
drummed into almost all teachers who take early-education courses. The
intention is to ensure caring treatment of young children, yet the
ultimate effect of the doctrine is to cause social harm. To withold
demanding content from young children between preschool and third grade
has an effect which is quite different from the one intended. It leaves
advantaged children [who get knowledge at home] with boring pabulum, and
it condemns disadvantaged children to a permanent educational handicap
that grows worse over time."
To make matters worse, today's prospective teachers are often themselves
the products of poor schooling and arrive on campus requiring remediation
in math, writing, and sometimes reading. Consequently textbooks used in
teachers colleges have been dumbed down to the point where a book used for
a sophomore-level child psychology course, for example, "is written at
what used to be a 10th or 11th grade high school reading level," according
to John E. Stone, an education professor at East Tennessee State
University.
Small wonder then that 59 percent of newly-matriculated Massachusetts
teachers, steeped in methodology designed to make students feel good about
themselves but bereft of factual knowledge about any subject, failed a
literacy exam given by the state last year. This was no isolated incident.
The previous spring, Connetquot school district on Long Island in New York
state got 758 applications in response to an advertisement to fill 35
teaching vacancies. District officials decided to narrow the pool by
asking applicants to take a short version of a multiple choice reading
comprehension test taken from the state's old 11th grade Regents English
exams. Just 202 applicants correctly answered at least 40 of the 50
questions.
Not too long ago it was expected that a child would learn to read by the
end of first grade. In recent years, that expectation has been pushed back
to the end of third grade - and many children still fail to learn because
their teachers were never properly taught how to teach them. The
prevailing "whole language" philosophy of reading instruction sees
learning to read as a natural process that will come in time when the
child is developmentally ready to learn to read. A good example of the
chasm between education professors and parents (and even many teachers) is
the language war over the best way to teach reading - phonics or whole
language. Most schools of education continue to train prospective teachers
in whole language even though research shows that early, systematic
phonics instruction is necessary for 30 to 40 percent of beginning
readers. It takes a brave teacher to buck the belief system and whip out
flash cards when she sees children struggling to read because they have
not been taught to sound out the letters of the alphabet. California,
which saw its reading scores plummet after years of whole language
instruction, has ordered schools to teach phonics, but there is massive
resistance to this change.
Parents complain, too, that their children reach middle school and can't
multiply because teachers have been trained to emphasize "higher level
thinking skills" rather the mundane memorization of the multiplication
tables. Rote memorization is bad, teacher trainees are told. Learning any
facts is useless, they hear, because information is constantly changing
and increasing. It would be impossible to teach or absorb it all.
A 1997 Public Agenda survey documented a huge disparity between what
parents want their children to be taught in school, and what professors of
education want them to learn. Parents want orderly schools that emphasize
the academic fundamentals. Education professors want less structured
schooling that facilitates inquiry and stresses "learning how to learn."
Despite evidence that disadvantaged children especially benefit from
traditional "direct instruction" (the teacher has information and
transmits it to the pupil), Public Agenda found that even for this group
education professors continued to preach process and learner-centered
teaching in which children "construct their own knowledge."
Raising the Bar
To become a public school teacher, college graduates have to be certified
by the state. Prospective teachers must take required general education
and education courses, do a stint at student teaching, and pass a series
of general knowledge tests. The passing scores on these tests vary from
state to state but tend to be low. As a result, a lot of unqualified
teachers get into the classroom. In the early '80s a few states weeded out
the illiterates by testing veteran teachers, but howls from the teachers
unions soon nipped that practice in the bud. For their part, unions
complained that too many teachers were assigned to classes in subjects
they had not trained in. A math teacher, for example, might be asked to
take over a physics class because of a shortage of physics teachers.
Prodded by public officials, states like Pennsylvania are attempting to
address the problem of teacher quality in a variety of ways, including
forcing changes in the way the teacher training schools do business.
Governor Tom Ridge and Secretary of Education Eugene W. Hickok have
launched reform initiatives to upgrade teacher training. The first thing
they've done is make it harder to get into state schools of education by
increasing the required minimum grade point average to a 2.5 or higher,
depending on the specialty. They're also making it harder to get licensed
as a teacher and are forcing schools to eliminate the watered-down content
courses for teachers, replacing them with rigorous curricula that put the
emphasis on subject mastery. There is considerable resentment among the
deans and other high-level administrators, but privately some faculty
members at the schools of education are cheering the efforts.
Pennsylvania's East Stroudsburg University, for example, raised the grade
point average needed to get into elementary education from 2.5 to 2.75.
Students still need to take 60 hours in general education, but no longer
have a smorgasbord of courses to choose from. A would-be secondary math
teacher now must take the same math course a math major takes, not an
easier course designed especially for teachers.
Hickok, who gave up his tenure at Dickinson College to continue working on
education reform during the final four years of the Ridge administration,
remains disappointed that teaching is "still attracting too many students
who really aren't of the intellectual calibre I'd like to see. On any
college campus, the best and the brightest aren't going into education,"
he said. "That will take time." Some deans of schools of education agree.
Dean Edwin J. Delattre of Boston University School of Education - one of
the harshest critics of teacher training - says there are no more than 50
good teacher training institutions among the 1,300 in the country. Of the
others, he says: "They admit and graduate students who have low levels of
intellectual accomplishment. They are well-intentioned, decent, nice
people who by and large don't know what they're doing."
Three years ago BU began to target only teacher applicants with high SAT
scores. The inquiry pool immediately dropped 17 percent, but SAT scores of
the freshman class topped 1200 that year - more than 300 points higher
than the average self-declared education majors who took the 1996 SAT. BU
also doubled the amount of time prospective teachers must spend in math
class and made an ethics course mandatory.
Some schools, among them George Mason University's Graduate School of
Education, are tying teacher training to professional development schools
- public schools that bridge the chasm between the theorists at
universities and the practitioners dealing with real children in real
classrooms. These schools work closely with teacher training institutions
and allow prospective teachers to use their classrooms for extensive field
experience. The program uses the school's veteran teachers as mentors to
the student teachers and also brings university professors out of their
ivory tower and into a real classroom. New teachers say the extended
practical experience is extremely beneficial. Dean Gary R. Galluzzo of
George Mason is a strong advocate of professional development schools. He
remembers going through teacher training and not seeing any students until
his first day of student teaching. "I didn't see a teenager until my first
day in that school in 1973," he said. "That's wrong."
Another way to improve the quality of teaching is through alternative
certification programs. If properly designed and executed, such programs
can open public classroom doors to people like Hickok, who has taught at
the college level but is deemed unqualified to teach in a public K-12
school because he has not jumped through the hoops of ed-school
methodology training. The nation's first true alternative certification
program was pioneered by New Jersey in the '80s. The program, which
attracted more minorities to teaching than the regular teacher college
route, put college graduates with a bachelor's degree into K-12 classrooms
where they worked with a mentor teacher while taking an abbreviated
teacher training program evenings and weekends. Pennsylvania is about to
launch a similar initiative that will let bachelor's degree holders teach
under a mentor while taking one year of subject-based coursework to obtain
a teaching certificate. The key is that the coursework will steep the
teacher candidate in the subject he or she has been hired to teach, not
just pedagogy.
This kind of alternative certification, which can bypass or at least
lessen the impact of the faddish curricula of the teacher training
institutions, could be a potent tool for forcing schools of education to
become responsive to and provide the kind of no nonsense teachers that
parents and the larger public want to see in K-12 classrooms.
School choice, which allows families to choose the public or private
school they want their children to attend with state funding following the
child, could also prod schools losing students to rethink their
methodologies, putting pressure on the training institutions. In many
districts, parents for years have signaled their desire for traditional or
basic schools that put an emphasis on subject matter and are dedicated to
achievement. The few public schools that feature structure and the basics
find parents standing in line for days to try to get their child enrolled.
Public charter schools can have the same kind of impact, particularly if
their charters successfully free them from the regulatory red tape of
hostile local school boards and teachers unions.
Another lever for change could come through the states, which accredit
teacher training institutions and license teachers. If a school regularly
graduates teachers who can't pass the state's certification test, states
can shut that school down. States can also adopt value-added assessments
to determine how well teachers are doing in the classroom. Pioneered in
Tennessee, value-added assessment requires new teachers to demonstrate
their ability to produce achievement in their students, not just pass
performance-based exams that test their grasp of the current pedagogocal
orthodoxy learned in teacher training schools. At a minimum, value-added
assessment requires annual testing of students in all grades with a
reliable and valid achievement test.
Unfortunately, teacher training reform appears to be headed in the wrong
direction. The 1996 report of the National Commission on Teaching and
America's Future calls for all teacher training to be aligned with the
teacher certification standards developed by the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards. The National Board's standards are
consistent with the "latest research" that supports learner-center
teaching and other fads already solidly in place in those institutions.
The current push by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher
Education to bring all teacher training under its auspices would similarly
assure that social and attitudinal goals, not academic achievement, remain
the priority of teachers. And that would add another nail to the coffin of
teacher training reform.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
----
Like what you see? Check out a complete rundown of this month's issue,
including
many items that are only in print. If you are not already a subscriber,
SUBSCRIBE TODAY!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
----
This site and all contents within are Copyright 1999
The Washington Monthly, Washington, D.C.
Web Construction by Joshua Barlow
--------------------
David Blacker
University of Delaware
blacker who-is-at udel.edu