Has there been a new (public) idea in teacher education in the last thirty
years?
None of what is proposed here differs from what was considered new when I
joined the field in the 1970s.
Clinical experience is important for new teachers, but it costs a LOT of
money: to pay full-time faculty to visit students in schools and work with
them on their development as teachers, to pay to exempt experienced
teachers in the schools from a full teaching load so they can mentor the
new teachers on site, to pay to subsidize the participation of the new
teachers in schools both before and for a year or two after they acquire
fulltime jobs.
There are also some structural drawbacks: research faculty don't want to
spend time travelling to schools, there are fewer qualified mentor teachers
in the schools than are needed at a time when many new teachers are
entering the profession (as at present in the US), clinical experience
without a complementary opportunity for critical reflection on practice
leads to the thoughtless reproduction of the status-quo culture of schools,
etc.
It's also wonderful to have faculty from the "content" disciplines
(history, science, etc.) more involved in the education of teachers, but
(a) for secondary school teachers this already happens, with no very
obvious good results; (b) it's hard to get these faculty and education
faculty to figure out how to speak a common language about anything; and
(c) for elementary school teachers, doing this right means they will need
more than four years to prepare for teaching (expensive and problematic at
a time of teacher shortages) and the academic demands (becoming reasonably
adept at several different disciplines in addition to understanding how to
teach a wide variety of students) are more than many of them can handle,
even in five years.
What no one in the field wants to face is the simple fact that the basic
problems of US education cannot be solved by making improvements in the
existing system. We need a completely new approach, or at least a very
substantially different institutional structure for supporting education.
We need a new design.
And short of global thermonuclear war, the conditions for change on such a
large scale seem rather remote ...
JAY.
At 05:58 PM 10/27/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>"The Carnegie Corporation of New York has added its voice - and some
>serious dollars - to the chorus of groups calling for reform of teacher
>education. In a paper released in September, "Teaching as a Clinical
>Profession: A New Challenge for Education," the philanthropic foundation
>recommends that teacher education programs be modeled more along the lines
>of medical training programs, with an emphasis on clinical experience and
>in-school residencies. The paper is intended to provoke broader discussion
>about a $40 million initiative the foundation has announced in April,
>called "Teachers for a New Era." The goal of the initiative is to create a
>change in the public's thinking about how we train and support the kind of
>teachers public schools and society needs."
>
>"Thus far, Carnegie has announced that four institutions are already on
>board: The University of California at Northridge, Bank Street College of
>Education, Michigan State University, and the University of Virginia."
>
>"Faculty in the arts and sciences need to be more involved in contributing
>to the preparation of teachers. The institutions have to put resources
>into creating better and more interactions with teachers, schools and
>districts. The profession needs to better define what teachers need to
>know and be able to do when they go to work in a classroom. And new
>teachers need to benefit from better-designed clinical experiences,
>induction programs and ongoing mentoring."
>
>To read the report, go to: www.carnegie.org/pdf/teachered.pdf
>or www.aft/org/higher_ed/downloadable/k16report.pdf
---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
610 East University
Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jaylemke
---------------------------
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