New Tack in Teacher Education - Report Example

New Tack in Teacher Education Introduction The common criteria set for admitting into a normal school are patience, love of learning andthe young, the ability to develop internal discipline, integrity and sound reasoning in others. Patience tops the list of the necessary qualities because teaching requires long and exhaustive hours of lesson preparation and presentation. A love for learning and the young is just as important because teaching involves instructing and relating to young people. A natural ability to instill discipline and integrity in others is specified too because teaching is all about informal counseling and guidance. Once a would-be teacher passed this set of criteria in the old days, a normal school, or a university offering the regular 4-year teacher education courses, proceeded to use these basic attributes as building blocks toward making the student teacher attain proficiency in the subjects considered as fountainheads of knowledge on teacher preparations: psychology, sociology and general education. In the traditional approach, that was all there was to teacher education. The assumption was that tutelage in psychology and sociology would sufficiently prepare student teachers for the tasks of reaching out to young people from diverse social classes with different beliefs, behaviors and mental constructs. General education, for its part, is the euphemism for the nitty-gritty, and more taxing part, of teaching – preparing lesson plans, checking test papers, evaluating pupils’ performance, what to do with a difficult and rowdy class, handling slow learners. Under this assumption, teacher education hardly counted as a field of specialized study and as object of academic research. Teacher educators were not even asked to participate in research into their work (Korthagen, F., Loughran, J. & Russell, T., 2006). Only lately did policy makers, lawmakers and academic researchers begin to question the old notions of an effective teacher education program when confronted by repeated year-to-year reports of poor academic performance across the school systems. Something must be wrong in teacher preparations indeed when respectable publications like the US News and World Report play up stories like: as of 2000, 75 million American adults or 2 out of 3 Americans can’t read adequately. It looks worse in less developed countries, such as one in Asia where it was reported that only one of five elementary graduates showed a passable competency in the five basic subjects of science, mathematics, English and writing. Bullough & Gitlin (2001), as cited in Korthagen, et al. (2006), confirmed that the traditional approach to teacher education was among the features of the educational system that needed an overhaul when the two academic researchers were asked to develop a new teacher education program from the old one. The research duo noted that the old TEP model they worked on was “disjointed, fragmented and confusing.” The theory-to-practice view, the research team added, suffers from many limitations and inadequacies and is thus counterproductive. Another instructive indictment: the standard TEP model is irrelevant to the reality of everyday practice in schools. From these observations, the search for new ways of preparing teachers emerged. One of the persistent concepts that developed operates on the principle that knowledge (theory) should relate to experience and emotion (practice). This means that immersion in theory, on which traditional TEPs are focused, is not altogether bad so long as an equal emphasis is placed on practice. In other words, the more ideal approach is for theory and practice to go hand in hand so that when student teachers go out to practice their profession they know how to handle the problems of everyday teaching through theory-guided actions. This new tack in teacher education is reflected in TEPs that set aside rote recall in favor of understanding and application, giving due consideration to the different backgrounds of student teachers, their varied learning capacities and their individual experiences and needs. TEPs that failed to take these factors into account have proven less and less successful in producing effective teachers. (Darling-Hammond, L. & Snyder, J., 2000) Authentic Assessments More and more TEPs are using the innovative method of authentic assessment which essentially assesses the teaching readiness of student teachers based on actual classroom settings. Authentic assessment replaces the more traditional multiple-choice, paper-and-pen tests by simulating the acts of real-life teaching in the teacher education classroom. This simulation strategy affords student teachers the opportunity to think and act on problems encountered in an actual classroom. Through authentic assessment, student teachers are expected to acquire better understanding of the influences of culture, experience, readiness and context on how people grow, learn and develop. This in turn will enable them to make good judgments when dealing with specific events and problems in the classroom. Darling-Hammond, L. & Snyder, J. (2000) identify four aspects of assessment that could boost candidates’ abilities to teach well in the future. These are: 1) assessments that sample the actual knowledge, skills and dispositions desired of teachers as they are used in the teaching-learning contexts; 2) assessments that integrate multiple kinds of knowledge and skills as these are used in practice; 3) assessments that collect multiple sources of evidence over time and in diverse contexts; and 4) evaluation of assessment by individuals with the proper expertise against criteria that matter in field performance. The process of authentic assessment is at the heart of TEPs in seven universities in the US that were found effective by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. These universities are found in Milwaukee, New York, Texas, California, Maine, Virginia and Boston. Most of the seven TEPs use the tools of case making, portfolio gathering, exhibition and problem-based inquiries to assess teaching skills of student teachers. They also impose assessment tasks to analyze the teaching, learning and curriculum materials. With the case method of assessment, the student teachers are asked to come up with reports or case studies that dwell on precepts, principles, theories and issues as they occur in the real world. The students themselves read or analyze the simulated cases and write their own cases. Because the method challenges the initiative of student teachers, it is considered useful in motivating them to learn. As for the case studies they prepare, it would serve as good instructional materials for the students after them. Darling-Hammond & Snyder compliment a curriculum-related casework prepared by teacher candidates at Stanford University as part of a course called Principles of Learning and Teaching. As the student teachers were studying theories in relation to strategies, they wrote a case about a teaching experience in which they encountered difficulty achieving one of the curricular goals. In the discussion of the case, a peer handled the review while an instructor posed questions and hypotheses, raised pertinent issues and suggested other literature to shed light on the teaching situation. This exercise proved valuable in enriching the experience of student teachers and in helping them develop new perspectives in solving classroom problems. As for the other assessment tools, the portfolio method involves the use of such documentation tools as photos and videos to record classroom practice, while exhibition is simply the demonstration of simulated teaching events or contexts. In a problem-based inquiry, the teacher educators go out of the classroom to interact with families of the student teachers and discuss their school-related concerns. The idea here is to bring the teaching process closer to the community to dispel the notion that the activity is a “private and hidden act.” Experiential Learning Learning from experience is a strategy that has been made the central plank of many TEPs (Korthagen, et al., 2006). This is believed critical in giving shape to the seven principles of a more relevant TEP, which are: 1. Teacher education involves continuously conflicting and competing demands. Thus, students should learn from experience. 2. Learning about teaching requires a view of knowledge as a subject to be created rather than as a created subject. 3. Teacher education requires a shift in focus from the curriculum to the learner. The curriculum should be linked with theory and practical experience. 4. Teacher education is enhanced through research. Through their own research, student teachers can create their understanding of classroom practice. 5. Learning about teaching requires that student teachers work closely with their peers. “Collegiality has been demonstrated to be a critical factor in helping student teachers develop their classroom practice (Korthagen, et al.)” 6. A meaningful relationship needs to be established between the school, teacher educators and student teachers. Such close cooperation helped integrate theory and practice within the TEP in the Netherlands. 7. Learning about teaching is enhanced when the TEP approaches are the same ones used by teacher educators in their own practice. From the experiences of teacher educators, student teachers will know when and how to take professional risks. As components of TEPs in current use, principles 1, 2 and 3 come under the heading “Views of Knowledge and Learning,” while principles 4 and 5 serve as guidelines on “Program Structures and Practices.” Principles 6 and 7 have to do with the quality of staff and organization involved. Taken altogether, these principles indicate that learning from experience will not work by itself if not supported by classroom research, collegial action and cooperation in equal doses. A study of TEPs in Canada and the Netherlands serves to illustrate this point. In Canada, a successful TEP used the practicum as jumping board for applying university education to actual classroom practice. The practicum period is of course the post-graduate teacher preparation that is usually carried out at the opening of the school year, with the novice teachers dumped in their assigned class completely at their own devises. In this case, the practicum was moved four weeks into the school year to enable the novice teachers to learn from first-hand experience. A mentor teacher is on hand to lend support. The teacher education thus continued through the four-week part of the practicum as the student teachers observe and learn how an actual class is managed. Teacher education was also extended in the practicum period in the Netherlands to enrich the TEP there, with close cooperation forged between the mentor teachers and the school administrators involved. For four months the student teachers undergo their practicum in closely collaborating threesomes. In between they go back to school to discuss their teaching experience with an eye on how they could improve their practice and methods. Once the mentor teachers in charge find that the student teachers are ready, they are then given full classroom responsibility. Classroom-Based Research During the “era of global methodological prescription (Allwright, D., 1988),” the efficiency of teacher education was measured on the basis of the methods used instead of what happened in the TEP classroom. Closer inspection found that no single research method is reliable and absolute and so most TEPs veered towards technique. But the use of technique yielded the same unreliable result, thus pointing the way to classroom-based research, in which the classroom is viewed as the object of research not simply as setting. In research activities with the classroom as central focus, some TEPs gather feedback on the quality of teacher training through direct observation, others by fixing observation schedules. Through direct observation, priority is given to activities that need undivided attention while under the observation schedule method, all the classroom activities are analyzed as they come along. Either way, the general objective of classroom-based research is to detect errors in the classroom so that the necessary corrections can be made in an efficient manner. This type of research “reveals previously unexplored aspects of classroom processes in which teachers and learners are engaged.” (Salmani-Nodoushan, M., 2005) It will thus engender better methods of teaching and learning. The process operates on two principles: 1) that classroom activity is a collective endeavor; and 2) that the teacher educators are a source of input and should be the focus of research. In a study involving 31 teacher educators and student teachers, it was found that corrective feedback through classroom-based research goes a long way in increasing the classroom participation of student teachers. Catheart & Olsen (1976), as cited in Salmani-Nodoushon, M. (2005), observed that student teachers wanted to be corrected more often when they did something wrong, but not many of the teacher educators were willing to do so. In such a case, error treatment becomes “inconsistent and ambiguous.” What is needed is a more positive process of corrective feedback so that learners are encouraged to do better. This research method figures prominently in TEPs studied by O’Connell, F. (1999), one of which is named Sustainable Teacher Learning and Research Network Project. Under this TEP project, the student teachers and teacher mentors work in tandem to frame and solve education-related problems and thus jointly create their own “powerful opportunities” for learning. Intuition and Reflection A teacher education program is developed primarily to improve the quality of instruction for the benefit of student teachers, but the teacher educators are occupying an increasing role as well in many TEPs. In this regard, an area of concentration is the fostering of an intuitive teacher educator who uses a highly developed sense of intuition to determine if he is doing the right thing. Bacigalupe, G. (2002) says intuition may be hard to define in an academic sense, “but it is something that is with me everyday in my professional, teaching and research practices.” Intuition comes into play when professionals engage emotionally and socially with the challenges encountered by people who seek their expertise. When placed at the core of the mentoring process, it translates to a viable sharing of knowledge. Awareness of this quality is believed important for a teacher educator because the knowledge required in teaching includes knowledge of content, of pedagogy and of local context. An intuitive teacher mentor is expected to know what to say and teach based on a developmental assessment of those he is mentoring. In fostering intuition among teacher educators, the TEPs that employ this strategy encourage the philosophy that there is more than one answer to certain clinical situations (Atkinson, T. & Claxton, G., 2000). This factor may be related to reflection, another ability that many TEPs seek to develop in student teachers this time. In so doing, the TEP includes instruction and curriculum modules that promote the accurate and thorough recall ability of novices (Allen, R. & Casbergue, R., 1997). The prospective teachers are encouraged to make a habit of reflecting on teaching practices since these become more effective in the same way that pedagogical schemata develop from experience. On the part of teacher educators, they should reconsider their goals so as not to expect too much from novices too soon. Teaching for Diversity With globalization and internationalization, it is inevitable that teacher education should step down from its ivory tower to transform into an instrument for social justice and equity. Thus, “Teach for Diversity” has been made a distinct TEP subject in countries with diverse cultures and high incidence of poverty. The importance of this concept is recognized in the US, where the number of poor minorities entering its educational system increases from year to year. In a California university, for example, student teachers undergo a Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development (CLAD) program. The expressed goal of the program is to invest student teachers with a more acute knowledge of diverse cultures to prepare them for the future task of developing English proficiency among minority students. (Athanases, S. & Martin, K., 2006) Such a TEP objective needs a more complicated work and refining in countries like Iran where deep-seated religious beliefs intrude into the teacher education arena to compound the problem on social, cultural and historical diversity. A study of Iranian student teachers (Naraghi, A., 2004) revealed that Iranians find it difficult to absorb instruction in science and philosophy, whose theories and concepts are Western in origin. In addition, the Iranian students are hard put to distinguish between the study of material and spiritual subjects such that their learning motivation was described as “striving for nearness to god” and “perfection in a mythological sense.” The pervasive influence of religious ideology is nowhere more evident than in Iran’s system of higher education. There is also the influence of the French educational system, in which one seeks to master all prescribed subjects in one fell swoop, which could easily frustrate a well-prepared teacher education program. The quality of the Iranian textbooks used for the teacher education courses does not help the problem any. Aliakbari, M. observes that for the most part these textbooks are “culture-free,” their cultural content limited and very basic when available. Thus, they serve no purpose in developing intercultural competence and broadening the students’ world-view and cultural understanding. Conclusion Teaching has always been a moral activity, such that this concept is now being incorporated into TEPs. (Willemse, M., Lunenberg, M. & Korthagen, F., 2005) The increasing political, social and scientific attention on the moral aspects of teaching also concerns teacher education. But the complexity of current views and theories on TEP hampers efforts to work out concepts that would prepare student teachers for moral education. TEP developers can take a cue from Iran by converting the challenge posed by its preoccupation with spirituality and religion into a window of opportunity for developing moral precepts into their programs. From the moral perspective, we turn to the equally essential material prerequisites of TEP, which is a shared professional language and methods to develop a knowledge base on which to build teacher education practices in different settings and countries. (Korthagen, et al., 2006). As may be gleaned from the preceding discussions, the TEP serves well when both theory and practice are devised based on social, cultural and real-world contexts. In the brew go the processes of authentic assessment, experiential learning, intuition and reflection, classroom-based research and teaching for diversity. It was initially thought that beginning teachers are not capable of advanced practice until they are trained on survival and classroom management. But highly successful TEPs using the calibrated assessment tools mentioned above showed otherwise. (Darling-Hammond, L. & Snyder, J., 2000) References: Higher Education Advisory Council of Islamic Republic of Iran. “Educational System in Iran: A Profile.” Aliakbari, M. “The Place of Culture in Iranian ELT Textbooks in High School Level.” Ilam University, Iran. maliakbari@hotmail.com Naraghi, A. (2004). “The Culturally Dependent Diversification of Learning Behavior Based on the Learning-Style Model of Experiential Learning.” Cuvillier Verlag, Gottingen; 2004. Allen, R. & Casbergue, R. (1997). “Evolution of Novice Through Expert Teachers’ Recall.” TTE, Vol. 13, No. 17; 1997. Nodoushan, M. (2005). “Research in the Language Classroom.” Vol. 5, 12 December 2005. Ozgun, S. & Sen, A. “Beliefs and Perceptions of Pre-service Teachers.” www.elsevier.com/locate/tate O’Connell, F. (1997). “New Teachers Explore Teaching through Conversation, Story and Narrative.” TTE 15 (1999), 367-380. Willemse, M., Lunenberg, M. & Korthagen, F. (2005). “Values in Education: A Challenge for Educators.” TTE 21 (2005) 205-217. Darling-Hammond, L. & Snyder, J. (2000). “Authentic Assessment of Teaching in Context.” TTE 16 (2000) 523-545 Korthagen, F., Loughran, J. & Russell, T. (2006). “Developing Fundamental Principles for Teacher Education: Progress and Practices.” TTE, Elsevier Ltd., 2006. Athanases, S. & Martin, K. (2006). “Learning to Advocate for Educational Equity in a Teacher Credential Program.” TTE 22 (2006) 627-646. Read More