Washington
Teacher-training programs need to be revamped to focus more on hands-on, clinical instruction, similar to how doctors are trained, a panel of education experts recommend in a report released on Tuesday by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education.
The report, created over the last 10 months by a panel that included teachers, educators of teachers, state-government administrators, and union representatives, calls for sweeping changes in teacher-training programs that would affect almost all aspects of teacher education, including accreditors, education schools, and individual teachers.
It finds the current model of teaching, which relies heavily on classroom instruction and course work, inadequate. It outlines a new system of teacher training and education-school accreditation that borrows from the approach taken by medical schools, including their emphasis on hands-on training.
"We have a model from medicine, and we ought to use it," said Nancy L. Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York and one of the panel's co-chairmen. Ms. Zimpher, who spoke here at a presentation of the report, is a strong proponent of the clinical-instruction model, calling for it to be adopted throughout the SUNY system.
A Shift to Practical Training
The report calls for a fundamental redesign of education schools that would integrate extensive hands-on preparation with the theory and content currently taught in education schools. That structure would bring in and reward experienced teachers to serve as mentors and clinical instructors for aspiring teachers. Coupled with that redesign would be more-rigorous accountability measures for education schools; better recruitment of potential teachers based on academic performance and the attributes that make good teachers; better placement based on school districts' needs; strengthened partnerships among teacher-training programs, local governments, and school districts; and the accumulation of better knowledge about which programs work.
The major change proposed in the report would shift teacher instruction away from lectures and toward more-practical training, in which aspiring teachers would be expected to perform in front of a classroom from the day they walked into the program.
Most aspiring teachers already are placed in student-teaching positions for 10 to 12 weeks toward the end of their education. But the panel's recommendations call for a more immersive environment in which future teachers would spend significant time in front of a classroom throughout their training and receive more feedback from experienced educators.
That type of change would require partnerships with local school districts to provide the classroom environment as well as experienced teachers to help train the student-teachers and provide feedback. It would also require better tracking of student and teacher performance on a variety of measures, the report says. That would help instructors and researchers better establish what works and what doesn't.
Eight states have already signed letters stating that they intend to add a clinical element to their teacher-training programs.
Some universities already have such elements in place, but they are not widely used.
"There's great potential in this report to increase what we know about what works," said Donna Wiseman, dean of the College of Education at the University of Maryland at College Park and one of the panel members.
Increased Scrutiny
Teacher-preparation programs have come under increased scrutiny in recent years as reports have shown that the biggest in-school determinant of student achievement in elementary and secondary education is teacher quality.
The report also calls for raising admissions, performance, and graduation standards for aspiring teachers. Critics of teacher-training programs often cite studies showing that students who enter such programs often have lower grades and standardized-test scores than students who head for other professions.
Teacher and education-school quality and accountability are likely to be the subject of policy debates when Congress takes up legislation to renew the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is expected to be considered next year.
The U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan, who spoke at the panel's presentation, said the report made him optimistic about the changes under way in teacher-training programs. But he recognized that it will take resources and partnerships to make changes and that local, state, and federal governments must play a role in improving teacher-certification standards.
"This transformation cannot be accomplished by reforming teacher-preparation programs alone," he said.
The panel received criticism from some policy analysts, including Rick M. Hess, director of education-policy studies for the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based policy group. Mr. Hess said a flaw in the report was its "one-best-model" view of teacher training. He said that there might be different models of instruction that work equally well for different people. He suggested differentiating training programs based on teaching styles, subjects, or population served, similar to how medical students train in various specialties.
He also said the report fails to consider fiscal realities and what would have to be eliminated to make the proposed changes possible. It also does not delve deeply into how technology is changing the educational process, he said.
James G. Cibulka, president of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, said it would work over the next two years to overhaul its accreditation standards, to bring them in line with the report's recommendations.
A longtime criticism of the accreditation system, Mr. Cibulka said, is that standards are set too low and underperforming schools are allowed to slide by. He said he hoped this report and the ensuing changes would remedy that pattern.
"We must raise the bar," he said, "for new teachers and the programs that prepare them."
Comments
1. archman - November 16, 2010 at 05:47 pm
Teacher quality can be improved overnight simply by yanking all the long-lambasted "education major" versions of majors classes and having the students enroll (and pass) the same classes as the rest of the university students.
Chemistry teachers should take the same majors classes as chemistry majors. English teachers should take the same majors classes as english majors. History teachers should take the same majors classes as history manjors.
It *used* to be this way (for obvious reasons), and now it commonly is not. And look at what we now have to show for it. Teachers coming out of schools with abominable competencies in the fields they will be instructing in, and a hearty disdain for learning themselves. The replacement of core competency courses with (embarrassing, watered down) education major versions has wreaked massive damage on our public education system.
2. 11295659 - November 16, 2010 at 06:02 pm
Nearly twenty years ago Eastern Oregon University began a Master of Arts in Teaching program based on an apprenticeship model designed for students who have already earned a baccelaureate in something besides education. It is wonderful to learn that others have finally discovered something that has been successful for so many years.
3. impossible_exchange - November 16, 2010 at 08:19 pm
Yes to more practical but no to "measured."
Sorry, but ever since certain merit-mongering technocratic types started pushing "testing" it has become a means to consolidate power in the hands of those whose ego has driven them to hold power--too often that ego is fueled by the legitimate intellectual insecurity of never having been the smartest in the class.
Thus K-12 has become an absolute mess and higher-ed is heading that way.
No to measuring, no to rubrics, and other such short-cut devices for teaching. Yes to apprenticeships, yes to anything that puts people who love to teach closer together with students who want to be teachers so that they can develop a holistic approach to that future teacher's becoming a teacher (holistic not as in hippie, but as all encompassing).
Assessment and rubrics are useful tools certainly, and they have their place at all levels of education EXCEPT in the education of educators, EXCEPT in the evaluation of educators as such at any level and in any way (this is not to say that there shouldn't be rubrics and evaluation for research and tenure, but teaching and how someone teaches, and learns, is fundamentally more complex than ANY and EVERY short-cut technocrat tool anyone can think up).
Every metric set to corral social interactions into data points for the purpose of controlling that interaction from "above" always fails.
Things like love, family, friendships, education, politics, are complex in ways that math cannot easily, if at all, capture.
So LET IT GO!
The old model was FAR more successful than all the moronic mucking about by micro-managing educator-admins and politicians.
You really want to educate a teacher let real teachers do it and stay the f#@$ out of their way while they do it.
To take up Mark Slouka's argument about deference in Harper's a few years back: The bosses aren't special. They're at least as stupid as the rest of us. In fact, in many cases they're much much stupider. The successful are too often just those who lack the intelligence and the self-reflexivity to question their own competence, e.g. Sarah Palin.
Often those in charge are petty, vindictive, incompetent, and overpaid, all fueled by their legitimate feelings of insecurity. This is not always so. But it often is. (Not that I am advocating a reverse meritocracy, because this is true at all levels of society, it's just particularly glaring at the "in charge" level of things.)
4. wvcurmudgeon - November 17, 2010 at 08:16 am
Wow.
There is no one way to educate teachers, rather there are many ways. More field work is needed. I beleive that it is needed to help candidated understand what they have learned in the classroom. There needs to be a balance of both.
Accreditation is a frustrating process, I have been there on both sides of the fence (writing reports and evaluating reports). Both have caused a lot of consternation for me. And I recently left an institution (on my own accord) at least partially over the handling of accreditation by people who did not understand it and who used it for their own agenda. BUT there has to be some kind of evaluation completed on candidates, programs, and faculty. If not, how will we know how we are doing, how will we know if students (K-12 or college) are learning anything?
I know that this type of evaluation (rubrics) are frustrating to develop. But what I keep telling my department is - we are just putting down on paper - what we have been doing in our heads for years. (sorry - not sounding very curmudgeonly today)
5. sklien - November 17, 2010 at 08:17 am
One key difference between medical school and most teacher education programs is, of course, that the former is a post-baccalaurate program, and the latter is not. If future teachers are put into a more professionalized, intensely clinical experience, it is clear how they would learn nuts-and-bolts pedagogical mechanics... but when would they learn other stuff?
archman's point is well taken, especially for future teachers of science -- in this new framework, could future teachers even be involved in the same kinds of classes as other students? Education programs at liberal arts institutions, for instance, are already up against it regarding their status as a "pre-professional, not-really-an-academic-field" status, not to mention the resource limitations of having students earn a liberal arts degree while gaining clinical experience and learning methods and pedagogy on top of everything else and still try to graduate students in close to four years. Is the Council advocating that future teachers just get trained separately from everyone else, not experiencing a solid grounding in non-education academic coursework and experiences?
If they are not, then logistically speaking, how could their proposed intensive clinical model be expanded beyond the status quo in a "both/and" proposition without realistically extending the time to degree completion by at least 1-2 years (also requiring additional expense that would be borne by students who will eventually become underpaid teachers struggling with larger-than-normal student load burdens)? Undergraduate education is not the same as graduate education, so the workability of this model needs much more clarification.
6. 11291652 - November 17, 2010 at 08:18 am
Stop blaming teacher credential programs and say yes to higher pay for classroom teachers, so education programs and schools can recruit from better students. Yes to less administration in schools (and in universities for that matter), less standardized testing. Yes to music, arts and PE for kids if you can find anyone who had that as part of their education (teacher candidates are young and public education has been tanking for a long time). No to charter schools, vouchers and programs that provide life rafts to the lucky kids leaving the others to second rate public schools. You shouldn't have to win a lottery to get a decent education. That was the whole point of public schools (see James Madison for starters). Yes to parents who quit moaning about the quality of television, just turn the damned thing off and read to their kids. Same for parents who quit moaning about the quality of fast food and feed their families fresh vegetables. You can't fix what's broke buy blaming the teachers. The cracks are broader and deeper and the repair requires a big self reflective change for all of us.
7. wvcurmudgeon - November 17, 2010 at 08:18 am
Wow.
There is no one way to educate teachers, rather there are many ways. More field work is needed. I beleive that it is needed to help candidated understand what they have learned in the classroom. There needs to be a balance of both.
Accreditation is a frustrating process, I have been there on both sides of the fence (writing reports and evaluating reports). Both have caused a lot of consternation for me. And I recently left an institution (on my own accord) at least partially over the handling of accreditation by people who did not understand it and who used it for their own agenda. BUT there has to be some kind of evaluation completed on candidates, programs, and faculty. If not, how will we know how we are doing, how will we know if students (K-12 or college) are learning anything?
I know that this type of evaluation (rubrics) are frustrating to develop. But what I keep telling my department is - we are just putting down on paper - what we have been doing in our heads for years. (sorry - not sounding very curmudgeonly today)
8. wise1inmo - November 17, 2010 at 10:01 am
In response to archman's excllent comment - "Teacher quality can be improved overnight simply by yanking all the long-lambasted "education major" versions of majors classes and having the students enroll (and pass) the same classes as the rest of the university students."
You hit the target exactly.
When students wanting to become teachers FIRST pass the major courses as those in the major (and I would demand that they indeed ARE majors in their prospective fields) - then attain their teaching credentials - only then will the sorry state of K-12 education improve.
9. 22080647 - November 17, 2010 at 10:09 am
I wonder what Archman's agenda is. I have not encountered the watered down courses for ed majors he speaks of. Let's not paint all ed programs the same way Arne would, that is, without knowledge. As an example, after admission to our program, the candidates are in the field almost every semester. This is the case in many ed programs.
As far as NCATE goes, it is an incredible waste of money, time, and mental effort. If it was doing its job, this blog would be unnecessary. I am thinking of retiring before their next visit.
10. daddyprof - November 17, 2010 at 10:42 am
If your ("your" in a generic sense) version of Science 101 for education majors is dumbed down, then guess what? You did it wrong! If you have decided a priori that these students are substandard, and you create a special, substandard course for them... That's a self-fulfilling prophecy, ain't it?
The ostensible purpose of a special section of Science 101 for education majors is to get them framing the content in terms of how they will teach it. Not LESS content, and not half*ssed content. That class should focus your content on a group of students who are taking the course for different reasons than the rest of the non-majors, i.e., making that content a part of their future professional lives. Nonmajors have a different agenda; they are fulfilling a gen-ed requirement. They don't want to go through the process of contextualizing your content in a teaching framework, so you don't make them. Instead, you create your separate ed-majors section and you devise appropriate standards--hopefully the ones YOU want to see teachers held to--not lower ones driven by bad misconceptions of the population.
It's a very hard thing to do correctly if you don't value doing it.
11. archman - November 17, 2010 at 10:50 am
My "agenda" (nice bomb throwing there) is making competent teachers. One cannot teach a subject without having mastery in it. This is *the* central issue that plagues teacher training programs in america today.
There is very good reason why so many (non-education) professors are constantly lambasting the education majors in their classes (visit the CHE forums regularly to read about this). Student for student, the education majors tend to underperform. This is entirely unacceptable.
The "solution" that many education departments have implemented is to teach all/most of their classes in-house, or create special "education major only" versions of standard core classes (e.g. math, writing, science). In all my personal experience and readings on this matter, I have yet to hear of any such one of these classes being of the same level of rigour (much less surpass) that of the course it replaced. This also is entirely unacceptable.
One science class I once taught had never passed a single education major that enrolled in it. I found that horrifying. I no longer teach that class but a colleague does. The course still has yet to pass a single education major. Good lord.
Putting teachers in training "in the field" is meaningless if those students do not have minimum competencies in the fields they will be teaching in. I do not believe that further work in this area is necessary.
12. allencar - November 17, 2010 at 10:59 am
"One key difference between medical school and most teacher education programs is, of course, that the former is a post-baccalaurate program, and the latter is not. " While this is true, there are many clinically based undergraduate programs out there - nursing, many of the allied health fields like respiratory therapy, clinical lab sciences and imaging sciences, for example. These programs integrate some heavy duty sciences with the clinical experience so the students understand how to apply the information in their respective professional settings. Sklien's question, "how could their proposed intensive clinical model be expanded beyond the status quo in a "both/and" proposition without realistically extending the time to degree completion by at least 1-2 years?" is a very insightful one. In the health sciences, we accomplish it by filling the students' days with coursework or clinical experiences. They are told that they will spend 40 hrs/wk actively engaged in program curricula and that all studying will be done outside of that time. I have occasionally had students request to have "all their classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays" to which I respond - "Those are liberal arts student schedules and you are NOT a liberal arts student." We also require summer session attendance in the Junior and Senior years. It can be done and it is worth it for the knowledge and abilities they will carry with them into the workplace upon graduation.
13. cwinton - November 17, 2010 at 11:18 am
In response to 22080647 I think archman has articulated what many of us have observed, in my case across a number of institutions of some repute. There may be effective colleges of education out there, but if so they are few and far between. The worst, but not only sin education programs commit is that they cheat their students by providing watered down content courses rather than putting them in content major courses. Even methods courses, which you might suppose they are good at, are characterized by being repetitive and divorced from the current reality of K-12 education. Grading standards are so lax that on my last campus there were more honors graduates from education than all other colleges combined. And from what I know of NCATE, it exemplifies the absurd waste of time characterizing bureaucratic program evaluation (which impossilbe_exchange (#3) rails about).
14. fsweitz3 - November 17, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Two things to add here. Let's not forget that elementary teachers need content knowledge in a wide range of areas - suerly we can't expect them to major in all of them. The assumption that the exact same history, chemistry, etc, courses that service the needs of majors and gen ed will also serve the needs of prospective teachers is questionable. On the other hand,whatever they are taught should be taught with rigor and integrity. Time for A&S and Education faculty to come out of their silos and collaborate with mutual respect on effective preparation.
Second, in line with sklein's comments, medical students are not admitted to their "apprenticeship" unless they have been trained in and showed reasonable mastery of scientific inquiry as an undergraduate. What are the equivalent modes of inquiry for teachers as professionals, how might they best be learned, and who is best prepared to teach them?
15. jizbetty - November 17, 2010 at 02:14 pm
How can you compare a definite science to creative and informative gathering and distribution of knowledge? It is very easy to describe educational programs as out dated and lacking the media to keep up with this century. The fact is that educating people requires more than just books and materials to perform in the front of the classroom. Real teaching and instruction comes from the heart. Before someone starts comparing apples to oranges or should I write steak to chicken, give new, old and budding teachers a reason to enter and stay in this profession. Give them a reason to motivte and channel energy for 6 to 8 hours a day. Pay the teachers what they are worth. Everyone wants to support the program with more talk. It is best to put the money to good use in salaries, technology, and opportunities to learn and grow.
16. andrew_roedell - November 18, 2010 at 06:21 pm
If our politicians and policymakers are serious about reforming our educational system to make it more competitive internationally, they should not shrink from observing and (wherever consistent with our national values) implementing the practices of those nations whose students consistently outperform our own. One of starkest differences between K-12 education in the United States and primary and secondary education in high-performing nations such as Finland, South Korea, and Singapore is that in those nations only higher-performing University students (top third of their classes or better) are permitted to become teachers. If America's hospitals are regarded as the envy of the world, surely this is in large degree because we only allow our "best and brightest" to become doctors or medicine. If we really want to improve the overall quality of our teachers, we need to hold those who aspire to become teachers to similarly high standards.