Flights from the field and the plight of teacher education: a personal perspective

Abstract

This self‐study of my role in teacher education examines events in my career, using Schwab’s deliberations on ‘the practical’ as an interpretive tool with which to broaden, burrow, and re‐story my personal experiences. Through reflecting inward and outward, backward and forward, I connect specific episodes I encountered in my career with Schwab’s explication of ‘the practical’. In the final analysis, my self‐study reveals the seeds of a small renaissance: a change not only in the way teacher education is approached in my university, but also in how I think about it and participate in it.

Keywords:

• career development
• curriculum theory
• narrative inquiry
• the practical
• self‐study
• teacher education

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my UH colleagues with whom the teacher‐education programme was re‐imagined. I especially appreciate the support and contributions of my two past department chairs as well as my current interim chair.

Notes

1. At the present time, there are 26 teacher‐education programmes available in the Greater Houston area. These are offered by universities, school districts, the state’s regional education office, and private consulting firms approved by the state. With any previous degree, individuals are able to teach in schools on the understanding that they will take a handful of identified courses to receive their credential to teach.

2. See Dewey (1916, 1934, 1938), Connelly and Clandinin (1988, 1990, 1999), and Clandinin and Connelly (1995, 1996, 2000).

3. E.g. Cohen et al. (2004), Clandinin and Connelly (1992), Ross (2003), and Shulman (2004).

4. E.g. Reid (1999) and Westbury (2005).

5. Richard McKeon (1900–1985) was John Dewey’s student at Columbia University and Schwab’s colleague at the University of Chicago. Dewey, McKeon, and Schwab traced aspects of their scholarship to Aristotle.

6. I entitled my research report, ‘To teach or not to teach: teaching as a potential profession’. The worn document is one of two work samples I saved from my K–12 years.

7. The survey, distributed in 1972 and interpreted in 1972–1973, requested some factual information (e.g. years of teacher education, years of experience) and offered some open‐ended questions or statements to which the teachers could respond.

8. See Bennett (1985), Carleton (1985), Feldman (1985), Gerber (1985), Houston Post (1956, 1957a, b, c, 1960), Office of the Superintendent (1955–1956), and Wyckoff (1985).

9. See Carleton (1985).

10. Cuban (1999) has contended that scholars have always trumped teachers in university contexts in the US and Canada, particularly at campuses considered ‘Research 1 institutions’ or those seeking that status.

11. As suggested at the beginning of this paper, several local school districts, some of which are among the 100 largest districts in the US, provide their own teacher‐education programmes. Also, one local school jurisdiction has formed its own ‘corporate university’.

12. See Reddy (1979), Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Clandinin and Connelly (1995), and Craig (2002).