Challenging Teacher Education as Training: four propositions

ABSTRACT

The authors examine two trends of thought central to much of the current discussion on the reform of teacher education: (1) Increasing the time certification students spend in schools and assessing their performance in relation to a predetermined list of desirable teaching skills; and (2) Developing preservice programs that require students to conform to a model of good teaching derived from ‘objective’ empirical research. While these trends differ in significant ways, the authors argue that both are inherently conservative, supporting the long standing training orientation where the technical aspects of teaching are separated from educational aims and purposes. To reform teacher education, the authors argue, requires challenges to the assumptions of training. To begin to do so, they present four propositions that in their view will make teacher education more educative: preservice teacher education must be joined to inservice programs; work contexts need to be carefully studied and criticized; teacher education must clarify and critique the personal theories perspective teachers bring with them; and reflection, especially on the aims and purposes of education and schooling, needs to become a central part of teacher education.