Thoughts on Teacher Education

Andy Hargreaves (2000) distinguished between professionalism, or standards of daily practice and interaction in the schools, and professionalization, which entailed the recognition and status associated with teaching. He warned against the rise of “central curricula and testing regimes that have trimmed back the range and autonomy of teachers’ classroom judgment, and a market-inspired application from the corporate sector of systems of administration by performance management (through targets, standards, and paper trails of monitoring and accountability)” (pg. 168-9). The market-driven demands on schooling challenges both the professionalism and professionalization of teachers and teaching.

Cultural Myths and Flawed Views of Professionalism. Britzman (1986) demonstrated how cultural myths about teaching, with its reliance on individualism, ignores the structure and external forces that influence education and may lead to unrealistic expectations that the teacher will be “responsible for what is in fact a product of complex social circumstances” (pg. 453). Indeed, Fenstermacher and Richardson (2005) identified four criteria necessary for student learning, which include: willingness and effort by the learner, the social context of the learning, opportunities for teaching and learning, and good teaching (pg. 190). They suggested that the current discourse fails to consider any variable other than teaching.

In addition to Britzman’s cultural myths, Cannella (1997) described four themes in the discourse of women as professional teachers, which include the good mother, the gendered worker, the agent of the state, and the good daughter—all of these defined by patriarchal assumptions. Cannella explained, “Teaching has been created as the ultimate gendered profession, the good ‘female’ instructing the younger members of society how to yield to and support the ‘male controlled’ world” (pg. 143). Acker (1995), likewise, grappled with issues of intensification and assumption that “like good mothers, good teachers find that their work is never done” (pg. 122). Acker noted that the image of teacher as martyr willing to self-sacrifice poses contradictions to the teaching, which serve to intensify teachers work with little reward or recognition.

The current neoliberal shadow engulfing public schools seems to perpetuate these flawed views of teaching and the idea of teaching as merely the transmission of technical knowledge; caring, social justice, or even democracy remain secondary to acquisition of knowledge. For example, commentator George F. Will (2006) lambasted the schools of education for being “about ‘self-actualization’ or ‘finding one’s joy’ or ‘social adjustment’ or ‘multicultural sensitivity’ or ‘minority empowerment’” but “never about anything as banal as mere knowledge” (pg. 98). This call for content knowledge as the basis of teacher education is echoed by the report of the Rod Paige, former U.S. Secretary of Education (U.S. Department of Education, 2002).

Behind Closed Doors, Beyond Constraints. Cuban (1993), writing about the 1940's, described how despite efforts by the New York City school district officials to change teaching practices, teachers oftentimes continued to teach in familiar ways. Likewise, more recently Kennedy (2005) discovered that teachers relied on prior knowledge, beliefs, dispositions, and experiences in deciding whether or not (or in what ways) to enact reform efforts. Perhaps the mark of a true professional must be to teach “inspite of the test” (Gradwell, 2006).

Teachers must also connect with parents and the community at large (Hargreaves, 2000). Vanessa Walker (2001) asserted that the values of professionalism exhibited by early African-American teachers stressed the connection between teacher and community. These values included the following: teachers developing relationships with the community, teachers committed to professional ideals, teachers caring about students, teacher making curriculum relevant to students’ needs, and communities contributing to the schools. I believe these values should be the basis of a new model for professionalism which may inform our communities about the myths found in neoliberal rhetoric.

References:

Acker, S. (1995). Gender and teachers' work. Review of Research in Education, 21, 99-162.

Britzman, D. P. (1986). Cultural myths in the making of a teacher: Biography and social structure in teacher education. Harvard Educational Review, 56(4), 442-456.

Cannella, G. S. (1997). Deconstructing early childhood education: Social justice and revolution. New York: Peter Lang.

Cuban, L. (1993). How teahers taught. New York: Teachers College Press.

Fenstermacher, G. D., & Richardson, V. (2005). On making determinations of quality in teaching. Teachers College Record, 107(1), 186-213.

Gradwell, J. M. (2006). Teaching in spite of, rather than because of, the test. In S. G. Grant (Ed.), Measuring history: Cases of state-level testing across the United States (pp. 157-193). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Hargreaves, A. (2000). Four ages of professionalism and professional learning. Teachers and Teaching: History and practice, 6(2), 151-182.

Kennedy, M. M. (2005). Inside teaching: How classroom life undermines reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

U.S. Department of Education. (2002). Meeting the highly qualified teachers challenge: The Secretary's annual report on teacher quality. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, Office of Policy, Planning, and Innovation.

Walker, V. S. (2001). African American teaching in the South: 1940-1960. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 751-779.

Will, G. F. (2006, January 16). Ed schools vs. education. Newsweek, 98.