Thoughts on Teacher Education

In Mrs. Linda Strait’s U.S. History class, the students act out a simulation in which they as African-American teenagers attempt to convince the Anglo-American owner of a skating rink to allow them to stake in the rink (Grant, 2003). The student teams construct arguments to convince the skating rink owner, played by Mrs. Strait, to admit them. As each team presents their case, Mrs. Strait bounces back with statements such as, “…not my problem. Find another place” (Grant, 2003, pp. 20-21). Students must come up with powerful reasons to change her mind. I find this lesson remarkable because Mrs. Strait, an African-American teacher, teaches in a primarily middle-class, Anglo-American school. Mrs. Strait explained her reasoning for this activity, “What I try to convey is that America is multifaceted. That there—it’s not just White America anymore. I don’t know if it ever was just that, but that’s how it was always taught in history books” (quoted in Grant, 2003, p. 25). I believe Linda Strait presents an example of a teacher who practices culturally relevant pedagogy. However, several individuals do not see the need for culturally relevant teaching especially in Linda Strait’s homogenous classroom. I want to make two responses to this position, labeled by some as the exemption syndrome.

First, subscribers to the exemption syndrome may have implicit deficit beliefs about students of color. Bartolomé (1994/2003), for example, described how some students view culturally responsive teaching methods as a solution for working with culturally diverse students. These well-intentioned preservice teachers held the assumption that “children who experience academic difficulties (especially from culturally and linguistically low-status groups) require some form of ‘special’ instruction since they obviously have not been able to succeed under ‘regular’ or ‘normal’ instructional conditions” (p. 409). “Normal” education, by default, refers to Anglo-American, middle class education, which is supposedly a democratic meritocracy. Ladson-Billings (1995) summarized it best when she wrote, “the goal of education becomes how to ‘fit’ students constructed as ‘other’ by virtue of their race/ethnicity, language or social class into a hierarchical structure that is defined as a meritocracy [emphasis by author]” (p. 467). The exemption syndrome assumes that since Anglo-American students in Mrs. Straits are not “otherized,” the students already “fit” within the school system.

Second, the exemption syndrome implies that cultural competence has no importance for non-minority students. Teachers who hold this position teach uncritically, reproducing instead of changing (or bettering) society. Ladson-Billings stated, “Not only must teachers encourage academic success and cultural competence, they must help students to recognize, understand, and critique current social inequality” (p. 476). In addition, Bartolomé (1994/2003) suggested that teachers committed to social change achieve a sense of political clarity, in which they recognize that “teaching is not a politically neutral undertaking” (p. 412). I argue that critiquing the effects of white privilege must occur for a teacher to establish this clarity. The exemption syndrome prevents teachers from reflecting on how they participate in a system of inequality which adopts a “‘cultural’ ideology of White supremacy” (Bartolomé, 1994/2003, p. 414).

Critical teaching and critical learning form the foundations for changing societal inequities. Although Bartolomé (1994/2003) established the “moral conviction that we must humanize the education experience of students from subordinated populations” (p. 425), I believe that any education which implicitly reproduces inequality, thereby de-humanizing the “other,” also de-humanizes non-minority students. As Mrs. Strait confirmed, “[racism] is really still happening today” (Grant, 2003, p. 25); all students must be empowered to work towards social justice.

References

Bartolomé, L. I. (1994/2003). Beyond the methods fetish: Toward a humanizing pedagogy. In A. Darder, M. Baltodano & R. D. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (pp. 408-429). New York: RoutledgeFalmer

Grant, S. G. (2003). History lessons: Teaching, learning, and testing in U.S. high school classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Ladson-Billings, G. J. (1995). Towardy a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491.

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.

I have come to realize that curriculum specialists view the problems of teacher education from a completely different lens as educational psychologists. Although they both of agree on several points, each views the process of teaching teachers from different standpoints.

The curriculum theorist approaches the issue of teacher education from a standpoint of philosophy. They ask the question "What is the value of teacher education?" As a perequisite of this question, curriculum theorists grapple with the purpose for schooling and the role and substance of the subject matter. The curriculum theorist might argue for social justice and curriculum relevance. The curriculum theorist will champion the teacher as the great curriculum decision-maker. Regardless of which curriculum theory the curriculum person takes, they all rise from a philosophical position depicting the value/purpose/essence of schooling and teaching, whether that be for social reproduction, cultural training, or social justice.

Whereas the theorist draws heavily on philosophical positioning, the educational psychologist begins with the most basic premise of schooling--that the student learns something. Educational pyschologists ask, "What is the function of teacher education?" As a perequisite, they ask what are the structures underlining the process of learning and teaching. The educational psychologist, in many cases, begins first with identifying a structural framework for learning. The educational psychologist might argue that students learn best when they are encouraged to construct their own understanding of the material; hence, teacher education ought to prepare teachers who create constructivist lessons or environments. The educational psychologist pointing to research may assert a set of prescriptives: The teacher ought to do this, do that... Educational psychologists may apply these concepts to adults and suggest that future teachers, like students, learn best when they create their own understanding of teaching.
When designing teacher education, the curriculum theorist will begin first with defining what is of value in teacher education, what aims (curricular and societal) should the teacher education program strive for? For instance, the teacher education might strive to promote social justice among teachers. The aims are almost always board and lofty, idealistic and hopeful. Something to strive toward, but maybe never obtain. (Yet, there is value in the striving!)

When designing teacher education, the educational psychologist will begin first with defining the stucture and process of learning. The educational program functions to prepare the teacher to work within that structure. The educational psychologist always start first with the student. How does the student learn best? What qualities or features does the teacher need to possess in order to bring about learning? What type of learning environment does the teacher need to create to bring about learning? How can teacher education instill these qualities and promote the creation of these environments?

A curriculum theorist will study the teacher education program for its substance, its internal coherence, its aims and goals. The educational psychologist might study the teacher education program for its adherence to learning principles, how it instills teacher qualities, and how its teachers perform as a result of a type of instructional technique.

Each perspective offers unique insights into our understanding of teacher education. Perhaps with the infusing of anthropology in both curriculum and learning theories, greater connections might be drawn between these two disciplines.

As mentioned in the previous post, many ACPs suffer from problems of design. A lack of capacity forces several program directors to compromise the quality of their program. Here's a quote from the report by the Next Generation of Teachers:

"Charing little or no tuition means that programs may not have sufficient funds to hire a specialist in each subject for which they offer a license; to train or modestly compensate the mentors who supervise student teaching; or to offer meaningful follow-up support once candidates have begun their new teaching assignments."

Capacity refers to both human resource, or organizational, capacity as well as monetary capacity. From experience working in an ACP, I can tell you that limited capacity greatly affects the program's ability to strive for quality levels, especially when the program attempts to do more than its few employees are able to accomplish.

Here's how a lack of capacity impacts programming for many ACPs:
1. ACPs relied on recruitment and selection to ensure individuals are likely to succeed.
2. On-the-job support usually came from the school district rather than the program.
3. Many ACPs accepted more applicants, some underqualified, to reach a break even point or quota.
4. Organization staff juggled multiple tasks, unable to specialize or to complete specific projects to a level of quality.
5. Curriculum of program tended to be based on meeting certification requirements (test prep) rather than on teaching.
6. Some directors resorted to technology-based curriculum or e-mentoring as a way of cutting costs rather than employing unique features of computer-based learning.
7. Supervisors of new teacher received little or inadequate training.
8. Instructors lacked appropriate credentials.
9. Directors chose not to perform research or evaluation on the program results due to costs and/or time.
10. Many staff avoided suggesting innovations that required time and resources unavailable to the program.

I am sure that capacity issues have a greater impact than what I just listed here, but ten seemed like such a good number to stop at!

Many find fault with Alternative Certification Programs and unfortunately for some very good reasons. A report by the Susan Moore Johnson and the Next Generation of Teachers Project (2005) pointed out that many ACPs suffered as a result of the incentives, such as low tuition and minimum time committment for participants. This report hilighted what I call the problem of design. Recent scholarship by Dan Humphreys and Diane Wechsler (2005, also in press) demonstrated that regardless of the background of the teacher and training that the ACP provided, the school context outweighs these other factors in determining teacher retention. Hence, I refer to this issue as the problem of context.

I do not deny that many ACPs fail to live up to the promises of recruiting and educating highly qualified teachers. However, I disagree with researchers who attack ACPs outright without acknowledging the problem of context. First, ACPs tend to recruit teachers for mostly urban school districts, which may lack resources for new teachers. Second, ACP candidates must teach prior to completing full requirements for certification. Unlike their traditional counterparts who student teach, the ACP intern must overcome obstacles associated with the lack school resources, lack of parental involvement, langauge issues, and many others more than simply teaching. Critics judge the ACP for its failure to prepare teachers appropriately but neglect to address the problem of context.

Kenneth Zeichner (2006) wrote "The research indicates that it is the characteristics of the programs rather than who sponsors them that matter in terms of influencing a variety of teacher and student outcomes." I think we ought to also look at what makes teacher education work.

Humphrey & Wechsler (2005). Insights into alternative certification: Initial findings from a national study. Teachers College Record. Available from www.tcrecord.org.

Moore, S.J., Birkeland, S.E., Peske, H.G. (2005). A difficult balance: Incentives and quality control in alternative certification programs. www.gse.harvard.edu/~ngt/balance.pdf.

Zeichner, K. (2006). Reflections of a univeristy-based teacher education on the future of college- and university-based teacher education. JTE 57 (3), 326-340.

Zeichner (2006) most recently addressed the current status of university-based teacher education in the May/June addition of the Journal of Teacher Education. He acknowledged that “the legitimacy of education schools to engage in preparing for our nation’s schools is under question in an intense way.” The forces building against teacher education have used popular media such as magazines and editorial pieces in widely read newspapers. They have acquired the favor of the political powers that be. But are they right? Is teacher education at the university level flawed? Although Ken Zeichner discusses four areas for improving teacher education, he fails to address other fundamental problems in teacher education.

The attack on teacher education lead by members of the “deregulators” have focused on the charge that university-based teacher education forces courses full of ideological, brainwashing, fluff. George Wills (2006) lambasted teacher education programs with their view of constructivist learning and the use of dispositions, harkening back to a simpler notion that teacher involves imparting knowledge—end of story. The call for more “field-tested” practices champions a skill-based, practical approach to teacher education, debasing undergraduate programs as being too theoretical.

Let’s take a moment now to determine the legitimacy of these charges against teacher education. Do undergraduate programs teach skills? Do they prepare competent teachers?

Darling-Hammond (1996) and the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future issued a statement about five flaws in teacher education in their What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future. These include:
1. Inadequate time for learning subject matter, child development, learning theory, and teaching strategies.
2. Fragmentation of key elements of teacher education so that course work does not relate to practice teaching, and separate courses often do not relate to one another.
3. Uninspired teaching methods of traditional lecture format by faculty who do not practice what they preach.
4. Superficial curriculum where candidates do not have opportunities for in-depth understanding of how to apply theory or methods to real problems of practice.
5. Traditional view of schooling where prospective teachers work in isolation to teach in schools as they are.

Unfortunately, I believe many of these flaws still plague teacher education programs. I want to spend some time to discuss the concept of fragmentation and uninspired teaching. Then I will address other problems of teacher education including distribution (or lack of) for new teachers, lack of qualified teacher educators, the scarcity of professional development schools, and lack of follow-through induction programming.

First, fragmentation refers to the very real concern that professors and, in many cases, graduate students or adjuncts teach classes in isolation to the entire program. For example, one instructor may advocate a particular viewpoint in a foundations class about what makes for good teaching; whereas, another instructor might focus on a completely different approach in another course. Furthermore, a course may not address particular needs of teacher education students as they work through field based experiences. Both Zeichner (1996) and McIntyre, Byrd, & Fox (1996) have stressed the fact that field-based experiences, though helpful, many have less than ideal results. Zeichner, in particular, stressed the need for reflection, especially against the potential of socialization. A program that exists in fragments cannot be effective in advocating a consistent message about good teaching.

Second, some professors (maybe graduate students or adjuncts) can’t teach worth a flip. The old adage “Those who can’t do, teach; those who can’t teach, teach teachers” (or something like that) has had a bit of truth to it. In an introductory chapter of the first Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, Doyle (1990) lamented about the common fact that many professor don’t want to teach teachers and instead what to do more prestigious jobs like teaching grad school or researching. (I can say I have a few professors that would cause utter dread if I had as an undergraduate—boring as hell!) I once had a professor who used to say, “Do as I say, not as I do. You see, you will be a teacher and, therefore, you must teach. I’m a professor, so I profess.” It seemed funny at the time, but boy did I have a hard first year.

Third, okay let’s say we get the all the bugs worked out of teacher education at the university level, this still doesn’t guarantee that teacher education students will teach in the high needs urban schools. Zumwalt & Craig (2005) noted that as much as 50% of those who graduate from undergraduate institutions with teaching degrees never teach. Even worse, Jennifer NG (2002) reported that most of the teacher are Anglo females who attempt to teaching within a 100 miles of where they grew up, in nice suburban areas and avoid the urban or high-needs school. Darling-Hammond and Cobb (1996) noted that many of those would-be teachers who don’t get desired positions simply don’t teach. In an article in Education Week, Haberman (2004) ranted about the added cost placed on urban schools for needing to constantly recruit and retain teachers. How can undergraduate teacher education address this need? Can it?

Fourth, many teacher educators haven’t “been there, done that.” I’m sorry folks, but the truth hurts. How can a teacher educator who has never taught in an urban school district, isn’t a person of color, has little to no background in the public schools, actually prepare future teachers? Take for example, the following scenario (based on a real teacher educator): Graduated from an affluent high school, enrolled in Harvard for an undergraduate degree with an emphasis in education, immediately transferred to Stanford to begin graduate work in education; worked at a nearby school for two years, then moved to Teacher College to finish a Ph.D. Then got hired a big tier one research school in a large urban area and is assigned to teach new teachers working in this context. So where are the folks who have “been there, done that”? They are either still in the classroom or have left the field for good. They are most likely not in graduate school.

Fifth, earlier this year, I had an occasion to hear Dr. Sharon Robinson, the CEO of AACTE, speak at the National Association for Alternative Certification conference in Chicago. I found her message of promoting partnership between traditional undergraduate programs and alternative programs. She spent a considerable amount of time stresses the promise of professional development schools (PDS). Originally advocated by a group of conservative reforms in the Holmes Group Report, PDS does offer many advantages. One of these advantages includes the possibility of preservice teachers to work directly in the nearby schools throughout their schooling experience. However, despite the appeal of such programs, they are costly and, therefore, are not as widespread as journal articles would have us believe.

Finally, I have always had trouble with the fact that once a student graduates with a teaching credential the ties between the education department and the students are severed for good. Although Zeichner (2006) claimed that the practice of offering warranties was “silly,” I actually like the idea. What I find most appealing is the idea that the education provides support for the induction process. Currently, especially for urban schools, the schools are expected to take on too much of the induction process for new teachers, taxing very much needed resources. Supporting new teachers during the first year is on one thing that traditional education can learn from some, successful alternative programs (such as Banks Street College, for example).

As a product of undergraduate teacher certification, I recognize the merits of this form of preparation; however, we must be aware of the deficiencies in many such programs. Furthermore, alternative certification routes offer some advantages, but are plagued by several other problems (see Johnson, Birkeland, and Peske 2005 for a good analysis).

Sources:

Doyle, W. (1990). Themes in teacher education research. In W.R. Houston (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (pp. 3-24). NY: Macmillan.

Haberman, M. (2004). Where the public schools can find $2.6 billion more—every year. Education Week. Retrieved on February 1, 2006 from
http://www.educationnews.org/Haberman/where-the-public-schools-can-fin.htm.

Johnson, S.M., Birkeland, S. & Peske, H. (2005). A difficult balance: Incentives and quality control in alternative certification programs. Retrieved on August 1, 2006 from www.gse.harvard.edu/~ngt/

McIntyre, D., Byrd, D., & Foxx, S. (1996). Field and laboratory experiences. In J. Sikula (Ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education. (2nd ed, pp. 171-193). New York: Macmillan.

NG, J. (2003). Teacher shortages in urban schools: The role of traditional and alternative certification routes in filling the voids. Education and Urban Society, 35 (4), 380-398.

National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (1996). What matters most: Teaching for America’s future.

Zeichner, K. (2006). Reflections of a university-based teacher educator on the future of college- and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education 57(3), 326-340.

Zeichner, K. (1996). Designing educative practicum experiences for prospective teachers. In K. Zeichner, S. Melnick, & M.L. Gomez (Eds.), Currents of reform in preservice teacher education (pp. 215-234). New York: Teachers College Press.

Zumwalt, K. & Craig, E. (2005). Teacher demographics. In Cochran-Smith, M. & Zeichner, K. (eds). Studying Teacher Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Currently, I am planning to conduct a study on second career teachers. This will be the first of what I hope will be many studies in my career. Along the way, I have been reviewing a series of unpublished dissertations on teacher education and on the topic of second career teachers. (I am also working as a research assistant on a teacher education study and am preparing a literature review for a study next year on components of teacher education programs. In addition, I will be presenting a paper on alternative certification programs in October at a conference on curriculum and pedagogy. So, I’m really into the field right now.)

I wanted to share my thoughts about what I have discovered about dissertations. I present these ideas in a bulleted list.

1. Where the dissertation comes from matters. Sorry, folks, but not all Ph.D.’s are equal. Some universities allow for far less rigorous studies than others. Examples of less rigorous studies include studies with extremely small sample sizes (4) for a qualitative study involving two separate interviews each (only eight interviews). In addition, one dissertation used a survey method with an instrument that had not been validated. The doctoral student admitted in the limitation section of the study that no validation had occurred and that the results may not be valid. A final example occurred when one doctoral student relied so heavily on a previous dissertation that she used the exact path analysis and conditional matrix as the predecessor to explain her findings.

2. A Good Abstract Counts! For gosh sakes, I hated reading an abstract that doesn’t clue you into what the study was about. The best dissertations included a quick summary of the research questions, the research methods, the participants (YES! Give me the participants—interviews of 8 teachers, or 3 focus groups for candidates in an ACP, or some clue!), and bulleted findings. Is that so hard to ask for? In some of the dissertations, I had to virtually hunt through every page (yes, of course I read all the pages) to find all the information.

3. Bullshit is bullshit! I’m not perfect, but I strongly believe writing has to be coherent, useful, and “tight.” I remember Bill Stott’s book “Write to the Point.” I hated, absolutely hated, having to drudge through pages of fluff. Here is an example: a study on alternative certification programs does NOT need to include the history of teacher certification since colonial American times. Also, some doctoral students spent a tremendous amount of energy describing their opinions and personal feelings about things like the importance of teaching or their philosophy or background. While some of this may be useful for grounding the perspective of the researcher, too much of it reeks of self-promotion or page-filling. I had a professor who once said, “Aside for the quality of research, I think some committees have a weight requirement.” He held up his hand as if holding a stack of papers and continued, “Yeah, it has to feel like a dissertation.” Yuck!

4. Knowing the Field. The quality dissertations on teacher education topics expressed an in-depth understanding of the research in teacher education. These doctoral students provided the context for the study given the current research agenda and situation. However, unfortunately, many students wrote dissertations without a sense of the field. For example, more than one doctoral candidate made bold claims about teacher education, saying things like “Research demonstrates that alterative certification programs are far inferior to traditional education programs.” Or some doctoral candidates have made claims against traditional undergraduate programs relying on the work of Ballou, Podgursky, Walsh, etc., but not referring to Darling-Hammond or Arthur Wise or Reynolds. Another pet peeve is when the doctoral student will lump two seemingly opposing researchers together as if they both agree on the same subject. I found this frightening. Finally, a doctoral candidate may have cited a study with an obvious bent, such as work by the Fordham foundation or Kate Walsh’s National Center for Teacher Quality group, and pay no attention to the limitations of the study or who said what and what others said about it.

5. Where the hell are we going? Good dissertations had pretty detailed table of contents and used lots of subheadings. This made it so much easier on the reader to follow along and see the line of arguments developing. The bad ones tended to use the same old trite headings and lump too much under each heading. If I can’t tell where the dissertation is headed by reading the table of contents, then I think, “Oh no, another one of those dissertations.”

6. Give me the Big Picture. I found dissertations that provided a summary (even a bulleted list) of the key findings very helpful. Sometimes in the literature review section, the good dissertation will have a summary of the lit review, giving a good nutshell version or even a chart categorizing the findings and the researchers. Also, in the findings section, a good summary addresses each research question one at a time in a clear, easy-to-find format.

I hope you find these thoughts interesting and helpful.

After a long summer break, I have finally returned to this blog with renewed interest in the teacher education field. I hope that readers will pardon my long absence. As always, I will endeavor to utilize this blog to share my thoughts on the field of educating teachers. I look forward to any comments you might make to spread the dialogue.

AJ

In the most recent edition of Action in Teacher Education, teacher educators at Henderson State University (Harrison, Smithey, McAffee, Weiner 2006) discuss their attempts to operationally define appropriate dispositions for new teachers and incorporate them into their admissions standards for the teacher education program.

First, they defined teacher disposition as encompassing “a mood, an attitude, or a tendency or inclination to behave in a certain way” (72). For them, teacher dispositions include the intangibles, the ‘heart of a teacher,” and are most commonly associated with caring for students, efficacy, and enthusiasm, etc. They identify six dispositions that they seek to assess and promote throughout the course of their program:

1. caring for students and their families
2. sensitivity to diversity
3. sense of fairness
4. sense of efficacy
5. personal reflection, and
6. sense of professionalism

They operationally define these dispositions by analyzing the observable behaviors of what the candidate writes, says, and does.

If the article had ended at this point, I would have felt very intrigued by the process and the aims of the authors. Instead, the Henderson group then detailed how they use an interview method to assess candidate dispositions. (These interview questions are nothing new in teacher education and have been used extensively—thanks to the work of Martin Haberman—in alternative route programs searching for STAR teachers.)

A student not meeting the required dispositions in the interview had the option to try again. Here, I quote the authors:

“[After the interview] Candidates received a summary of their performance during the interview and a statement that they had ‘passed’ or ‘not yet passed’ the interview requirements for admission into the teacher education program. Candidates who received ‘no yet passed’ had the opportunity to interview again at a later date or meet with university faculty who gave the candidate another opportunity to demonstrate the dispositions in question….If the candidate still did not ‘pass’ the interview, he or she was advised to develop the disposition and interview again at a later date or to consider another profession more suited to his or her dispositions” (76).

I find the Henderson approach troublesome for several reasons. First, it assumes that certain individuals can readily adopt new dispositions. Because the assessment is based on a verbal interview, a second assumption is that what people say about their beliefs will correspond with how they will teach. (More on this in a moment.) Finally, the fact that these dispositions are distributed to candidates openly (students are even given a self-assessment test that highlights each category which is administered in an introductory course before the interview) suggests that students may be inclined to tailor their statements about teaching so as to emphasize these previously stated dispositions. (This habit of giving/telling the professor what he/she wants to hear characterizes the strategy of many successful college students...Of course, I am an exception, most, most certainly.)

Mary Kennedy (1999) summarized a key finding from her work on evaluating preservice teacher education programs through the Teacher Education and Learning to Teach (TELT) study. She described “the problem of enactment.” Basically, she discovered that although preservice teachers espoused certain beliefs, such as a belief in caring or in student ownership, when given specific situations to respond to, the preservice teacher might not have actually acted upon those beliefs. She offered possible explanations for this discrepancy. First, many beliefs are abstract in nature and, thus, ill-defined. Therefore, when a professor speaks about caring for students, the preservice teacher might have a completely different view of what that entails. Second, it might be possible that the preservice teacher is able to hold different, sometimes contradictory beliefs simultaneously and refer to one set of beliefs in one context and another set beliefs in different context. Third, although the preservice teacher might sincerely hold a specific belief, such as caring for all students or accepting diversity in the classroom, he/she may not know how to actually turn those beliefs into actions. The danger is that the preservice teacher might fall back on his/her own past experiences (the “apprenticeship of observation”) that most probably centered on traditional ways of teaching.

What does this mean for the Henderson group? It means that it is quite possible for students to espouse beliefs in each of the six dispositions, but not actually act upon them. If the Henderson group refers to what the candidate writes, says, and does, then the writing and saying may not be connected with the doing. And, as is the case for many undergraduate programs, professors rarely have access to witness the candidate “doing” in the context of the public schools with real kids and in a real classrooms.

Note on sources: Harrison, J., McAffee, H., Smithey, G., Weiner, C. (2006). Assessing candidate disposition for admission into teacher education: Can just anyone teach? Action in Teacher Education, 27 (4), 72-80.

Kennedy, M. (1999). The role of preservice teacher education. In Darling-Hammond, L. & Sykes, G. (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession (pp. 54-85).—This chapter is a MUST READ for any teacher educator. You can find this chapter at Mary Kennedy’s Website under publications: http://www.msu.edu/~mkennedy/publications/ValueTE.html

A.J. Castro, www.thoughtsonteachered.blogspot.com