A Decade of Experience with Certain Core Courses in the Professional Preparation of Teachers at the University of Wisconsin

Abstract

Nine years ago almost to the day I read a paper before this society on the Program in Education at the University of Wisconsin. We were at that time in the second year of a new core program that represented a considerable break with our tradition in the professional preparation of secondary school teachers. Eleven of the eighteen semester hours of Education required for our University Teachers Certificate had been allotted to three courses num bered Education 73, 74, and 75. The first of these courses, Educ. 73, was organized around the nature and development of the child; the second, Educ. 74, around the school and society relationship; and the third, Educ. 75, around the nature and direction of learning. These courses had grown out of extended committee work and a great deal of departmental discussion. They were understood to be not the preserves of any individual instructors or of any group of instructors but the creation and responsibility of the depart ment as a whole. Certain members of the staff were selected by the depart ment to draw up the detailed content, to teach the courses, and to report periodically on content, procedure and results. The department was not so large at that time as to permit many, had they wished, to be excused from direct assignment to one or another of these courses. Education 73, 74, and 75 have continued with us under the same titles to the present. About twenty-five different people have taught these courses for us during the ten years of their run. Perhaps a third of these people have moved on to other institutions where the work is easier, the field of service larger, and the pay considerably higher. At present fifteen members of the department are teaching Education 73, 74, and 75; and among them are five who were in the program when it started. The courses still belong to the department as a whole and are subject to criticism and change by the department as a whole, even though that department is now three times 571