A performance‐based teacher education program

Abstract

After many years of basing teacher education on a series of courses, Illinois State University started the 1971-72 school year with a new Professional Education Sequence (PES) which does away with traditional courses. A pilot project, designed to test the feasibility of such a change, was implemented during the preceding spring and summer. In the following fall, the program was expanded to include nearly all of the 1800 teacher education candidates at the university. The PES takes the place of the following former courses: American public education, secondary school reading, secondary education, and educational psychology. The program is performance based and is derived from an explicit conception of teacher roles. The teacher role consists of specified competencies formed in behavioral terms and expressed as objectives with explicit assessment possibilities. Each competency is the subject of a separate learning package consisting of a rationale, a behavioral objective, a preassessment proficiency test, concepts and questions to be answered, required learning activities, optional learning activities, and a description of the evaluation.