A Response to John Goodlad's Whither Schools of Education? Unless Other Changes Occur, They Might Well Wither

Abstract

This rejoinder argues that the institutional regard in which schools of education are held and their long-run operational prospects cannot be separated from broader policy issues such as the education system's accountability and incentive arrangements. Thus, by themselves, supply-side efforts such as rendering education schools more rigorous and practitioner oriented will be insufficient. Rather, only the development of an empirically based ability to discern good teaching and, thereafter, creating an intensified market demand for teaching talent can elevate the profession and future fortunes of schools of education. I approached the reading of the foregoing Goodlad article with enthusiasm. For decades, America's efforts at achieving a profession of education have had no more stalwart, insightful, analytic, or articulate proponent than Professor Goodlad. Through well-researched books, scholarly articles, engaging speeches, inspired leadership, and personal commitment, he has been a tireless and forceful crusader for professionally oriented schools of education and a proud cadre of well-prepared teachers for the nation. Despite my positive predisposition, I only reached the article's third paragraph before I was discouraged. This is no ill reflection on Goodlad or his writing. Rather, I quickly despaired from the painful realization that for decades virtually no progress has been made in solving the multiple problems of schools of education. In Goodlad's third paragraph, I was reminded that 100 years ago John Dewey was fighting to improve schools of education, elevate their institutional standing, render them more scholarly and scientific in their research, focus them more intensely upon the training of professional teachers, and model their teacher preparation and research efforts more after that of law, medical, engineering, and architecture schools. Regrettably, one is hard pressed to see even a scintilla of progress since Dewey's day. It would seem that schools of education are every bit as status deprived within academia, institutionally indistinguishable, and marginally regarded by the larger society today as they were a decade or even a century ago. Goodlad's seven-point agenda for coping with such despair is a reasoned one. He generously gives my colleague Geraldine Clifford and me credit for our stance in the book, Ed School: A Brief for Professional Education (Clifford & Guthrie, 1988). He then proceeds to call for a focus on the profession, a fully humanitarian approach to teaching and the training of teachers, a unified faculty, and so on. However, even if all that Goodlad espouses should happen, and it will not, it probably would be insufficient. None of these solutions, nor the supply-side ideas that Clifford and I, or almost anyone else, have previously put forward, will ultimately prove capable of eliminating the institutional inferiority faced by Ed Schools. These problems are too organic, too integrally tied to the problems of education itself, ever to be solved by concentrating on education schools or on the supply of better teachers. School of education problems must be challenged externally through empirical research results, elevated market expectations for teachers' performance, and public perceptions. Until there is a greater school district and school demand for good teachers, just as there now is a market for business executives, engineers, and so forth, there will be little prestige for good schools of education. These age-old problems of professional status, professionalism, institutional regard, and instructional improvement are twisted together and reciprocally reinforcing. Lower than preferred status for teachers discourages larger numbers of more able individuals from entering the field. A mediocre workforce, or at least a perception of a mediocre workforce, and a same-size-fits-all salary mentality impede offering able teachers higher remuneration. …