Inservice and continuing education: The need for a better mousetrap

Abstract

For many reasons Inservice and Continuing Education today is experiencing an intensive professional examination unforeseen several years ago. Much of this heightened interest in professional development results from a growing desire by teacher organizations to assume a meaningful role in governance of the profession. Such participation previously had been closed to all but state departments of education and higher education. Associated issues related to professional development include competency-based preparation, governance by consortium, field-based teacher education, teacher centers and renewal sites, and the search for an operational definition of the term professional. Part of the impetus for the reexamination of inservice and continuing education has come from higher education. Here, schools of education have sought to redirect their substantial human resources toward inservice and graduate education, both in response to a seeking for new markets and to an increased interest and broader sense of responsibility toward the teaching community. Most inservice and continuing education efforts have been criticized harshly as ineffectual. We believe that, despite an occasional ineffectual past, the time is right for clarifying the purpose for lifelong professional training of teachers. University teacher educators must assume an assertive position in this process and provide leadership in addressing major issues. For unless the profession can define a broader social purpose for education, then inservice and continuing education risks becoming obfuscated by a series of improvident, expedient activities which tend toward retrenchment and consolidation and which rarely address compelling social and human issues. For too long the university has acted as silent partner in this process, responding on cue to an occasionally stated need or majestically offering its view of truth via its prescribed program of study for recertification. Institutional accountability demands a different stance.