Notes: The Organization and Culture of Evaluation in Teacher Licensing Systems: Case Studies From Great Britain and the United States

Abstract

How should the state assure itself that those entrusted with the formal education of its young are qualified? With what investigation can it be satisfied that it has acquired sufficient knowledge about teacher candidate qualifications to grant a license?' Although the basic authority of the state to license teachers is not at issue in current educational reform, there are in the United States and in Great Britain divergent licensing practices. This article describes two systems: quinquennial programbased licensing at a California university and annual performance-based licensing at a British polytechnic.2 The former focuses on the quality of the program preparing the candidates; the latter, on the qualifications of individual candidates. The former is the dominant mode of teacher licensing in the United States; the latter, an emerging model.3 The systems represent, in Maurice Kogan's terms (1986), a public control model of accountability. They have in common (a) a basic objective, the assurance of competence in program graduates; (b) a basic procedure, review by professional colleagues acting as agents of the state;4 (c) a set of standards to be used in judging quality; and (d) the availability of sanctions to force institutional compliance with review team findings. The fact that, in both systems, professional colleagues function as agents of the state and in common utilize such procedures as observation and interview should not obscure the fundamental difference in immediate objective--determining the quality of a teacherpreparation program versus determining the teaching qualifications of individual students.