Preservice and In-Service Education of Teachers

Abstract

The period covered by review was a highly significant one for American teacher education. The intense interest in teacher education on the part of both professionals and laymen noted by Reynard (1963) was, if anything, heightened. Thus, the Carnegie Foundation persuaded James Bryant Conant (1963) to undertake a two-year study of the education of American teachers, and the report of that study headed, for many weeks, the best-seller list of American nonfiction. Similarly, one can note the attention given to the controversy over NCATE and the accreditation of teacher education, a subject treated in another chapter. Clearly the best known, most controversial, and in that sense at least, most significant large study of teacher education was that by Conant. Visiting 77 institutions in 22 states, Conant and a team talked with administrators, faculty, and students, observed classes, and studied programs through the examination of catalogs, course outlines, and textbooks. Twenty-seven recommendations emerged, concerning certification requirements, practice teaching, the establishment of clinical professors, an alluniversity approach to teacher education, and master's degree and inservice programs for the continuing education of teachers. Cartwright (1964), a staff member of the Conant project, summarized his views that the essence of the study included pleas for (a) much trial and study of the teaching process and of teacher preparation, (b) minimizing of regulation and certification requirements, (c) major reliance upon colleges for the development of programs and for certifying the competence of the products of those programs, and (d) direct responsibility of schools for participation in the preservice education of teachers. Reactions to the Conant report came from many quarters. Koerner (1964) registered his delight with this very imperfect, incomplete, inconsistent, sometimes impressionistic, often woolly-minded but courageous and apocalyptic report. Analyses by Brickman (1964) and Anderson, Burnett, and Klassen (1965) were critical of the study, suggesting a lack of scholarship in the appraisal and a failure to supply any evidence for many of the assertions and conclusions drawn. A Journal of Teacher Education symposium (Edelfelt, 1964) registered varying opinions of educators in schools and colleges. The Seventeenth Yearbook of the AACTE (1964) included a report of an opinionnaire survey made at the Association's annual meeting, disclosing that 178 of 191 respondents indicated no changes or plans for change resulting from the study. One conclusion reached from the opinions sampled by 21 reporters in their local