Student Learning: Education's Field of Dreams

Abstract

The focus of teacher education has been on teachers and teaching rather than on students and learning. Ms. Blackwell urges schools of education to shift their emphasis to the knowledge base about student learning, and she provides seven benchmarks for programs that will produce high- quality teachers who understand how students learn. AFTER A SEMESTER of delving into research on teaching, learning, and teacher preparation, the doctoral students in educational leadership at my university concluded that teacher education is primarily about teachers and teaching. Teachers tell students what they need to know and how to learn it, a model practiced for so long that what teachers do is presumed to be common knowledge. Everyone knows what teaching is. We have experienced it through years in the classroom. Parents teach their children; adults teach other adults in church or in the workplace. Teaching occurs whenever people get together. We all teach, and we know what teachers do, so much so that many confidently believe that teachers need little preparation beyond content knowledge. Thinking about teaching in this way puts teacher education in distinct contrast with medical and legal education. The training for doctors and lawyers clearly covers a professional body of knowledge that is to be mastered before students are allowed to practice. The work of these professionals carries an image of exclusiveness: we presume they know something others do not know. However, no mystery is associated with teaching; we don't generally believe that teachers have knowledge others do not have. So we must ask the hard questions: Do schools of education teach what teachers must know? Does teacher education teach about student learning? Student learning remains an elusive field of dreams, and schools of education are at a turning point, facing an uncertain future. Just as the education system is not organized to ensure every student a high- quality teacher, neither is it organized to ensure that every prospective teacher studies in a high-quality teacher education program that results in high-quality student learning. To help sort out this conundrum, I consider the disconnect between teacher education and a knowledge base that should be the domain of professional teachers: research on student learning. The core of the teacher education curriculum should be a rigorous, research-based curriculum that asks teachers to understand how different students learn in different content areas, not just a once-over-lightly, disconnected course that is so often the only exposure preservice teachers get to how students learn. Below, I offer seven sets of questions derived from benchmarks for student learning that faculty members and students should ask about their teacher education programs. My argument for inverting the traditional relationship between learning and teaching rests on four points. First, the traditional model of teacher education has failed to achieve the level of quality desired and may be rejected in its entirety by policy makers or overwhelmed by approaches from outside the university system. Only a sweeping shift has the potential to keep that from happening. Second, the knowledge base about student learning is now solid enough to offer a foundation that can transform the preparation of teachers. This knowledge base is grounded in well-designed research across various disciplines. Third, there is no agreement about what the professional knowledge base about teaching should be, and the research on which we currently base much of what is taught in teacher education does not meet stringent standards.1 Fourth, state licensing systems are under attack and in jeopardy for not demonstrating conclusively that certified teachers are more effective than those not certified.2 Most state licensing standards are rooted in a reductionist view of teaching that pretty much translates effective teacher behaviors into discrete competencies for program approval and teacher licensing. …