The Future of Teacher Education

Abstract

There is a future for teacher education. The vision for this future includes a growing knowledge base of how students learn. This knowledge will spread more widely to teacher education and professional development programs. Instructional strategies in literacy and mathematics that are now proven to make a difference for student achievement will become better known to teacher educators, school administrators, and teachers alike. Technologies such as video streaming will address the long-standing isolation of classroom teachers by confronting and spreading teaching expertise across the nation and the globe. Teacher educators, with K-12 school and social service partners, will craft specialized programs that prepare teachers for diverse students and the special challenges of hard-to-staff urban and rural schools. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards will not only provide a vehicle to identify and reward highly accomplished teachers but also an opportunity for universities to use them as their most prominent and valued teacher educators and specialists for preparing other teachers to excel in low-performing schools. No longer will teacher educators and their critics fight about the dichotomy of versus alternative preparation in efforts to address the nation's teaching quality problems. Instead, a new consensus will emerge, based on newly gathered evidence about the effects of teacher education, along with the marketing of its importance to a previously skeptical education policy community. Could this vision for the future actually be realized? Fulfilling the vision of this future will be dependent on the ability and capacity of the teacher education community to build and leverage public support and political will for supporting a true teaching profession whose actions focus primarily on serving the academic and developmental needs of all students--including our nation's most disadvantaged learners. However, there are reasons for skepticism, especially given the current polarization of teacher education politics being fueled by ideologues and academics alike. The divide often pits those who seemingly are hanging on to the traditional way of doing business (i.e., the typical sequence of often disconnected university content and methods courses and student teaching assignments) versus those who insist that evidence calls for shortcut alternative certification to be the answer to the nation's teacher quality and supply problems. Criticism of teacher preparation is often based on anecdote, and those who argue for alternative certification usually do not apply the same research-based standards expected of teacher education in developing their own programs. On the other hand, critics of alternative certification often do not own up to the fact that education has ignored the importance of attracting midcareer switchers and devising programs that are appropriate to their life circumstances and experiences. But more than anything else, the heated debate centers on whether teachers need preparation in pedagogy and if so, whether they need it before they begin teaching. As Education Trust (2004) has noted, neither side can prove their case convincingly, because evidence and data on teacher effectiveness are sorely lacking. Although Education Trust claims are not quite accurate, the evidence that does exist is slim and not well defined and used. To move beyond the current dichotomous debate, teacher educators first must more effectively articulate the issues at hand, own up to their own problems, and take aggressive steps, including assembling evidence on the effects of teacher education on student learning, broadly construed. MOVING BEYOND THE DEBATE REGARDING TEACHER EDUCATION The debate regarding teacher education evokes a larger set of contentious issues clearly defined by two opposing camps--those who seek to deregulate teaching and those who seek to professionalize it (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001). …