Does Teacher Training Matter?

What kind of training should a teacher have? How many years of college should be required? How much contact time with students in an actual classroom setting. What are the most appropriate assessments to determine whether a teacher candidate is ready to enter the profession? These are questions that have baffled colleges of education for years. As the teaching profession comes under more public scrutiny and demands more accountability, the issues surrounding teacher preparation have again surfaced. Most traditional colleges of education divide their pedagogy into several sections- Theoretical and practical. In the theoretical domain, students are exposed to how children learn. They investigate theories of learning, stages of learning and review of learning disabilities.  Everything thing from John Dewey to Daniel Golman is often included. The practical aspects to teacher preparation include site visits and observations of actual classrooms or in campus experimental classrooms, teaching sample lessons to peers that are videotaped and culminating in clinical practice, also known as student teaching. Teacher candidates are expected to prepare lesson plans and develop teaching strategies that will encompass all learners the classroom. In many colleges and universities, graduates who wish to teach in middle or high school setting must also be deemed highly qualified (using federal NCLB guidelines) in the subject that they teach. This often means completing a separate undergraduate degree in the specific content area, e.g. English, Mathematics, Social Studies, etc.

But the question remains which type of preparation best serves the candidate and ultimately the school and its students? When we take a look at the current research, the new norm for teacher evaluation is how the students perform on state or national standardized tests. So what becomes more critical, how to teach (pedagogy) or what to teach (content)? How does a teacher address the various learning styles so that all of the students (or a majority) can pass the test? A teacher should complete needs assessments of the students at the beginning of get academic year and monitor their progress as the year continues. Since most assessment tests are administered in the early spring, it is imperative that teachers ramp up their efforts after the Christmas vacation. By that time teachers should identify who is in need of remedial help, who can grasp concepts orally, visually or hands on. This might tend to favor the theoretical plank of the academic curriculum. There are too many videos on YouTube where students stare blankly at reporters and cannot answer the most rudimentary questions like how many Supreme Court Justices are there and how many Muslim nations there are.

Readers here  might want to  read some of the recent books by Linda Darling Hammond( From Inequality to Quality due out in April 2013 and Surpassing Shanghai  c.2011)

c.J. margolis 2012