- Email: [email protected]
Design of initial teacher education
International Journal of Educational Research 33 (2000) 453}456
Editor's introduction
Design of initial teacher education The chapters in this special issue of IJER are deliberate attempts to address two major problems facing international journals, especially in culturally sensitive areas such as education. First, the majority of the research literature is generated in Western countries, where university sta! are expected to devote a signi"cant amount of time to research and funding for research is available from government and other sources. Less wealthy countries cannot a!ord to "nance educational research; so their educational systems are relatively unresearched, especially by their own citizens who are best able to understand their social, cultural, and economic signi"cance. Second, particularly in an area like teacher education, institutions, policies, and individual educators are embedded in a social, economic, cultural, and political context unique to each nation. International journals seek, often successfully, to promote learning from comparison, challenging what may be taken for granted in some countries but not in others. But the imbalance in research output still leads to comparisons being framed by concepts developed and interpreted in the literature of the West. The title of our topic immediately raises problems of de"nition and comparison. Teacher Education program may include any of the following components: general secondary education, general higher education, specialist higher education in a particular subject, professional courses relevant to teaching, and supervised teaching experience in schools. Even in Europe some teachers are trained in Normal Schools, whose prime purpose is to provide su$cient secondary education for them to handle the subject content demands of primary education. Many countries in South America have recently abandoned their Normal Schools; others retain them, as have several African countries. In Spain secondary teachers require 6 years of university education; in Luxembourg it is 7 years. In Britain the majority of teachers, including many primary teachers, now train by means of a 1-year postgraduate program with a purely professional emphasis. In many African and Caribbean countries, initial teacher education is undertaken mainly by people who have already been teaching in school for some years. As a consequence, the term `pre-service teacher educationa does not apply. Even if one could disregard other, equally large, di!erences in national contexts, it would be a bold person who would seek to generalize across such a diverse range of teacher education programs. Another question one could ask is the extent to which initial teacher education programs are designed at all. Until recently, the major preoccupation of many countries has been one of teacher supply, especially when demand for teachers has been escalated by an expanding system of education. Economic circumstances determine the level of teachers' pay and whether it competes with private sector or 0883-0355/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 8 8 3 - 0 3 5 5 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 2 8 - 8
454
Editor+s introduction / Int. J. Educ. Res. 33 (2000) 453}456
even other public sector jobs. Where pay is very low, teaching may become a career choice of last resort, with all the problems of entry level, retention and morale that brings. In such contexts, gaining status though further general education is likely to be the main aim of teacher education programs; and trainees will be seeking opportunities to transfer to other career routes with better "nancial prospects. Both general higher education and specialist higher education in a subject may be part of a normal university curriculum, which is unlikely to be signi"cantly changed for intending teachers. Even professional courses may have to "t the same timetable slots and be taught in the same rooms as non-professional education. The sta! may have greater allegiance to specialist subjects and the social sciences than to the profession of teaching. There may even be university expectations about mode of assessment which severely constrain the outcomes of professional courses. Appropriate blocks of time for practical workshops or school experience may be di$cult to "nd. A further factor restricting the scope of any attempt to design a teacher education program is the distributed nature of decision-making in some countries. State governments often play a role in determining the length and funding of programs; local government may be responsible for the training institutions; there may be agreed standards and regulations, possibly even curriculum frameworks. The training institutions' design brief may be highly restricted and/or it may have to submit its design for approval by a body that may have little understanding of teacher education. The freedom accorded to the training institution will also be constrained by the competence, expertise and imagination of its sta!. In addition, it may have to negotiate access to and "nd placements in local schools, whose requirements may also signi"cantly in#uence the program. The whole process may resemble the negotiation of an international treaty more than the design of a simple course by those preparing to teach it. The challenge of designing this issue of IJER was somewhat similar. Our ideal design would have required a large and long research program to provide crossnational data on a range of issues. However, we have had to content ourselves with what was realistically achievable. In addition to the readily available literature in English, our main asset was ongoing collaborative international research programs and teacher education research links with several countries. This has given us access to some of the `gray literaturea and to case study data on current programs beyond what is publicly available. The result is three chapters with an essentially comparative focus * on national policies, teacher identity and teacher education programs. These are followed by two chapters on themes central to the professional development of teachers * skill development and the role of re#ection. The "nal chapter will bring together some of the key issues raised by the previous "ve chapters, and return once more to the question of how one can design a program for initial teacher education. In Chapter 1, Beatrice Avalos reviews reforms in teacher education in developing countries and in Latin America, where countries are in varying stages of development. Referring to the role of teacher education in general education reform, she notes a growing recognition of the importance of the quality of teaching to which teacher educators are often ill prepared to respond. The formidable constraints on both
Editor+s introduction / Int. J. Educ. Res. 33 (2000) 453}456
455
teaching and teacher education in many countries include the low general educational level of most teachers, low pay and di$cult working conditions. Moreover, teacher education institutions tend to su!er from inertia and poor funding. Focusing on Latin America, she notes a gradual move away from Normal Schools towards higher education as the preferred location for teacher education Only four countries are not even considering such a change, all in Central America. She concludes with a review of policies for quality improvement in teacher education. In Chapter 2, David Stephens and Michael Samuel explore the cultural dimensions of teacher education through a cross-cultural comparison of teachers' identities and roles. What are the social expectations of teachers displayed by their communities, and what are the preferred and expected roles of the teachers themselves? How are these expectations contested, transformed or negotiated during times of rapid sociocultural change? The potential disjuncture between social expected roles and personal sense of identity is re#ected in the structure of this chapter, which combines a literature review with biographical material from a recent case study of teacher formation in Kwa-Zulu Natal. In Chapter 3, Janet Stuart and Maria Teresa Tatto address the question of what initial teacher education can look like on the ground by comparing "ve innovative programs from three continents * Africa, America and Europe. Two of these programs are for untrained teachers who have been teaching for some time. Their analysis covers three dimensions: the political and epistemological context; the structures and institutions in which the programs are situated; and the curriculum strategy of intended outcomes, components and their content, approaches to teaching and learning, and assessment. The frame of reference for Denis Thiessen's chapter on skill development (Chapter 4) is mainly North America. Not only does most of the research literature on skills development originate there, but this dimension of teacher preparation is given more detailed attention than in most other parts of the world. Thiessen identi"es three, often overlapping phases * study, trial and appraisal/elaboration * then traces how these have been transformed as views about the nature of teachers' practical expertise have changed. In Chapter 5, Vivienne Gri$ths discusses types of re#ection and their relationship to action, in terms of focus and timing (before, during or after the action), and the respective roles of intuitive or routinized practice and deliberative, more thoughtful decision-making. These two dimensions are interwoven to examine both evidence of re#ection taking place and theories of professional practice that give major or minor roles to re#ection. What roles for re#ection are both feasible and desirable. She draws mainly on European and North American literature, but with some reference to the African context. Eraut's "nal chapter tackles the third major problem facing the authors of the chapters in this issue. Our commission was to address research focussed around the design of initial teacher education, yet design is normally regarded both as a product and as a holistic activity, whose outcome is judged by a combination of aesthetic criteria and "tness for its purpose and context. Teacher education programs, however, frequently derive from a distributed set of policy decisions made at levels ranging from
456
Editor+s introduction / Int. J. Educ. Res. 33 (2000) 453}456
individual lecturers to central government. Though barely recognized as a design process, it is nevertheless useful to retain a design metaphor as a reminder of how these decisions constrain each other and interact during implementation. Research into teacher education scarcely touches the design process as opposed to the design product; but it does cover many aspects of teacher education programs that are relevant to their design. Thus, research-based design is not currently possible and, given the complexity and contextualized nature of these programs, is unlikely to be possible in the future; but research-informed design is not only possible but desirable, and that is what this issue is intended to support. The "nal chapter provides a problem-solving brief rather than a further research review, drawing attention to the kinds of knowledge that could improve the quality of program designs that research either does or could, in the future, provide. M. Eraut Institute of Education, University of Sussex Educational Development Building, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RG, UK E-mail address: [email protected]
Editor's introduction
Design of initial teacher education The chapters in this special issue of IJER are deliberate attempts to address two major problems facing international journals, especially in culturally sensitive areas such as education. First, the majority of the research literature is generated in Western countries, where university sta! are expected to devote a signi"cant amount of time to research and funding for research is available from government and other sources. Less wealthy countries cannot a!ord to "nance educational research; so their educational systems are relatively unresearched, especially by their own citizens who are best able to understand their social, cultural, and economic signi"cance. Second, particularly in an area like teacher education, institutions, policies, and individual educators are embedded in a social, economic, cultural, and political context unique to each nation. International journals seek, often successfully, to promote learning from comparison, challenging what may be taken for granted in some countries but not in others. But the imbalance in research output still leads to comparisons being framed by concepts developed and interpreted in the literature of the West. The title of our topic immediately raises problems of de"nition and comparison. Teacher Education program may include any of the following components: general secondary education, general higher education, specialist higher education in a particular subject, professional courses relevant to teaching, and supervised teaching experience in schools. Even in Europe some teachers are trained in Normal Schools, whose prime purpose is to provide su$cient secondary education for them to handle the subject content demands of primary education. Many countries in South America have recently abandoned their Normal Schools; others retain them, as have several African countries. In Spain secondary teachers require 6 years of university education; in Luxembourg it is 7 years. In Britain the majority of teachers, including many primary teachers, now train by means of a 1-year postgraduate program with a purely professional emphasis. In many African and Caribbean countries, initial teacher education is undertaken mainly by people who have already been teaching in school for some years. As a consequence, the term `pre-service teacher educationa does not apply. Even if one could disregard other, equally large, di!erences in national contexts, it would be a bold person who would seek to generalize across such a diverse range of teacher education programs. Another question one could ask is the extent to which initial teacher education programs are designed at all. Until recently, the major preoccupation of many countries has been one of teacher supply, especially when demand for teachers has been escalated by an expanding system of education. Economic circumstances determine the level of teachers' pay and whether it competes with private sector or 0883-0355/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 8 8 3 - 0 3 5 5 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 2 8 - 8
454
Editor+s introduction / Int. J. Educ. Res. 33 (2000) 453}456
even other public sector jobs. Where pay is very low, teaching may become a career choice of last resort, with all the problems of entry level, retention and morale that brings. In such contexts, gaining status though further general education is likely to be the main aim of teacher education programs; and trainees will be seeking opportunities to transfer to other career routes with better "nancial prospects. Both general higher education and specialist higher education in a subject may be part of a normal university curriculum, which is unlikely to be signi"cantly changed for intending teachers. Even professional courses may have to "t the same timetable slots and be taught in the same rooms as non-professional education. The sta! may have greater allegiance to specialist subjects and the social sciences than to the profession of teaching. There may even be university expectations about mode of assessment which severely constrain the outcomes of professional courses. Appropriate blocks of time for practical workshops or school experience may be di$cult to "nd. A further factor restricting the scope of any attempt to design a teacher education program is the distributed nature of decision-making in some countries. State governments often play a role in determining the length and funding of programs; local government may be responsible for the training institutions; there may be agreed standards and regulations, possibly even curriculum frameworks. The training institutions' design brief may be highly restricted and/or it may have to submit its design for approval by a body that may have little understanding of teacher education. The freedom accorded to the training institution will also be constrained by the competence, expertise and imagination of its sta!. In addition, it may have to negotiate access to and "nd placements in local schools, whose requirements may also signi"cantly in#uence the program. The whole process may resemble the negotiation of an international treaty more than the design of a simple course by those preparing to teach it. The challenge of designing this issue of IJER was somewhat similar. Our ideal design would have required a large and long research program to provide crossnational data on a range of issues. However, we have had to content ourselves with what was realistically achievable. In addition to the readily available literature in English, our main asset was ongoing collaborative international research programs and teacher education research links with several countries. This has given us access to some of the `gray literaturea and to case study data on current programs beyond what is publicly available. The result is three chapters with an essentially comparative focus * on national policies, teacher identity and teacher education programs. These are followed by two chapters on themes central to the professional development of teachers * skill development and the role of re#ection. The "nal chapter will bring together some of the key issues raised by the previous "ve chapters, and return once more to the question of how one can design a program for initial teacher education. In Chapter 1, Beatrice Avalos reviews reforms in teacher education in developing countries and in Latin America, where countries are in varying stages of development. Referring to the role of teacher education in general education reform, she notes a growing recognition of the importance of the quality of teaching to which teacher educators are often ill prepared to respond. The formidable constraints on both
Editor+s introduction / Int. J. Educ. Res. 33 (2000) 453}456
455
teaching and teacher education in many countries include the low general educational level of most teachers, low pay and di$cult working conditions. Moreover, teacher education institutions tend to su!er from inertia and poor funding. Focusing on Latin America, she notes a gradual move away from Normal Schools towards higher education as the preferred location for teacher education Only four countries are not even considering such a change, all in Central America. She concludes with a review of policies for quality improvement in teacher education. In Chapter 2, David Stephens and Michael Samuel explore the cultural dimensions of teacher education through a cross-cultural comparison of teachers' identities and roles. What are the social expectations of teachers displayed by their communities, and what are the preferred and expected roles of the teachers themselves? How are these expectations contested, transformed or negotiated during times of rapid sociocultural change? The potential disjuncture between social expected roles and personal sense of identity is re#ected in the structure of this chapter, which combines a literature review with biographical material from a recent case study of teacher formation in Kwa-Zulu Natal. In Chapter 3, Janet Stuart and Maria Teresa Tatto address the question of what initial teacher education can look like on the ground by comparing "ve innovative programs from three continents * Africa, America and Europe. Two of these programs are for untrained teachers who have been teaching for some time. Their analysis covers three dimensions: the political and epistemological context; the structures and institutions in which the programs are situated; and the curriculum strategy of intended outcomes, components and their content, approaches to teaching and learning, and assessment. The frame of reference for Denis Thiessen's chapter on skill development (Chapter 4) is mainly North America. Not only does most of the research literature on skills development originate there, but this dimension of teacher preparation is given more detailed attention than in most other parts of the world. Thiessen identi"es three, often overlapping phases * study, trial and appraisal/elaboration * then traces how these have been transformed as views about the nature of teachers' practical expertise have changed. In Chapter 5, Vivienne Gri$ths discusses types of re#ection and their relationship to action, in terms of focus and timing (before, during or after the action), and the respective roles of intuitive or routinized practice and deliberative, more thoughtful decision-making. These two dimensions are interwoven to examine both evidence of re#ection taking place and theories of professional practice that give major or minor roles to re#ection. What roles for re#ection are both feasible and desirable. She draws mainly on European and North American literature, but with some reference to the African context. Eraut's "nal chapter tackles the third major problem facing the authors of the chapters in this issue. Our commission was to address research focussed around the design of initial teacher education, yet design is normally regarded both as a product and as a holistic activity, whose outcome is judged by a combination of aesthetic criteria and "tness for its purpose and context. Teacher education programs, however, frequently derive from a distributed set of policy decisions made at levels ranging from
456
Editor+s introduction / Int. J. Educ. Res. 33 (2000) 453}456
individual lecturers to central government. Though barely recognized as a design process, it is nevertheless useful to retain a design metaphor as a reminder of how these decisions constrain each other and interact during implementation. Research into teacher education scarcely touches the design process as opposed to the design product; but it does cover many aspects of teacher education programs that are relevant to their design. Thus, research-based design is not currently possible and, given the complexity and contextualized nature of these programs, is unlikely to be possible in the future; but research-informed design is not only possible but desirable, and that is what this issue is intended to support. The "nal chapter provides a problem-solving brief rather than a further research review, drawing attention to the kinds of knowledge that could improve the quality of program designs that research either does or could, in the future, provide. M. Eraut Institute of Education, University of Sussex Educational Development Building, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RG, UK E-mail address: [email protected]