Teacher Preparation

Media

Part of Panorama

Title: Teacher Preparation
Creator: Michigan State University Committee for the New Curriculum of the University Unit at Oakland, Michigan, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Hamilton
Identifier: Challenge of the times
Language: English
Source: Panorama Volume XIII (No.7) July 1961
Year: 1961
Rights
Fulltext: Challenge of the Times TEACHER PR (By the Michigan State University Committee for the New Curriculum of the University Unit at Oakland, rT'HAT THE POSITION of the L United States both at home and abroad is precar ious is a proposition general ly accepted as valid. Domesti cally, we find ourselves, at the moment, apparently un able to cope with certain of the problems which have emerged in our dynamic so ciety. Abroad we are chal lenged as never before to show that we possess the phi losophy, the knowledge, the willingness, the energy to ena ble us to take the lead in the establishment of the good so ciety throughout the world. There are those who think that both domestically and in ternationally we have serious ly lost ground in terms of both our coping and our lead ing during the last quarter of a century. Whether or not this be true, there is no doubt that our plight is serious. Per haps it always has been. Equally certain is the fact that the only long-range so lutions which seem to give promise are deeply rooted in and dependent on the quali ty of our educational process. There is little argument that the center of this educational process is the teacher, and we cannot hope for that process to rise in quality above that of the individuals who play this central role. For this reason, a seminar devoted to a consideration of teacher preparation has signi ficance far beyond one which concerns itself with but a spe cial field. It is of little use to discuss programs in engin eering, in science, and in bu siness if the students who ar rive on the university campus to undertake them have been taught inadequately through out their elementary and se condary experience. Compounding our difficul ties, although perhaps if pro perly dealt with, multiplying our opportunities, is the fact that the community as a whole has become a most ef fective teacher, perhaps more 36 Panorama EPARATION Michigan, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Hamil ton, now President of the State University of New York) effective than the schools themselves. Values, attitudes, even the willingness to learn seem in large part to be a reflection of the community rather than learned in the classroom. To a degree this has always been the case; but support might well be found for the hypothesis that there has been an increase in the success of the impact of that portion of the community other than the school, the home, and the church; and there is little evidence that the shift will assure a hap pier situation either for so ciety or the individual. Perhaps a sensible point of departure would be to make certain that it was thorough ly understood that the prepa ration of teachers is a respon sibility of the total universi ty and cannot, with success, be delegated alone to any department or division or col lege. The reason for this stems from the fact that the preparation of teachers is nei ther a simple nor unitary task, but rather a complicated fourfaceted responsibility which can only be borne by the to tal university. It must not be held that each of these res ponsibilities is the exclusive concern of a single sector of the university. On the contra ry, as will be seen, these func tions, regardless of by whom treated, must always be view ed as interrelated, supplemen tary, and complementary ra ther than discrete. First, it should be observed that all teachers regardless of level or speciality must be provided a liberal or general education of excellence. Not all would agree precisely as to what the content of such a liberal education should be, and certainly not all courses which describe themselves as liberal merit the label. In all likelihood, however, the pre sence of liberal programs which pursue their reasonab ly similar objectives by var ious routes is healthy in our July 1961 37 pluralistic society. Certainly there would be fair agree ment that the liberally edu cated person, be he teacher or engineer or doctor, should know something about the so cial world in which he lives, its history and cultural ante cedents, possess an under standing of the nature of science as an intellectual pro cess, be characterized by con siderable ability in the skills of communication so taught as to take full cognizance of the relationship of skills to content. This seems minimal. It also is agreed that teachers should receive this liberal edu cation in the company of those who are being prepared for other professions. Liberal edu cation knows no geographical boundaries, neither does it recognize professional prov inces. That students with va rying professional ambitions can with profit learn together seems obvious. A second dimension of this complex of education design ed to prepare teachers is in volved in providing for pros pective teachers learning ex periences which will make certain that they have com petence in the special field in which they are to be cer tified as teachers. How exten sive this should be cannot be answered generally. Perhaps it would be well to describe the desirable situation in terms of the student achiev ing sufficient competence of this nature that, if it subse quently prove feasible, the teacher can build a graduate program on this undergrad uate training. The elementary teacher naturally presents a special problem in this con nection, for what in fact, is the special competence which he should acquire? Under pre sent circumstances, he should ideally be provided with the most comprehensive “general” education possible. While it can be held that the elementary teacher should be expected to demonstrate a subject matter competence of no less quality than that dis played by the secondary tea cher, there is a point of view holding that the special com petence called for in this case is a thorough understanding of children and how they learn and grow. It is the third function to which the most adverse cri ticism in the preparation of teachers recently has been di rected. This has to do with professional education. Let it be said at the outset that no one concerned with teacher preparation would deny that in some quarters there has been superficiality in this area and fragmentation of courses and subject matter. 38 Panorama Needless to say, this is not the only area in a university where guilt on these charges can be proved; but the fact remains that courses in pro fessional education are in need of constant review and scrutiny both by those with in and without the field. But when all this has been admit ted, the fact remains that it is difficult to see how one could adequately prepare tea chers in contemporary socie ty without the availability of certain of the competencies and knowledge that have been developed in this field. It seems clear that prospec tive teachers should under stand the history of the Ame rican public school as well as the philosophical position on which it rests. A knowledge of the continuing inter-action between the school and the social order is necessary. Si milarly, the teacher should comprehend to the best of his ability the nature of the learn ing process and its implica tions for teaching methods. Finally, there are almost none who would deny the ne cessity for providing, in one way or another an internship through the form of what or dinarily is called “practice teaching.” If there be valid criticism on this, it would be that frequently the practice teaching experience has not been intensive enough nor coupled with an opportunity for learning through study of and reflection on the exper ience. Acknowledging the necessi ty for work in the field of professional education, there remains the problem of how much of the total collegiate program should the prospec tive teacher devote to such studies? Inevitably the ans wer to this question must be quantitative, but it is unfor tunate that such is the case. The important matter is the achievement of certain edu cational objectives, not the number of semester hours ta ken. Informed opinion would indicate that, including the practice teaching experience, the valid objectives of the professional part of a stu dent’s program should be at tainable by most students in from one-sixth to one-seventh of the effort devoted to the total undergraduate program. The fourth and last aspect of the teacher preparation program has to do with get ting each student to truly understand the nature of the discipline which he aspires to teach. This is a somewhat more newly recognized di mension of the teacher pre paration program. It is an educational task which we seem to have performed bad JULY 1961 39 ly. In the field of mathema tics, for example, there are many teachers who are com petent to deal with the sub ject in the manipulative sense. They are able to teach pro cesses and turn out students who can follow directions with reasohable accuracy, but far less success attends their efforts to give to students an understanding of the nature of mathematics as an intellec tual discipline and its proper relationship to other discip lines and, indeed, to the whole history of ideas. Probably by the very nature of the case, this is a function which will have to be performed at least in large part by those who teach the subject matter courses at the university le vel. If it eventuates that some of these university level spe cialists do not themselves un derstand the nature of their discipline in this sense, some embarrassment may ensue. Again it should be empha sized that these functions are by no means discrete. Libe ral education frequently pro vides the necessary subject matter for a teacher, and pro fessional education courses if properly taught can meet li beral objectives. Certainly a thorough understanding of the nature of a discipline should give valid clues to the best methods by which it can be taught. The implications, then, are clear. Only the en tire university is competent in the last analyses to assume the responsibility for the pre paration of teachers. Of recent years we have come to recognize in prepara tion for teaching, as with pre paration for other professions, that the university is not well equipped to do all that is re quired. Just as in medicine there seems to be a desirable division of responsibility bet ween the university on the one hand and the hospital on the other, so in the prepara tion of teachers should the school system share the res ponsibility with the universi ty. The problem, of course, lies in the difficulty in de termining who should do what. Generally speaking, there seems to be agreement that the universities should deal primarily with the theo retical, the scientific, and the substantive, leaving problems of application to be consider ed within the public school system. To be specific, much of what is now taught in the field of administration, busi ness management, and audio visual materials, to name but a few areas, might be learned better under the auspices of the school system. In point of fact, a major improvement in the prepara 40 Panorama tion of teach.ers could be at tained if the universities and the school systems were to re cognize more fully that theirs was a joint responsibility. There might be real merit, for example, in developing a teacher preparation program which in total was of five years in length, but with the last two years shared .by the school system and the univer sity with the student being paid full salary during this period. Some such cooperative ar rangement between the uni versities and the school sys tems might assist in preven ting a loss of personnel in the teaching profession which comes about through the new teacher not being adequately prepared for the shock of the first full-time teaching assign ment. The step from the campus to a classroom with thirty or forty youngsters not all completely dedicated to learning, or for that matter necessarily even decorum, sur rounded by the complexities of the community, the bu reaucracy, the parents, is a giant one. Too many promi sing teachers never recover, and quickly decide that their choice of a profession was illadvised. This “community shock” ef fect has been heightened of recent years for the new tea cher comes to the community with relatively less status than was formerly the case. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that the total educational level of the community is much higher than in earlier times. The new teacher will find it fai more difficult to establish his position as an intellectual and cultural leader than did his predecessors. One of the problems which confronts those who are con cerned with the preparation of teachers in the United States is the lack of career stability which characterizes the profession. All too often the teacher enters his profes sion clearly recognizing that it is not something to which his full professional life will be devoted. The primary rea son for this rests in the fact that so many of our elemen ts * * BLOCKHEAD The recruit complained to the sergeant that he'd got a splinter in his finger. “Ye should have more sense” was the harsh comment, “than to scratch your head.” 4J Iulv 1961 ary and secondary school eachers are women who plan •rom the beginning to teach only until they have assumed their role as wife and mother. Quite naturally, with such a large segment of the teacher population being so motiva ted, it is difficult to build the dedicated, career-minded pro fession which is so needed. Part of the answer to this dillemma lies in attracting more men to elementary and sec ondary school teaching. There is evidence that progress is being made on this front. Making teaching a career to which both men and wo men will be willing to dedi cate their lives is not easy. Some of the difficulty rests in the matter of salaries, and there is no doubt that these need to be increased marked ly. But more than this is re quired. Somehow communi ties must not only accord to their teachers appropriate sta tus, but school systems must provide a situation where able men and women can see for the entirety of their pro fessional lives such challenge that they will not be tempted to desert the profession for other pursuits. This means that school systems must rid the teacher of the necessity for being clerk, janitor, and nurse and must provide a way for the able and energetic to rise in responsibility and sa lary as their careers develop. One of the matters fre quently discussed in the pre paration of teachers has to do with the point at which stu dents should choose their ca reers. On this matter there is some disagreement. Those who favor a late choice ob serve that many bright col lege students do not crystal lize their interests until the later part of their collegiate careers and thus would make the teacher preparation prog ram sufficiently flexible that at almost any time a student might enter into it. On the other hand, there are those who hold that career choices are being made too late and that it would be wise to has ten the procedure rather than delay it. Perhaps the best ag reement which can be reached is that for most students the decision to enter the teacher preparation program should be made at the end of the sophomore year but that the program should be possessed of sufficient flexibility that later choice would be possi ble. U any students of the eduv cation scene have poin ted out that the teacher pre paration program would be far less difficult to operate if the candidates for it were se 42 Panorama lected with greater care. There is no doubt this is true. In fact, the world’s problems would be considerably dimi nished were the supply of an gels less limited. Given the great need for teachers, it seems quite unrealistic to as sume that the immediate fu ture will permit of much greater selectivity than is now practiced. Other professions also are seeking and need the able individuals. It seems un likely, and perhaps unwise, that the teaching profession will be able to attract a dis proportionate share of the gif ted. Even to the extent that se lectivity is possible, the ins truments on which judgments can be made are far from in fallible. Intellectual ability and performance can be mea sured reasonably well, but the more important desire to continue to learn is identified with great difficulty. Health and appearance, to the extent these are relevant, can be ap praised. It is in the area of the prospective teacher’s per sonality that great fuzziness attends the efforts to select. Instruments are so weak, the possibilities of great damage by the projection of stereo types so great that caution must be exercised in acting on the valid proposition that the teacher’s personality is an important part of the learn ing process. It should be pos sible, and is in fact impera tive, however, to provide spe cial educational challenge to the able students who are at tracted to the profession. In our concern for quantity the dimension of quality cannot be ignored. The great danger faced by even a new university will be its failure to take into account the fact that the future will be characterized, as is the pre sent, by great change. In short, we must plan on a so cial order where perhaps the only constant is the lack of a constant. This means that the administration of a university and its faculty must continue to be imaginative using the knowledge of the past but re fusing to be bound by past limitations. Only in this way will it be possible to' attract the quality of faculty essen tial. This exercise of imagina tion in fact is the task of the university, in any event, whe ther it is concerned with the preparation of teachers, law yers, physicians, or citizens. As Alfred North Whitehead has put it, “Fools act on ima gination without knowledge; pedants act on knowledge without imagination. The task of a university is to weld to gether imagination and exper ience.” July 1961 43
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