Teacher Training Revitalized
By Lyn Jerde
Jo Anne Caldwell has seen education students advance in their studies
to the point of student teaching – then decide, “This line of
work isn’t for me.”
As director of teacher education at Milwaukee’s Cardinal Stritch
University, she regrets losing these students so late in their academic
careers.
But the profession of teaching is a better one, she said, if college
and university students preparing for teaching careers are required to
prove their competence and commitment at all levels of their education.
When that happens, teacher education is a foretaste of the kind of accountability
and continuing growth that the state’s new licensure standards will
require of them throughout their careers.
Wisconsin’s teacher licensure standards should motivate competency-based
curricula in all 33 of the state’s colleges and universities that
offer K-12 education programs, said Caldwell, who is president of the
Wisconsin Association of Colleges of Teacher Education.
And, she is confident that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction
will insist on accountability from all the academic institutions.
“I do know,” Caldwell said, “that you can have wonderful
standards, and require all kind of things from institutions – but
if you don’t get tough with the institutions that don’t comply,
those standards mean little.”
Wisconsin’s licensure standards for teachers require newly licensed
teachers to prove proficiency, both in their teaching technique and in
the academic areas in which they seek certification.
“Proving proficiency” will require much more than taking a
course and passing a written test, said William Hartje, a teacher at Evansville
High School and chair of the Professional Standards Council.
“For example, it won’t be enough for students to take a class
in diversity,” Hartje said. “Each student will have to demonstrate
that he or she knows how to handle diversity issues in a classroom.”
The teacher licensure standards will officially go into effect in 2004,
but in many colleges, the standards have affected students entering in
the fall of 2000 – and in some cases, even before that.
Hartje said most high-quality teacher education programs were already
moving in new directions, long before the standards were adopted.
Those directions, according to Caldwell, are intended to accomplish the
following goals:
- Require students, at various stages of their education, to show, through
portfolios, what they have accomplished.
- Offer students hands-on experience in teaching at every stage of their
education.
- Encourage students to be truly committed to, and proficient in, teaching
children – as opposed to “picking up teaching credentials”
as an incidental goal. (An example of this is illustrated in the movie
“Mr. Holland’s Opus,” in which the protagonist, a musician,
becomes a music teacher solely to pay the rent while he establishes
his composing career.)
All these goals mesh with Wisconsin’s new standards, and will help
prepare people seeking their Initial Educator License to meet the standards
that the state requires.
Colleges and universities whose teacher training programs do not accomplish
these goals, Caldwell said, will have to improve if they are to succeed
in producing graduates who are able to meet Wisconsin’s standards.
“People have lost faith in teacher training institutions,”
Caldwell said. “They assume that all the programs are taught by people
who haven’t been in classrooms in years, and who wouldn’t know
what to do if they met an actual pupil.”
That broad-brush assumption is unfair to any college or university that
is serious about training students to comply with the standards.
But the standards do not require all 33 colleges and universities to adopt
identical teacher training programs.
Hartje noted that the institutions have a great deal of room for creativity
and individuality in how they design and/or change their teacher education
programs to comply with the licensure standards.
For example, the College of Education and Human Services at the University
of Wisconsin-Oshkosh has been moving, in recent years, toward a program
that requires students in teaching programs to prove their skills, starting
soon after they complete their core education courses in their first two
years.
MaryBeth Petesch, director of field experience and internships in UW-Oshkosh’s
teacher training program, said one of the required core programs is a
hands-on class titled “Individual, School and Society” –
in which each student must secure a job (volunteer or paid) that involves
working directly with pupils. Some examples include volunteering at a
Boys’ or Girls’ Club or one-on-one tutoring of disabled children.
In each of these assignments, an on-site supervisor evaluates the student’s
performance. Successful completion of the course is required to continue
in the education program.
UW-Oshkosh education students have to undergo personal interviews in
which they present portfolios of their accomplishments at three different
times during their studies: after completing their core courses, before
student teaching, and after student teaching.
The portfolios include, among other things, the student’s standardized
test scores, samples of their class work, sample lesson plans, letters
of recommendation and a personal statement on why the student seeks a
career in education.
Petesch said there are many pupils who leave the teacher education program
abruptly when they find out how stringent its requirements are.
But those who persevere are committed to teaching, and are prepared to
earn their Wisconsin license and teach upon graduation.
“I think we have a pretty rigorous program,” she said.
Petesch said UW-Oshkosh was moving toward a competency-based program of
this type as early as 1995, before Wisconsin adopted the new licensure
standards.
But the school also faces some challenges related to the licensure requirements.
For example, students who plan to seek licensure to teach specific subjects
will be required to pass content-level exams related to their chosen field.
Hartje said those exams are under development now through Educational
Testing Service. The tests will be designed to integrate Wisconsin’s
specific competency standards in each subject area with nationwide standards.
One key question that academic institutions will have to address, Hartje
said, is when to administer those tests. If they are given sooner than
the junior year, the students may not have completed enough course work
to perform well on the test. If they are given late in the student’s
academic career – for example, before student teaching – that
leaves little time for students who did not do well to retake the tests.
Petesch also raised concerns about the costs of those tests, and whether
students would have to pay those costs directly – especially students
seeking to be certified in more than one subject area.
There also will be challenges for small school districts that seek teachers
who are licensed to teach in a multiplicity of subject areas: With the
rigorous testing requirements, few students are likely to attempt to seek
licensure in several subjects.
Caldwell said the licensure standards could also affect people who are
considering teaching as a second career – who have a bachelor’s
degree and work experience in a non-education-related field, and need
to study in an education program for licensure.
At Cardinal Stritch, Caldwell said, that description applies to about
half the education students.
But if anything, the licensure requirements should make the entryinto
the teaching profession easier for some of these post-baccalaureate students.
Teacher education programs used to be driven largely by the number of
academic credits a student earned – a process that can be time-consuming,
and which does not necessarily indicate the student’s potential competence
as a teacher.
However, a performance-centered program, such as Stritch’s, will
reward students not for completing a certain number of credit hours, but
for demonstrating, in hands-on situations, their ability to teach.
For example, Stritch’s teacher education program includes a requirement
that students tutor inner-city children for at least a semester.
In the tutoring experience, Caldwell said, students must demonstrate
not only their ability to communicate with students and present lesson
plans, but also their ability to test the students’ skills, before
and after the tutoring.
Like UW-Oshkosh, Stritch has a portfolio-based evaluation process that
is conducted at several stages of a teaching student’s education.
Students who do not do well in their portfolios or hands-on components,
Caldwell said, may be “counseled out” of the education program.
“Some students find out that getting teaching credentials is not
going to be as easy as they thought,” she said.
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Posted February 12, 2002