Sarah Sparks, writing for Education Week, explores the differences in teacher preparation for American elementary school teachers compared with teachers in four high-performing countries. Excerpts from her article appear below:
U.S. elementary-grade teachers get far less training than teachers in high-achieving countries for deep understanding of the foundational math, reading, and science content they teach.
A new report on primary school teacher quality released by the Center on International Education Benchmarking finds high-performing education systems in Japan, Finland, Hong Kong, and Shanghai have very different approaches to elementary-level teacher training. But all of their teacher-education systems focus more than U.S. programs do on pedagogical content knowledge—deep foundational understanding of both basic concepts and how people understand them at different ages and developmental levels.
A new teacher candidate in Finland, for example, is given a copy of the elementary school curriculum, and the training over four years gives teachers deep understanding of the specific content they will teach at each grade and subject, including all the possible questions and misunderstandings students might have about that curriculum.
The report notes that many U.S. preservice education programs have teachers continue to take higher math courses, such as calculus, rather than focusing on building pedagogical knowledge of the math they will be teaching. For example, a general U.S. college graduate may understand that 1 2/3 is equal to 5/3 and prove that it is true, but may not predict that students may confuse the numerator and denominator when converting the fractions, or be able to decide which of a set of fractions would be the most challenging problems for a particular student.
In comparison to the four international systems studied, U.S. teacher education programs require lower levels of initial content knowledge in foundational reading, math, and science for teacher candidates, the report finds. The training programs also dedicate less course time to training teachers in the content they will teach (in part because curriculum can vary significantly from state to state) and teacher licensure exams do not include as difficult questions on content pedagogy as those in top-performing countries.
Hong Kong uses a corps of its most experienced and effective teachers to induct new teachers starting their careers. Programs like this and ongoing “lesson study” professional development in Japan help active teachers continue to refine their understanding of the best ways to teach specific content.
For more commentary, see http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2016/07/top-performing_countries_teacher_training.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news2
For the report, see http://www.ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/169726_Not_So_Elementary_Report_FINAL.pdf
