America’s traditional teacher preparation programs are under siege; enrollment is dwindling, as prospective teachers turn to increasingly popular alternative programs. There are calls for regulators to step in to shut down the worst institutions and help many others improve. But where should experts look for best practices?
A panel of education experts, assembled to discuss two reports released by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), suggested looking abroad to four educational systems that perform best on international student achievement tests. The reports focus mainly on how these four systems – British Columbia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore – improve the craft of their current teachers. The panelists used the findings to discuss how America’s education schools should improve: have future teachers spend significantly more time in classrooms, focus more on deepening a teacher’s knowledge of a subject-area – particularly math for elementary school teachers – and give teachers the research tools they need to examine whether what they’re doing in the classroom is working.
The question is what role America’s education schools would play if we imported systems that rely so heavily on in-school training. All four of the systems highlighted have set up structures where the best teachers formally train new teachers. The question is should states be putting resources in the faculties of education or designing a system like Shanghai, where it’s done by master teachers?
In Shanghai, government regulations stipulate that much of a teacher’s training happens at school and that you can’t get a teaching license until the master teacher says you’re ready. Lily Eskelsen Garcia – president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union – said she would have benefited from that type of a program.
“Right now, before you are a licensed teacher, you spend very little time with kids,” said Eskelsen Garcia. “I would have benefited from a full year residence, but it’s important to note in a lot of places that’s a paid position.”
To read more about teacher training in these varying countries, see http://hechingerreport.org/what-high-performing-countries-have-to-teach-us-about-teacher-training/
