Grossman, P. (2008). Responding to our Critics: From Crisis to Opportunity in Research on Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 59(10), 10-23.
“Teacher education right now is the Dodge City of education: unruly and chaotic”.
Jurisdictional dispute: from the clergy to the neurologists to the psychiatrists, to the clinical psychologists
Three areas of professional practice: (not necessarily understood linearly)
- diagnosis or assessment of situation
- reason and infer using professional knowledge
- effectively treat the problem or take action.
Academic knowledge, lack of lead to jurisdictional challenges. p. 12
Three areas demanding immediate attention:
- How teachers are prepared affects student learning.
- There is a need to improve the quality of research in teacher preparation
- Schools of education need to strengthen the preparation of teachers
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHER EDUCATION: WHAT DO WE KNOW?
- critics as far back as the 1950’s
- verbal ability, content knowledge, background check
- ABCTE American Board of Certification of Teacher Excellence
- Teach for America TFA but they can’t provide enough teachers…
- We need to argue what it takes both to teach and to prepare teachers
- We need, however, a stronger research base on teacher education
- Cognitive revolution: focus on teacher beliefs, knowledge and reflection at the expense of instructional practice or student learning.??
QUALITY OF ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE IN TEACHER EDUCATION p. 15
- more common instruments
- aggregate findings across studies
- build on its own findings
- We need more conversations bout our methods an our warrants, not just our findings
- The field has few examples of sustained programmatic research.
- NCRTL 1991 on teaching and learning to teach
- Results: a major in a subject matter does not necessarily give people the knowledge that they need for teaching.
- Results: mentors don’t necessarily help novices become more skillful teachers
- Many things were NOT learned: where and how long they teach, or how their students’ learning was affected.
- We need to be able to examine outcomes of teacher education in a systematic way.
THE RESEARCH THAT WE NEED p. 20
- A balance between small qualitative case studies and larger scale research projects.
- How do we distinguish between selection bias and the effects of the program?
- Look beyond knowledge, beliefs and reflection to practices an student outcome
- We need to create new tools to collect broader sets of data.
- We need to prepare our graduate students to engage in this research.
- In crisis lies opportunity.
mjcoonkitt 