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The preparation of teachers in the United States varies from state to state and from institution to institution, with no national consensus on a central body of knowledge or skills that a teacher needs to enter the classroom. Historically, education in the United States has been the province of the states, and, accordingly, standards for teacher education and licensing are set at the state level. These standards may be reviewed and influenced by professional associations and a national accrediting agency but are not controlled by them. Accreditation of teacher education programs is largely voluntary (unless the state mandates otherwise). In the absence of an articulated knowledge base from the profession itself, and with no unified, mandated policies for the preparation of teachers, the United States has a diversity of practices, with little coherence in purpose and curriculum, embedded in a system that is difficult to change in response to national needs and priorities.
Schools of education originated in the mid-1800s with the founding of "normal schools," which were developed to prepare teachers for what were then called "common" schools, those that were free, tax-supported, and open to all. In the early years, normal school students were predominately females who had completed little more than an elementary education. As more of the students arrived with a high school background, normal schools evolved into teachers' colleges, which often had an expanded postsecondary curriculum in addition to teacher training programs. In the early 1900s, these teachers' colleges developed into state colleges, and since the 1950s, many have attained university status (Urban 1990).
Simultaneous with the growth of the normal schools in the late 19th century was the development within universities of departments of education. The mission of these units differed from that of the normal schools, with a focus on the philosophy and psychology of education, the preparation of high school teachers rather than elementary-level teachers, and the training of school administrators.
Today, approximately 1,340 teacher education programs exist in the United States in both public and private institutions (Corrigan and Haberman 1990). These programs differ widely in size, institutional mission, and range of students served.
The primary path for teacher training in the United States is through a 4-year college degree, which usually consists of 2 years of general liberal arts courses followed by admission to an education program for coursework and field experiences in the schools. At some institutions—generally smaller, private colleges—students may be admitted to the education program even earlier in their undergraduate careers, thereby truncating their discipline-based coursework.
Teacher training also exists at the graduate level, where there are two major categories of program: 5-year integrated or extended programs and postbaccalaureate programs. In the integrated or extended programs, students usually pursue a major in a field other than education and are gradually introduced to the education profession through coursework and field experiences. The fifth (and sometimes sixth) year involves concentrated professional preparation. Models vary widely, with some 5-year programs offering both a bachelor's and a master's degree (M.Ed. or M.A.T.), and others offering a bachelor's degree and graduate credit hours. In postbaccalaureate programs, students who already have bachelor's degrees in subject areas receive a year or more of professional preparation for teaching. Graduates may receive an M.Ed. or M.A.T, or graduate credits but no degree, or may simply be eligible for teacher certification as a result of the training.
Another route to the classroom is through an alternative certification program, which provides on-the-job training to college graduates who are placed in teaching jobs and given the concurrent coursework and supervision necessary for certification. Classes are held in the evenings, on weekends, and during the summer. These programs often draw a more diverse population than the 4-year degree programs, attracting more members of minority groups and older individuals seeking a career change. Approximately 3.4 percent of all teachers have completed or are participating in such programs, which were provided in 43 states as of 1993 (American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education [AACTE] 1993). Intended as a means of expanding the pool of teachers, especially in areas of critical shortage, alternative certification programs are a cost-effective alternative for training but are also criticized as providing less professional preparation than standard programs (Feiman-Nemser 1990).
Reform efforts of the 1980s included recommendations for further professionalization of teaching and the elimination of the undergraduate education major. Reports of both the Holmes Group (Holmes Group 1986), consisting of deans of education and liberal arts and provosts of nearly 100 research universities, and the Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession (Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy 1986) recommended that teachers be trained solely at the graduate level, following an undergraduate degree with an academic major. Proponents of graduate education for teacher preparation assert that the status of teachers will be elevated by this approach, claiming that such programs will attract more qualified applicants, offer more rigorous instruction, and produce teachers with firmer grounding in their subject areas (Feiman-Nemser 1990).
Approximately 1,000 public and private universities confer graduate degrees in education in the United States (USED 1995). Although their focus is more often on educational research and the preparation of education faculty, teacher training programs at this level are increasing in number. However, a recent study to assess the impact of proposals for extending teacher preparation into graduate education concluded that "the 4-year program remains the primary route to teacher certification, while the extended program is intended for students who decide late in their educational experience to pursue a teaching career" (Wong and Oglethorpe 1993).
The most compelling reason for the persistence of an undergraduate education curriculum, in spite of strong recommendations for change, may be the increased cost of extending teacher education programs into the graduate level, for both the institutions and the students. Graduate programs, with their lower student-faculty ratios, are more costly than undergraduate programs for the institutions. For the students, the increased cost of additional study may produce a more restricted applicant pool. In particular, there is a concern that teaching will attract fewer minorities, who have been historically less likely to have the resources for graduate study (Wilkinson 1989).
The criteria for admission to a teacher education program are determined at each college or university and are sometimes mandated by the state, a practice that is increasing. Approximately 70 percent of teacher education programs now have a minimum grade-point requirement for admission, and 13 states have enacted minimum grade-point standards (Darling-Hammond 1990). The college grade-point average has been the most frequently used factor in admissions, but the minimum has been low enough to provide little restriction to entrance. Standards were raised in the 1980s, especially in doctorate-granting institutions, and by 1985, a grade-point average of between 2.5 and 2.9 (on a 4-point scale) was required for admission to nearly 60 percent of the secondary programs and 45 percent of the elementary programs in the nation (Clark and McNergney 1990). In 1980, only half that percentage of programs had such standards.
Those who choose to enter teacher education are predominately white, female, and from families where they are the first generation to attend college. According to a 1987 survey by the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE), the median age of students enrolled in undergraduate training programs is 24, and one-quarter of the students are married.
Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores of entering education students are generally lower than those of their counterparts. Education majors in the early 1980s ranked second to last in a list of 13 college majors ranked by SAT scores (Schlechty and Vance 1983). From 1973 to 1982, the gap had increased between mean SAT scores for education majors and the national SAT average. In subsequent years, however, the gap in scores between education majors and others has narrowed. While average verbal scores for all students dropped 4 points between 1982 and 1991, those of students choosing education rose 12 points, and mathematics scores for education students increased 22 points, compared to a 7-point increase for all students (National Science Foundation [NSF] 1993).
Standards for teacher education programs and the certification of teachers have largely been set by state education agencies, an anomaly among the professions. Education has no counterpart to a medical board or bar association, as in the fields of medicine and law, that defines the knowledge base, sets standards for practice, and enforces standards of professional conduct. In the absence of such an organization, standards for education programs are determined in a variety of ways. For example, admission and graduation requirements may be determined by either the state or the institutions themselves, depending on the particular state. In 57 percent of the states, these requirements are state mandated; in the remaining 43 percent, institutions of higher education are permitted to establish the requirements independently (AACTE 1993).
An additional application of standards for teacher education is through the accreditation of teacher education programs. More rigorous standards were developed in 1987 by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the only recognized teacher education accreditation body in the United States. NCATE engages experts at various levels in the process of developing standards and aims to draw both on research and best professional practices. Disciplinary associations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) are involved in the development of standards for their particular areas.
Accreditation of teacher education programs is a voluntary matter, however, with less prestigious regional universities more likely than major research universities to seek the external validation it provides. The accreditation process is a costly expenditure of institutional time and money, and its value has been questioned by those such as John Goodlad (1990), who concluded that the "NCATE review process is better at detecting serious deficiencies . . . than at stimulating processes of renewal" (p. 147).
Certification of individual teachers is the primary way in which states control teaching. Furthermore, the practices of licensing and certification generally drive the teacher education curriculum. Historically, local officials administered oral examinations to determine who could teach; this practice was gradually replaced by written tests. As teacher education programs proliferated, it became more common for states to certify these programs, whose graduates were then licensed. By the 1950s, this was the clearly established method of certification. It was not until the reform movement of the 1980s that competency testing emerged, based either on state-developed or national commercial tests, such as the National Teacher Examination (NTE).
Results of these tests are often used not only for individual certification but as a measure of the quality of teacher education programs and a basis for the continued certification of teacher education programs by the state (Roth and Pipho 1990). In 21 states, entry to teacher-training programs is determined by testing. Testing for certification occurs in 36 states, with 23 states requiring tests in specialty areas, generally the NTE specialty-area tests. Only 11 states have no testing requirements for admission to teacher education programs or for certification (NSF 1993).
One of the recommendations of the Carnegie Task Force (Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy 1986) was the creation of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), which was recently established to develop standards and performance assessments to supplement state certification. NBPTS is now establishing a national, voluntary system for professional certification to identify and recognize accomplished teachers. In determining performance standards by developmental age level and by subject matter in 30 fields, NBPTS aims to engage teachers in the process of assessment. National Board Certification is being designed not as a means of onetime certification but as part of an ongoing professional renewal process for teachers. As currently planned, the board will issue entry-level certificates and will also officially recognize higher levels of teacher competence.
The practice of granting lifelong certification at college graduation is clearly fading. Some states have begun to require first-year evaluation of classroom performance as a condition for full or continuing certification. In addition, 32 states now also require that certificates be renewed, usually on the basis of continued coursework, and in some cases on the basis of subject-matter testing or performance assessment (Darling-Hammond 1990). One of the central recommendations of the Holmes Group was a three-tier system of licensing: instructors (beginning teachers permitted to teach under supervision), professional teachers (those with master's degrees and eligibility for certification), and career professionals, who would engage in study beyond the master's degree and who would supervise instructors (Holmes Group 1986).
Although almost all states require that public school teachers pass certification tests in their specialty areas, wide variability exists in course requirements. The range for secondary school certification in mathematics is between 16 and 45 credits, and 15 states have no science or mathematics course requirements for elementary certification (NSF, 1993). Furthermore, in subject areas with a critical shortage of teachers, notably mathematics and science, emergency certification is possible. States typically have a process that permits the awarding of a substandard certificate issued for a limited period to individuals needed to fill particular roles. Often, these certificates are renewed as long as the individual takes specified college courses. The emergency certification process has been criticized as creating a double standard for entry to the profession. Anderson and Smith (1987) note that in 1981-82 more than half of the teachers newly hired to teach mathematics or science were teaching with emergency certificates. It has been noted, however, that state certification may be a poor national indicator of teacher quality, given the wide range of requirements at the state level (NSF 1993).
It is surprisingly common to find individuals teaching outside their main area of training. More than a third of teachers surveyed in 1987-88 reported that they neither majored nor minored in their major teaching field in their highest degree earned (U.S. Department of Education [USED] 1993a). For example, in Michigan in the early 1980s, half of those teaching chemistry had not majored in chemistry, and nearly two-thirds of those teaching physics did not have physics majors. The National Research Council claims that of the nation's 200,000 secondary school teachers of mathematics, more than half fail to meet professional standards, and fewer than 10 percent of elementary teachers meet contemporary standards (National Research Council 1989). A recent analysis of the qualifications of secondary school teachers who teach at least one class in a specific subject indicates that the percentage of teachers reporting both a college major or minor and certification is, at only 54 percent, lower in mathematics than in any other field, (McMillen, Bobbit, Lynch, and Kasprzyk 1994).
One of the strongest criticisms of teacher education seems to be the absence of a clearly articulated knowledge base by and for the profession. This lack of an agreed-upon foundation of knowledge contributes to the view that education, by comparison to other fields, is less than a profession. No single vision of what teachers need to know and must be able to do exists in the United States, although one goal of the NBPTS is to define this for the profession.
Feiman-Nemser (1990) outlines five conceptual orientations in teacher preparation, some of which may coexist in particular programs: academic, practical, technological, personal, and critical/social. These orientations shape the curricula in different ways at different institutions. One increasingly popular paradigm of teacher preparation is that of the "reflective professional" who can continually inquire and think reflectively about his or her own practice. From this perspective, teaching skills and knowledge are useful to the degree that one can make considered judgments about their contextual application.
According to the U.S. Department of Education (1993a), very few teachers today major in a field other than education at the undergraduate level. More than two-thirds of the nation's teachers majored in either general education (39 percent), subject areas in education (28 percent), or other education fields (1 percent). Only 2 percent majored in mathematics or science education. Secondary school teachers, however, were far less likely to major in general education than were elementary school teachers (12 percent versus 65 percent).
In most 4-year teacher education programs, students spend 2 years fulfilling general education requirements and 2 years within the teacher training program, with those preparing to teach in secondary schools usually continuing further disciplinary coursework in a major area of study throughout the 4 years. Elementary education students complete an average of 50 of their 125 hours of credit in the education unit, compared with secondary education students, who average only 26 hours of credit in education (AACTE 1987).
For elementary and secondary education students, coursework includes both methods courses, in which they study the techniques of practice, and foundations courses, such as the history of education, the sociology of education, the philosophy of education, and educational psychology (or possibly a course in adolescent development for secondary education students). Elementary education students are likely to take six or seven methods courses on the teaching of subjects such as reading, arithmetic, social studies, science, art, and music. Those preparing to become secondary school teachers may take a general methods course, as well as one specific to their subject area (Feiman-Nemser 1990). Thus, in this traditional 4-year curriculum, preparation in subject matter is gained in liberal arts units, in which no attention is paid to the special needs of those who are learning a subject in order to teach it; methods courses are intended to provide the linkage.
In a survey of recently graduated full-time teachers, nearly 8 of 10 general education teachers (usually elementary education teachers) reported that they had taken at least one college course in mathematics; 7 out of 10 had taken at least one course in physical science (USED 1993b). The average college credits earned, of those who took any courses in these fields at all, was 5.8 in mathematics and 4.1 in physical science. Of science and mathematics teachers (largely at the secondary level), nearly all took mathematics courses in college, but fewer than 6 of 10 took calculus (USED 1993b). The National Research Council (1989) advocates the development of elementary school specialists in mathematics and science, noting that "the United States is one of the few countries in the world that continues to pretend?despite substantial evidence to the contrary?that elementary school teachers are able to teach all subjects well" (p. 64).
In addition to coursework, students earning degrees in education are expected to gain experience in actual classrooms. Teacher education culminates in a semester-long practice teaching experience, often preceded by field experiences of shorter duration. A 1985 study of institutional members of the AACTE indicated that 99 percent of teacher education programs offered some variety of early field experience, ranging from 5 to 85 hours for different programs (AACTE 1987). Within the early field experiences, students are likely to engage in such tasks as observing, tutoring, planning instruction, designing materials, operating media, and performing noninstructional tasks. These experiences are generally linked to teacher education courses and provide increased instructional responsibilities as the student progresses through the program.
Student teaching is often viewed as the most fundamental element of teacher preparation in the United States. Student teaching experiences usually span one term and average about 12 weeks in length. A 1982 study of 902 teacher education programs indicated that of the time spent in student teaching, 14 percent was spent observing, 26 percent participating, and 60 percent teaching (Johnson and Yates 1982).
The lack of a theoretical base for field experiences has been criticized, and research on student teaching does not depict a favorable view of its effects. A number of studies indicate that the primary outcome of practice teaching "is to make prospective teachers more authoritarian, rigid, impersonal, bureaucratic, and custodial" (Hoy and Woolfolk 1989, p. 111).
A central problem in student teaching has been the engagement of cooperating teachers, the classroom teachers to whom student teachers are assigned, who are haphazardly selected and unlikely to receive supervisory training. This situation is complicated by the fact that these teachers' roles are not well differentiated from those of university supervisors responsible for overseeing the student's placement, who may be either regular faculty, teaching assistants, or faculty with adjunct appointments. Supervising student teachers is a low-status role for university personnel, and little training relevant to the task is generally provided. Hoy and Woolfolk (1989) conclude that:
the two roles are often ambiguous, confused, and in conflict. Consequently, more often than not, there is no discussion with student teachers of their classroom performance in light of contemporary theory and research; there is no conceptual perspective during the field experience; there is no supervision guiding attempts to improve instruction; there are no optional teaching strategies considered by the student and cooperating teachers; and there are few enforced standards of performance. (p. 112)
Recommendations from various sources for improvement in this area have included supervisory training, better site selection, and the separation of supervision and evaluation.
An emerging model for addressing a multiplicity of concerns in teacher education, including student teaching needs, is that of the professional development school. Similar in idea, but broader in purpose, to the laboratory schools proposed by John Dewey in 1896 and which were prominent until the 1970s, professional development schools are the educational parallel of teaching hospitals in the medical profession. Both the Holmes Group (1986) and the Carnegie Forum (1986) recommended versions of this approach, which offers a means for teachers and university faculty to collaborate on both teaching and research. These partnerships between school districts and colleges and universities have grown rapidly since the late 1980s.
Although laboratory schools were originally designed as environments where educators could test and verify pedagogical theory and introduce practitioners to the best educational practices, their research mission floundered over time. By 1964, when their number nationwide reached a peak of 212, they were primarily campus-based schools that served as convenient sites for student teaching experiences (Stallings and Kowalski 1990).
As research endeavors declined and enrollment in teacher education programs increased, thus increasing the need to place student teachers in public schools, laboratory schools appeared to fill little real need. By 1988, only 95 were still in existence. Although laboratory schools had been envisioned as an environment where theory and practice would be joined, in fact, in 1988, 61 percent of the laboratory schools reported little or no collaboration between college and laboratory school faculties (Stallings and Kowalski 1990). This finding and a review of research produced from laboratory school research led Stallings and Kowalski to conclude that laboratory schools and their instructors had contributed very little to the development of theory in teacher education.
The new move toward professional development schools is designed to again place the emphasis on collaboration between universities and public schools and on research endeavors to improve the profession. Following the recommendations of the Holmes Group (1986), in particular, a considerable number of such partnerships have been created in recent years. Schools for professional development assume the sharing of responsibilities by school educators and university faculty and are based on the premise that "all teachers are learners who are engaged in ongoing inquiry into their practice" (Grossman 1992, p. 182).
Continued
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[Teacher Preparation and Teachers' Lives in the United States - Part 2]