Abstract: time to devote our time, resources, and expertise to teacher preparation models that envision a new and not a traditional world, the authors maintain. School-based teacher education is one such model. Inertia has frozen traditional teacher education into forms that we are no longer able to reshape. No effort, however heroic, can transform it, because the promise of reform will always be encased within a delivery system that systematically frustrates the effort. structures, organizations, and reward systems required to sustain universities, their faculties, and their students preclude any restructuring of schools of education in ways that would enable them to prepare excellent teachers. As John Goodlad has noted, The necessary conditions for vigorous, coherent, self-renewing programs of teacher preparation are not in place.(1) A radical and effective reform is urgently needed, and we believe that one promising path to that reform can be found in school-based teacher education. SCHOOL-BASED TEACHER EDUCATION In school-based teacher education, the primary faculty expertise, the responsibility for curriculum development, and the authority for budgets are located in the school districts. enterprise is conducted by the people who should be in charge of the education of novice professionals - the master teachers of a district or consortia of districts. Research and evaluation are both internal and external. As opposed to the way the lab schools of yesteryear were run, the curriculum and environment of school-based teacher education are developed collaboratively by master teachers, who also serve as the primary deliverers of instruction. Consultation from cooperating universities and regional educational service entities is crucial, of course, but the center of teacher education remains in the school district. School-based teacher education is an entirely new model for the education of educators, and it responds to the national critique of traditional teacher education that began in the mid-1980s. As Kenneth Zeichner observes, It's not just a matter of changing the syllabus of the clinical course, but the whole context of teacher education.(2) How does school-based teacher education work? Typically, an individual interested in becoming certified through a school-based teacher education program applies in the late winter or early spring, is screened and interviewed, and, on submission of adequate transcripts, is admitted to the program. During July and early August, the candidate takes part in guided observations in the schools of the district in which he or she wishes to work. In mid-to late summer, the candidate quits his or her full-time job and enters a year-long paid internship - a period of orientation and intensive practical study of pedagogy. Such topics as classroom organization, behavior management, individualized education programs, and models of teaching are taught during the guided observation time in the summer. Applicants learn how to write lesson plans from the teachers they are observing and from master teachers with experience both in the theory of curriculum planning and in the practical design of lesson plans. At the same time, seminars in motivation, positive discipline, stress management, violence prevention, and communication skills provide intensive instruction. In a school district with a full-scale teacher education program, the candidate is officially employed by mid-August as the teacher of record in a classroom. During the course of the yearlong internship, the novice teacher is carefully nurtured, mentored, and supervised by at least four independent but coordinated experts: the supervisor from the district teacher education program, the district curriculum specialist, the principal, and the assistant principal. In cases in which a university is directly involved, a university supervisor also participates. Extensive hours of training - determined through a collaborative process that brings together district, university, and other specialists - are provided, along with appropriate university courses that have been rewritten by area universities specifically for interns. …
Publication Year: 1994
Publication Date: 1994-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 37
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