PowerPoint Presentation
Cheryl Craig, Ph.D.Professor
Endowed Chair of Urban EducationAERA Fellow
Texas A & M University
Teacher Education Restructuring: Learning Environments And
Innovative
Pedagogies
When the winds of change blow… some build walls, others build
windmills…
Teachers and the Teaching
Profession
The Winds of Changes
Teachers:Fountainheads of Curriculum
Decisions
Teachers
The potential to most significantly impact youth
Minded individuals (Dewey, 1938)
“Agents of education” (Schwab, 1954/1978)
Schools And Teachers Are Charged With Conflicting Aims
Students must be prepared for the present and future while
honoring the past
Teachers must teach students a common body of knowledge
Teachers and students must support the educational directives of
governments
Teachers’ Role?
“Impossible Ones” (Schwab)
Teacher Educators’
Roles?
“ImpossibleOnes”
(Ben-Peretz)
Teacher Educators’ Impossible Roles
Demands on teacher education are high; support for teacher
educators is low
“The deliverables” policymakers expect are those that
prospective teachers would want and which teacher educators would
desire
Teacher Candidates
Bring their personal histories, propensities, desires, and
challenges into educational situations
Take away understandings unique to their own persons
Teacher Education Restructuring
Learning Environments and Innovative Pedagogies
Looking Backward: U.S. Teacher Education To Date
Teacher Education Has Mirrored The Development Of The
Country
A British colony
Independence as a nation
Rise as an international superpower
Three Certainties About Teacher Education
It is necessary
It is driven by supply-and-demand
It is subject to the issues of the day
Teacher Preparation In The U.S.
Normal Schools
Non-degree Granting Colleges
Colleges of Education
Teaching: “A minor profession”(Schön)
“The Crisis Of Professions” (Schön)
A Nation at Risk (ANAR)
Respect accorded professionals plummeted
No Child Left Behind Act (2002)
Teacher Education
Public/private universities and colleges
Regional educational offices
School districts
Private consultants
Internet companies
U.S. Educational Difficulties
The quality of education
Student dropout
Underlying Education Gap
Opportunities
Resources
Poverty
Stronger Teacher Education
Teacher certification
Teacher education reforms
Looking Forward
Teacher Education Restructuring
Technical Rationalism (Schön)
Not being able to withstand the complexities of reality
Not being able to adjust to local conditions
Technical rationalism
Expected output
Planning
PlanningPlanning
Everything that can be planned can be realized
Mismatch
Swampy lowlands
AcademiaPractice
High grounds
(Schön, 1983)
As Teacher Education Became More Formalized And
Standardized…
Theoretical gains
Practical losses
Minor Profession
Teaching
Law
MedicineMajor Profession
(Schön, 1983)
Two Different Places That Teachers Deal With…
In-classroom places
Out-of-classroom places
(Craig, 1995)
The Teaching Profession has been Tightly Controlled &
Subject to the Relentless External Manipulation Of
Policymakers….
“The Practical”
The Restructuring
Of Teacher Education
“The Practical”
A complex discipline
Group deliberations
Educational situations
Teacher
Learner
Subject Matter
Milieu
The Practical
Organic forms of knowing and intuitive kinds of action
“Ready theory for practical use”
Educational Policy
“A Grand Story” Of Loosely Connected Ideas
“Lack Explanatory Power”
• Broader perspective
• Vantage point of the system
Seeing Small
• Close up view
• Intricacy
• Intentionality
• Concreteness of everyday life
Seeing Big
Seeing Small; Seeing Big
Policy
“A bad eclectic” (Schwab, 1983)
Impossible teacher/teacher educator roles
Pieces of policy puzzles do not fit together
Singapore And Finland
“Thinking schools, learning nation”
“Trust through professionalism”
Students in both countries lead the way
Four Pillars Of Education (UNESCO Report)
Learning to know
Learning to do
Learning to live together
Learning to be
Life Cycle Learning
Equitable And Excellent Futures
For Youth
‘Annals and chronicles’
‘Curriculum of life’
‘Rivers of life’
Generative Teacher Development Experiences
Video clips
Narrative portraits of school contexts
A focus on teaching moments
Teachers’ cultural narratives
Ongoing analysis of techniques and strategies
Knowing, Doing, Community, And Identity
Thinking and action
Narrative authority
Knowledge communities
Identity
• The possibility that current, adapted, and new
approaches—through the rigorous enactment of ‘the practical’ in
localsettings—will more purposely be built on policies andtheories
that are coherent and defensible, not disjointed anddestined for
failures as so often is the case.
Any instructionally sound practice can be corrupted
Teaching without words occurs
No practice can possibly be a “best practice”
Technician Transmitter
Consumer
Receiver
Teacher-as-Curriculum-Implementer
Policy makers mandate changes; Teachers do what they are
told.
Teacher As A Curriculum Maker
Teachers as active agents
Bridges teacher education and ‘the practical’
‘The Practical’ Paradigm Shift
Cooperating teachers
Teacher educators
Teacher candidates
Shifting polarized positions: a narrative approach to teacher
education
(Li, Conle & Elbaz-Luwisch, 2010)
‘The Practical’: Two Fundamentally Different Teaching Places
Formal: Teachers
Informal: Parents and family members
Practically Oriented Pedagogies
…formal teacher education… [ is], of course, important. But we
do think that, on the whole, there is more for most teachers to
learn by coming, self-consciously, to grips with their own teacher
knowledge than with what may be learned [about] knowledge or skills
…from others]… (Connelly & Clandinin)
Practically Oriented Pedagogies
…This work should be done in the context of an understanding of
the significance of informal teacher education and, therefore, with
a humble spirit and with modest expectations(Connelly &
Clandinin)
First entailment‘The Practical’…
Is not an elixir
Dependent on the willingness of human beings
Provides opportunities for both negative and corrective
responses
Second Entailment‘The Practical’…
A time-consuming endeavor
Not all educational problems are of sufficient magnitude to
warrant full-dress deliberation
The most comprehensive of deliberations need to be reserved for
the most vexing of issues
Third Entailment
Politically charged issues may require prior
walk-a-mile-in-my-shoes
The pedagogically use of vicarious human experience
The appropriate channeling of Eros (emotion)
Fourth Entailment
It is entirely possible certain perennial problems in the
education of children may result in mandatory changes in the
preparation of all preservice teachers
Fifth Entailment Those in the teaching and teacher education
field will need to…
Systematically disclose the contents of deliberations
Provide field-based evidence for the actions individually and
collectively taken
Sixth Entailment The Practical
Questions driving the deliberative process will hopefully be
different ones
The possibility of queries being more closely related to student
learning is high
Hegemonies underlying the questions asked will be laid bare at
the inquiry table
CHALLENGE Technocratic Thinking, WHICH…
Fails to account for the complexities of educational
situations
Gives rise to decisions based on dubitable evidence
Affects adults and children in deleterious ways
Policy Prescriptions
Educational Theorists
The Winds Of Change
The Power Of ‘The Practical’
• Editing the ISATT 30th Anniversary Yearbook, From Teacher
Thinking to Teachers and Teaching: The Evolution of a Research
Community (2011-2013)
• Editing the three-volume set of International Teacher
Education: Promising Pedagogies (2013-2015)
• Authoring The structure of teacher education chapter in the
Handbook of International Teacher Education(2014-2015)
• Delivering keynote addresses around the world since 2007
(Ongoing)
