A Critical Analysis of Philosophies of Education and INTASC Standards in Teacher Preparation

The establishment of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in 1987 and the Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium (IN-TASC) in 1992 called for the development of performance-based assessment for teacher certification. This paralleled the development of curriculum standards and standardized achievement testing in K-12 educational settings. It has been our experience as teacher educators that these developments have resulted in many teachers adopting the perspective that standards control what and how they teach. Some teachers and pre-service teachers in our classes have expressed that these educational policies force teachers to adopt an essentialist perspective, which results in a renewed emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic (Bagley, 1934, 1938). As teacher educators, we are concerned because these practices exclude the possibility of a more constructivist perspective offered by progressivism— one that is grounded in John Dewey's (1916) democratic theories, and in Paulo Freire's (2003) critical literacy theory, which we believe promote a more inclusive educational experience. Instead, pre-service teachers resist our practices to introduce them to critical literacy theory and request more practical teaching strategies that prepare children from success on standardized tests. Moss's (2007, in press) work indicates one's educational philosophy, and not external standards, determines how a teacher teaches. In an attempt to verify this notion, we have provided pre-service teachers with a forum to critically examine