The Role of Preservice Teacher Education

I deas about teacher education are strongly influenced by a received wisdom about learning to teach. Most citizens in the United States who have thought much about teaching subscribe to the received wisdom, and most teachers subscribe to it as well. The most vocal and visible group not subscribing to the received wisdom is teacher educators. Here is why. According to received wisdom, teaching is fundamentally a self-evident practice. What to teach should be obvious if you know your subject, and what to do at any given moment should be obvious from the situation. Therefore learning to teach consists of two main parts: you learn the subject you intend to teach through college-level liberal arts courses, and you refine your technique and personal style through experience in your own classroom. Most versions of the received wisdom end here. Some versions add a small role for teacher education, acknowledging that there might be some benefit from studying child psychology or perhaps research on teaching. But the role of teacher education is still considered to be relatively modest. Even reform movements, which usually acknowledge that there might be more to teacher learning than meets the eye, often subscribe to the received wisdom and concentrate more attention on continuing professional development than on preservice teacher education. Consistent with received wisdom, reformers tend to believe that a great deal of teacher learning occurs in the context of practice, that teachers can continue to refine their techniques throughout their careers, and that this is where reform efforts should be concentrated.