Teacher education designed or framed

This chapter highlights conclusions from the previous chapters about factors impinging on the design of teacher education programs and then assembles a design brief informed by the research reviewed. It begins with economic and social factors impinging on the recruitment, preparation and retention of teachers. It then looks at overall national policy for teachers and teacher education. National indicators of teacher quality and the option of training teachers after a period in post are discussed. The focus then shifts to teacher education institutions and their sta!, next to the design process itself on which several perspectives are o!ered. Finally it suggests that given the complexities of teacher education policy, a long-term strategic planning approach might be more appropriate than a more narrowly conceived design brief. ( 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. The "ve preceding chapters have unveiled the many complex factors a!ecting teacher education that were heralded in the introduction. Chapters 1 and 2 focus mainly on factors external to Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs), Chapters 4 and 6 relate primarily to design decisions taken within TEIs, and Chapter 3 uses case studies to examine how program designs in di!erent countries arise from di!erent combinations of governmental and institutional decisions. Avalos (Chapter 1) reviews national policies for teacher education in developing countries within the context of more general policies for improving the quality of education in schools, with detailed examples from South America. Teacher education is being upgraded in level and increasingly incorporated within the Higher Education sector. But there is little sign of any concomitant improvement in the pay and working conditions of teachers, which remain su$ciently poor in most developing countries (and indeed many developed countries) to be non-competitive with other salaried occupations. TEIs have rarely changed their culture or developed their sta! E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Eraut). 0883-0355/00/$ see front matter ( 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 8 8 3 0 3 5 5 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 3 4 3 su$ciently to match the new expectations of a reforming school system; and are often seen as likely to constrain rather than facilitate changes in the school sector. The move of TEIs into higher education has usually been accompanied by a reduction in direct government control; but nevertheless indirect control is exercised through institutional accreditation, speci"ed curriculum frameworks, coordinating agencies or funding arrangements. Samuel and Stephens (Chapter 2) use case studies of two student teachers in South Africa to illustrate the complex cultural paths they have to travel to establish an identity within the heterogeneous milieu of contemporary urban life. Contemporary urban life is characterized in terms of multicultural settings undergoing rapid social change and an education system stretched by an ambitious program of reform. Not only do they have to learn in contexts very di!erent from those in which they grew up, but they have to "nd a personal and professional identity as teachers that develops and sustains commitment to their work in order to contribute to the growing expectations of their society. For teacher educators, there is a need to support and contribute to this transition process both during and after quali"cation if new teachers are to continue in teaching with any signi"cant level of professional motivation. The authors o!er a model depicting the forces impinging on student teachers' development of identity and role. The model contains inertial forces, stemming from biographical experiences of home and school, programmatic forces, emanating from the TEI program, school placements and the socializing in#uences of both college and practice schools, and contextual forces, derived from both the macro-environment of changing government policy and the micro-environment of the changing cultures within the schools where they teach. Stuart and Tatto (Chapter 4) use "ve case studies of teacher education programs, located in countries spanning the spectrum of gross domestic products (GDPs), to address the interaction of external and internal factors in their creation and implementation. Comparisons across these programs illustrate both the range of design decisions and the options opened or foreclosed for teacher educators by the decisions and in#uences which frame their daily work. They begin with frameworks for thinking about teacher education: "rst the historical and cultural in#uences and current political pressures on the teacher's role, then the prevailing assumptions about school knowledge and the knowledge needed for good teaching. Next they review structural parameters such as the length and location of the course, its timing within the teacher's career, the positioning of teaching experience in schools, and the characteristics of their students. Nested within these ideological and structural parameters, come more detailed decisions about the nature of the curriculum itself, its goals and content and the processes of teaching, learning and assessment. It is these latter issues that receive prime attention in Chapters 4 and 5. Thiessen (Chapter 4) reviews changing orientations to the practical component of teacher preparation in the North American context. The "rst orientation, Developing Impactful Behaviors, derived from the behaviorist approach to researching teaching which dominated the 1960s and 1970s. Distinct teaching skills were "rst studied in class, developed through simulated practice with observer and/or feedback, then "nally transferred to the classroom. However, neither the program designs nor the 558 M. Eraut / Int. J. Educ. Res. 33 (2000) 557}574