Preparing Teachers Building Evidence for Sound Policy (2010) / Chapter Skim
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4 Preparing Teachers for All Fields
4 Preparing Teachers for All Fields
Pages 65-74
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From page 65... ...
That is, we hoped to find in the literature on teaching and learning mathematics, reading, and science some guidance as to what sorts of indicators would be most useful in assessing the quality of teacher preparation in each field. To do this, we broke the question into four parts:1 1.
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From page 66... ...
The science of learning has been expanded by new methods for testing hypotheses about mental functioning (including sophisticated brain imaging technology) , as well as strategies for integrating insights from anthropology, linguistics, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and other fields in order to develop richer models of the role of social and cultural contexts in learning.
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From page 67... ...
First, How People Learn describes the critical distinction between novices and experts in any context and how the development of expertise is gradual. With continued learning in any field -- chess, auto mechanics, mathematics, or English literature, for example -- individuals gradually accumulate "extensive knowledge that affects what they notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information" and this accumulation, in turn, "affects their ability to remember, reason, and solve problems" (National Research Council, 2000a, p.
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From page 68... ...
. There is a critical distinction between pedagogical content knowledge and the advanced content knowledge that one would develop by taking upper-level courses in a subject, and thus it is important to be clear that aspiring teachers cannot develop pedagogical content knowledge simply by taking additional courses in their field, even though a thorough grounding in university-level study for a particular field of learning is an important prerequisite.
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From page 69... ...
The authors also concluded that proxies for teacher knowledge, such as grade point averages or completion of a major or minor in a subject, are not precise enough to capture the potentially important differences in teachers' preparation. The authors thus stress that simply requiring that prospective teachers major in a subject or take a certain number of courses is not likely to result in material improvements in teacher quality, partly because they found little evidence of correlation between pedagogical content knowledge and, for example, the number of mathematics courses taken.
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From page 70... ...
They particularly emphasize that prospective teachers should develop the tools to continue their own learning in the discipline they will teach and that they should be prepared to learn from experience as they progress in their careers. The authors argue that a foundational understanding of the ways student learn the subject matter is a key tool for doing both.
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From page 71... ...
They argue that prospective elementary teachers have just as great a need for both strong liberal arts preparation and the opportunity to develop expertise and pedagogical content knowledge in a particular subject matter, as do teachers of older students. Acknowledging that prescriptions in this area are based on logical inference and experience rather than empirical research, the authors assert that although all prospective elementary teachers should be well prepared for both mathematics and reading instruction, if they also have the option of specializing in other areas, such as science, social studies, or art, there would be benefits for teachers, students, and schools.
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From page 72... ...
. One issue with studies that assess teacher effectiveness using student achievement scores is that the relationship they examine is what statisticians call distal -- that is, a significant amount of time lapses between undergraduate course-taking and the teaching that might be expected to influence students' test performance.
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From page 73... ...
These and other studies may help the field develop more explicit ideas of what it means to acquire strong subject-matter knowledge, how to measure that knowledge, and how to design teacher preparation experiences to promote acquisition of that knowledge.3 CONCLuSION On the basis of the limited available research related to content preparation, there are the beginnings of answers to our four questions regarding what students and teachers need to know and what learning opportunities they need. The research on thinking and learning has identified two elements as key to the capacity to teach in a way that fosters the kind of learning described above: s ubject-matter expertise that encompasses a deep foundation of • factual knowledge, understanding of how that knowledge fits in the conceptual framework of the field of study, and an internal organi zation of that knowledge that facilitates retrieval and application of his or her knowledge; and p edagogical content knowledge in a given subject-matter field, • that is, an understanding of how students' learning develops in that field, the kinds of misconceptions students may develop, and strategies for addressing students' evolving needs.
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