Innovator Vol. 38 No. 1 - Fall 07: RE-IMAGINING TEACHER EDUCATION
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Teacher education has been a serious endeavor at the University of Michigan for well over a century. Beginning as early as the 1850s, faculty members from a variety of disciplines across campus offered courses for prospective schoolteachers, and in 1879 the University established the nation’s first permanent chair in the “art and science of pedagogy.” By the time the School of Education was founded in 1921, the University was already home to thriving courses in teacher education. We have continued to offer well-regarded teacher education for decades, and we have prepared many teachers who have gone on to successful professional careers as classroom teachers. As dean, I have enjoyed meeting our graduates who were prepared here as long ago as the 1940s and learning of their experiences. Still, the time has come to take advantage of new knowledge and new possibilities to redesign fundamentally how we recruit and prepare teachers
at Michigan.
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?
Despite the American rhetoric of equal educational opportunity and public school excellence, problems of low and inequitable academic achievement persist stubbornly in this country. When schools do succeed, it is most often with white, middle class students, and even these students rarely produce work comparable to that of their peers in many other industrialized countries. Policy-makers and citizens have proposed solutions to these problems that range from changes in curriculum and school organization to new standardized tests and increased accountability for both students and teachers. Although these changes are likely to be important elements of the solution to the problems we face, without accompanying changes in the instruction that teachers provide and in teachers’ capacity to connect effectively with their students, these reforms will falter. The evidence is clear that teachers are key to the quality of instruction and of students’ learning.
Whether leading a group of tenth graders in an analysis of a poem, teaching fifth graders how plants use light to make their food, or helping a first grader learn a set of useful sight words, teaching is complex interactional work. What does it take to explain the long division procedure clearly and show what is really going on at each step? Watching an accomplished teacher lead a group discussion or inspire a roomful of fourteen-year-olds or design just the right assignment for a group of learners is fascinating. It is important to notice how much more this takes than simply being smart or liking kids.
Although some teachers acquire this knowledge and skill from experience, many do not. Yet the practice of teaching can be taught. How to build the new kinds of professional training that can prepare people committed to and capable of ensuring all students’ learning is our goal in the Teacher Education Initiative (TEI), launched two years ago. In this issue of Innovator, we begin to tell the story of this major whole-school initiative, and invite you to share in our passion for the challenging, complex work of re-imagination.
