Centre stage paper – Days 1 & 2: The challenge

Is it time for transformation in teacher education?

 

 

We seem to have settled on a definition of transformation in the context of schools. It is significant, systematic and sustained change that secures success for all students in all settings. Teachers, students and thought leaders in iNet are playing a leading role as information about how change on the scale of transformation is moved around the globe at unprecedented speed. Such change (‘success for all students in all settings’) has never been achieved in the history of education, although it has been achieved in some schools. The challenge is to achieve it in all?

Transformation in teacher education

Transformation in teacher education is significant and systematic change that ensures that all who work in or for schools are prepared for, and sustained in, roles that place them at the forefront of professional knowledge and skill, helping to ensure that success is secured for all students in all settings.

The case for transformation

Some reviews of teacher education have been devastatingly critical. One such review in the United States concluded that ‘the nation’s teacher education programs are inadequately preparing their graduates to meet the realities of today’s standards-based, accountability-driven classrooms in which the primary measure of success is student achievement’. Conducted by Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College, Columbia University, who had earlier completed a study that offered a similar critique of leadership programs, the report considered practice in 1,206 university-based education schools. His general findings included inadequate preparation, a curriculum in disarray, disconnected faculty, low admission standards, insufficient quality controls and disparities in institutional quality. He concluded that ‘Teacher education is the Dodge City of the education world. Like the fabled Wild West town, it is unruly and chaotic. Anything goes and chaos is increasing as traditional programs vie with non-traditional programs, undergraduate programs compete with graduate programs, increased regulation is juxtaposed against deregulation, universities struggle with new education providers, and teachers are alternatively educated for a profession or a craft’. He warns that such programs must demonstrate their relevance and impact on student achievement in schools ‘or face the very real danger that they will disappear’ (these excerpts from the Executive Summary of Levine, 2006).

What a dismal picture! While Levine identifies exemplary programs and offers a template for the design thereof, each described below, nothing could be further from the acclaim that accrues to programs in countries like Finland, where every teacher has a master’s degree, only 10-12 per cent of applicants are admitted, and teacher education is one of the top three preferences for students entering universities.

Context counts!

At this point it is important to state a powerful dictum that applies to critiques of teacher education and proposals for its reform. ‘Context counts!’ Levine’s critique of the United States is based on an assumption that ‘standards-based, accountability-driven classrooms in which the primary measure of success is student achievement’ are required, or at least are the reality.

Overall, the United States is a relatively low performer in the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA); standards-based, accountability-driven classrooms are perceived by many as oppressive (Hargreaves and Fink, 2006); and admission standards in teacher education are generally low, largely reflecting the poor professional status of teachers and teaching. Compare this with Finland, which is a top performer in PISA, where teaching is an esteemed profession, and teachers are largely free of oppressive accountabilities. In Finland there are no league tables that permit school-by-school comparisons of student achievement. Teachers have a high degree of professional autonomy to determine how they go about their work. There is a high level of community trust that schools and their teachers will deliver the best outcomes, an expectation that is borne out in PISA that found that the disparities between high- and low-performing schools in Finland were among the smallest in participating countries.

Those defending the status quo in other countries often contend that the lessons to be learned from Finland are limited. There are two strands in the argument. One is that it is not enough to be high achievers in the basics, which are assessed in PISA. What about creativity and critical thinking? Indeed, but Finland just happens to be one of the world’s most creative nations as reflected in its standing on three key indicators of creativity: talent, technology and tolerance (Florida, 2005). The other is that Finland has a relatively homogeneous population and its schools don’t have to address the range of ethnic backgrounds that countries like the United States must deal with. Indeed, but Finland just happens to offer a more personalised approach to dealing with the range of learning needs than does the United States. At 20 per cent, Finland has the highest proportion of students who receive additional educational assistance of 16 countries examined in an OECD study, compared to the UK (14.4 per cent) or the United States (6.6 per cent) (Harris, 2006). Teachers in Finland have deep preparation in a discipline area but also in pedagogy that enables them to deal skilfully with the range of individual differences.

A template for quality

Before looking at developments in other countries it is illuminating to return to Levine’s study of teacher education in the United States. He describes four exemplary programs within existing schools or faculties of education including the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, also recognised by the Carnegie Corporation as having one of the top programs in the country, and the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP) at Stanford University, ranked third in the well-regarded rankings in the US News and World Report. Levine offers the following template for judging quality in teacher education:

1. Purpose: The program’s purpose is explicit, focusing on the education of teachers; the goals reflect the needs of today’s teachers, schools, and children; and the definition of success is tied to student learning in the classrooms of education school graduates.
2. Curricular coherence: The curriculum mirrors program purposes and goals. It is rigorous, coherent, and organised to teach the skills and knowledge needed by teachers at specific types of schools and at the various stages of their careers.
3. Curricular balance: The curriculum integrates the theory and practice of teaching, balancing study in university classrooms with work in schools beside successful practitioners.
4. Faculty composition: The faculty included academics and practitioners, ideally combined in the same individuals, who are experts in teaching, up to date in their field, intellectually productive, and have their feet firmly planted in both the academy and the schools. Taken as a whole, faculty members and their fields of expertise are aligned with the curriculum and student enrolment.
5. Admissions: Admissions criteria are designed to recruit students with the capacity and motivation to become successful teachers.
6. Graduate and degree standards: Graduation standards are high, students are adequately prepared for the classroom, and the degrees awarded are appropriate to the profession.
7. Research: Research carried out in the program is of high quality, driven by practice, and useful to practitioners and / or policy makers.
8. Finances: Resources are adequate to support the program.
9. Assessment: The program engages in continuing self-assessment and improvement of its performance.

The importance of alignment

The concept of alignment is a feature of the Levine template. A limitation of the template is that it has a narrow view of alignment. Levine refers to internal consistency (alignment) within the faculty and external alignment (with schools). Alignment in a broader sense is required and this accounts for the strength of programs in Finland. It was noted earlier that there is a high level of trust in schools by the wider community. While teachers are well-paid, they are by no means the best paid in the OECD on a purchasing price parity basis. Social capital in support of schools and teachers is extraordinarily high in Finland. In our book Raising the Stakes: From Improvement to Transformation in the Reform of Schools (Caldwell and Spinks, 2007) we describe how schools that have been transformed have been able to align four forms of capital: intellectual, social, spiritual and financial.

Intellectual capital refers to the level of knowledge and skill of those who work in or for the school, all of whom should be at the forefront of knowledge and skill.

Social capital refers to the strength of formal and informal partnerships and networks involving the school, parents, community, business and industry, indeed, all individuals, agencies, organisations and institutions, including the church, that have the potential to support and, where appropriate, be supported by the school.

Spiritual capital refers to the strength of moral purpose and the degree of coherence among values, beliefs and attitudes about life and learning. For many schools, spiritual capital has a foundation in religion. In other schools, spiritual capital may refer to ethics and values shared by members of the school and its community.

Financial capital refers to the monetary resources available to support the school as it seeks to achieve transformation, securing success for all students. It is acknowledged that some schools are in more challenging circumstances than others, so the notion of needs-based funding is embraced.

Jessica Harris has systematically compared Australia and Finland in respect to their relative strengths in these four kinds of capital and concludes that they are stronger and better aligned in Finland (Harris, 2006). The same applies to teacher education. Social capital in support of schools is especially high and this translates into support for teacher education, the esteem of faculties of education and the prestige of the profession.

Subject to this limitation, Levine’s template is recommended for most national settings, but remember the dictum: ‘Context counts!’ For example, personalising learning has a particular priority in England and some other countries, so teachers’ professional knowledge and skill must be aligned with what is required if this intention is to be realised. The pedagogy is dramatically different if the student is the most important unit of organisation (‘new enterprise logic’) rather than when the classroom was the most important unit (‘old enterprise logic’). In many countries, students are utilising state-of-the-art personalised information and communications technologies, and in most instances, they find that traditional forms of learning in schools are utterly boring. Schools must incorporate these technologies. There are powerful implications for teacher education.

New mindsets

These requirements call for a new mindset for many teacher educators. Those nearing retirement will have entered the field of education or teacher education in the 1970s when government, state or public schools were still operating in a 20th century mode: schools built, owned, operated and funded exclusively by government, and agencies of government were the sole providers of services to schools. The transformed 21st century school is now adept at operating in networks in public and private sectors, educational and non-educational, to share knowledge, solve problems, pool resources and provide support, not just locally but nationally and internationally. A new mindset is also required in respect to the way in which students will work in the future. In the 20th century, most went to work in businesses and industries that succeeded in a local economy. This context for employment is fading fast in many countries and new mindsets are required for teachers and teacher educators. More and more work will be undertaken in non-unionised small businesses where creativity, agility, flexibility, technology and continuous on-the-job learning are essential. The associated mindsets are evident, for example, in many of the specialist secondary schools in England, where more than 80 per cent of schools have adopted a specialism with the support of one or more partners in the new economy.

Conclusion

In 2004 I concluded two terms as dean of education at one of world’s leading research universities. While continuing to teach in graduate programs, I located my new office suite in a modern building, along with hundreds of small businesses in scores of different fields. I observe daily how the new workforce operates and what I experience is a far cry from how we work in a university or from the experience of those who work in schools. I have the opportunity each year to visit schools in several countries and have been struck at how run down and obsolete are the facilities suffered by teachers who are expected to offer a new and challenging curriculum with dramatically different pedagogy. The same kind of obsolete facility may be found in most schools of education. A new kind of alignment is required.

Is it time for transformation in teacher education? In some countries, the answer is in the negative for there are mechanisms in place to ensure alignment and agility of the kind illustrated in this paper. In other countries, and I count my own in this category, the answer is ‘yes’ and a steady stream of reports (an example is that of the Standing Committee on Education and Vocational Training, 2007) that call for more reports and more money to implement incremental change on a traditional model may accelerate a worst-case scenario (OECD, 2001) that sees the meltdown of the profession.

References

Caldwell, BJ and Spinks, JM (2007). Raising the stakes: from improvement to transformation in the reform of schools. London: Routledge.
Florida, R (2005). The flight of the creative class. New York: HarperBusiness.
Harris, J (2006). Alignment in Finland. Occasion Paper No. 1. Melbourne: Educational Transformations.
Hargreaves, A and Fink, D (2006). Sustainable leadership. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Levine, A (2006). Educating school teachers. Washington DC: The Education Schools Project.
OECD (2001). What schools for the future? Paris: OECD.
Standing Committee on Education and Vocational Training (2007). Top of the Class. Report on the Inquiry into Teacher Education. Luke Hartsuyker MP (Chair). Canberra: The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Acknowledgement

The author is indebted to Associate Professor Christine Ure, Associate Dean Teacher Education, University of Melbourne, for her insights on the importance of context in forming a view on quality in teacher education.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian J. Caldwell is Managing Director of Educational Transformations and Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, where he served as Dean of Education from 1998 to 2004. He is Associate Director (Global) of International Networking for Educational Transformation of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.

 

Go to top of page     Go to online discussion