Former U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, stated in his open letter to America's college presidents and education school deans that many teacher training programs in the country do not give the future teachers their needed training. This, in turn, has left them unprepared.
This conclusion was based on the report of National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), according to Duncan's open letter, which was published in Brookings. The same also pointed out a few reasons why this was happening.
It was noted that the assignments were vague and the grading results were extremely subjective. It was also mentioned that during training, teachers were asked to share their teaching philosophies on certain kinds of children, however, the specific strategies used were not presented.
Theories on education may serve as the foundation of knowledge, but this alone is not enough. In teaching, or in any other field for that matter, application of the assimilated learnings is important.
In view thereof, the Harvard University alum described what a good teaching program is. He said that the program must provide a challenge to the candidate teachers.
To Duncan, results can be easily evaluated if the specifics had been laid down. As such, he provided an illustration explaining that a candidate teacher may be asked to write and develop a lesson plan for kids with dyscalculia, based on the specified standards and curriculum.
Duncan, however, claimed that all throughout his career there were only a few who said they were ready to teach on the first day, TES had learned. Of course, there will always be a learning curve and that is understandable to a certain extent.
With regard to the teachers training programs, the former Secretary believes that they are not living up to their responsibility in training the teachers. Consequently, their future students may suffer because of it.
Despite these, there were some identified cases that manifested improvements in the program. One example given was the Hunter College-CUNY, wherein they reportedly require their teacher candidates to record themselves teaching on video.
This method will provide the professors information on the instruction used by the candidates and their work analysis. In this manner, they are creating an environment open for feedback, which is essential for development.
