The Legacy of Teacher Education, 1980-2000.

Overview & Synopsis

In a broad overview of teacher education, the challenges that faced four generations of teacher educators are considered as background to the issues now confronting the fifth generation. The major contribution of the first generation was to set out the fields which were to comprise the content of professional study--pedagogy, curriculum, educational psychology, and the history and philosophy of education. The legacy of the second generation of teacher educators was establishing teacher education in the college and university setting and making the study of education an organized academic enterprise. The third generation of teacher educators used its university base to broaden the range of specialities and sub-specialties which now characterize professional education. The fourth generation was challenged in terms of social relevance and responded with systems for making teacher education more accountable to the graduates, the profession, the public, and the government. The challenges now facing teacher educators lie in meeting the need to consolidate and reshape previous legacies rather than in staking out new frontiers. The heavy emphasis upon educational psychology which has dominated not only teacher education but also educational research is questionable, and the need now is to insure that prospective teachers have equal opportunities to study the ways of learning and teaching derived from other academic disciplines. In exploring current and future trends in teacher education, other issues are brought into consideration: the trend toward over-specialization, the changing relationship between the school of education and the public school, the status of educational research, and the role and responsibilities of teachers and teacher educators in society. The trend to redefine education as a personal, rather than as a common good, is seen as narrowing goals and limiting the way in which teachers view their work. If the fifth generation of teacher educators can generate a national reconsideration of education so that it is once again accepted as a common good, their legacy will be a great contribution. (JD)