blissl@ecsvax.UUCP (Leonard B. Bliss) (01/13/88)
The discussion of teacher training for university instructors really hinges on the answer to a rather basic question. This is: Are there a set of skills which allow persons having these skills to be more effective instructors than persons not having those skills.? Until recently, the people who run elementary and secondary skills seemed to have believed that such a set of skills exists (they have required their teachers to become certified to teach by going through a program of higher education which included courses which proported to teach these skills) while institutions of higher education did not (certification consisted of the appropriate subject matter degree). These ideas are changing as evidenced by the recent discussion on this newsboard and the statement by the President of Boston University (John Silber) last month at a convention of Connecticut school board members and school administrators where he suggested a ten year moritorium on teacher certification which would allow schools to hire anyone they felt was qualified to teach in their classrooms. (Reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/3/88, p. B2) Precisely who is right depends on what the research suggests about the effects of teacher behaviors on student achievement and other outcomes and the literature is, at present, somewhat less than conclusive. One possible explanation for this dearth of useful literature is the fact that research in education done up until this point has been done on a shoestring. While physicists can demand multimillion dollar accelerators and other equipment to study something as simple as atomic structure, educationists have difficulty obtaining even tens of thousands of dollars to look at something as terribly complex as the way people behave. We're obviously dealing with an interesting set of values here and, for all their talk about our nation being at risk and the need for school reform, we have yet to see those in power put their money where their mouths are. Educational research is just not as sexy as Star Wars. Until we have some real data, all talk about training university faculty and the things that make for good teaching on the university level is just a lot of talk. It's good clean fun, of course, and it keeps us off the streets. But it won't really get us anywhere. Now, how do we go about demanding some of the resources we need to answer some of these questions? Len Bliss College of Education Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 (704)262-3103 blissl@ecsvax