To push more prospective teachers toward adequate content preparation, some states have limited the number of hours a candidate can take in education as part of the bachelor degree.
For example, in , the Colorado state legislature adopted the following conditions for teacher licensure, including at the elementary grades:. Other states, such as New York, have moved to a required five-year program, thereby ensuring that candidates have strong preparation in a major followed by a coherent teacher preparation program.
In addition, a recent report from the American Federation of Teachers recommended that education for prospective teachers be organized as a five-year process at a minimum. It is important to keep in mind that when one examines the evidence of what it takes to teach science or mathematics well, increasing the teaching of content alone, without regard to how and in what context that content is taught, is insufficient.
For example, the knowledge base in many fields of science, mathematics, and technology is growing and changing so rapidly that specific content that a student learns during preparation for teaching may be out-of-date or may need to be revised substantially by the time that person begins teaching. Teaching prospective teachers content knowledge without helping them also to understand how to keep abreast of developments in their subject area cannot lead to effective teaching of these disciplines.
Science and mathematics educators agree that strong content preparation is necessary but also look at the way that content is taught. Teachers of science will be the representatives of the science community in their classrooms, and they form much of their image of science through the science courses they take in college. If that image is to reflect the nature of science as presented in the standards, prospective and practicing teachers must take science courses in which they learn science through inquiry, having the same opportunities as their students will have to develop understanding.
The teacher understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline s he or she teaches and can create learning experiences that make these aspects of subject matter meaningful for students.
The teacher realizes that subject matter knowledge is not a fixed body of facts but is complex and ever evolving. The teacher appreciates multiple perspectives and conveys to learners how knowledge is developed from the vantage point of the knower. The teacher can evaluate teaching resources and curriculum materials for their comprehensiveness, accuracy, and usefulness for representing particular ideas and concepts.
The teacher engages students in generating knowledge and testing hypotheses according to the methods of inquiry and standards of evidence used in the discipline. The teacher develops and uses curricula that encourage students to see, question, and interpret ideas from diverse perspectives. The teacher can create interdisciplinary learning experiences that allow students to integrate knowledge, skills, and methods of inquiry from several subject areas. But what research exists to support this recent emphasis upon knowing, understanding, and being able to do science and mathematics?
Ball contended that, to teach mathematics effectively, a teacher must have knowledge of mathematics and a conceptual understanding of the principles underlying its topics, rules, and definitions.
Similarly, after an extensive review of science education, Coble and Koballa concluded that science content must be the centerpiece of the preparation of science teachers. What science or mathematics should a teacher know to be an effective teacher in these disciplines and subject areas? According to Shulman and Grossman , content knowledge consists of an understanding of key facts, concepts, principles, and the frameworks of a discipline, as well as the rules of evidence and proof that are part of that discipline.
In an extensive review of the literature on the education of science teachers, Anderson and Mitchener noted that most preparation in subject matter occurs outside of schools of education. Prospective secondary science and mathematics teachers devote a large portion of their studies to their particular disciplines, but little is known about what students really learn in their subject area courses. This lack of knowledge about the real value of courses is particularly interesting in light of the fact that students in teacher education spend the majority of their academic time taking courses in the arts and sciences departments.
Ball and Borko et al. Even today, college coursework in mathematics may not stress conceptual understanding of content. Rather, the emphasis is on performing mathematical manipulations in a lecture format. Science coursework often is similar. Arons pointed out that college science courses, particularly introductory survey courses, focus on the major achievements in an area of science. Then, when prospective teachers of science go on in science coursework—most often some of the same coursework engaged in by science majors—they are exposed to science as a body of facts, not, as Coble and Koballa found more recently , as a way of knowing the natural world through inquiry.
Until recently, many teacher educators have taken it for granted that teacher candidates would be knowledgeable about subject matter in the discipline s in which they elected to major.
As early as , Steinberg et al. Undergraduate science, mathematics, and engineering education has begun to change during the past decade in ways that are consistent with the reforms being espoused for grades K Rothman and Narum provide an overview of these changes in undergraduate education and predict the kinds of change that is likely over the next 10 years.
Brown and Borko concluded that teaching mathematics from a conceptual perspective is very unlikely to occur unless a teacher has deep conceptual understanding of the mathematics subject matter at hand. Few parallel studies exist for science education. Carlsen found that teachers with deeper conceptual understanding of science allowed their students to engage in discourse more often than teachers with weaker conceptual backgrounds. Carlsen also noted that teachers with greater understanding of content asked students a greater number of high-level questions, whereas teachers who did not know the material tended to dominate the classroom discussion.
He found that teachers with higher levels of content knowledge integrated pieces of that knowledge more often into their teaching. These teachers also recognized higher order principles in the discipline, and their instructional strategies reflected this depth of knowledge. Within their specialty, teachers with greater content knowledge wrote examination questions that focused less on recall and more on students being able to apply and transfer information.
However, when they were teaching outside of their specialty, these teachers followed textbook chapters more closely and were less likely to recognize or address student misconceptions. As was noted earlier in this report, some policymakers and teacher educators believe that prospective teachers should emphasize their preparation in subject matter at the expense of preparation in education. Do teachers who were majors in science or mathematics understand the subjects they teach better than teachers who were education majors?
Ball and Wilson conducted a study at Michigan State University that examined this question with prospective elementary teachers before and after they had completed their teacher preparation programs. They looked at two groups, one composed of prospective teachers who had been prepared in a traditional preparation program, and the other composed of prospective teachers who had been prepared in an alternative program.
Ball and Wilson found that both groups of teacher candidates lacked understanding of the underlying relationships of mathematics.
At the beginning of their teacher preparation programs, 60 percent of these prospective teachers could not generate a real-world example that would demonstrate to their students an application for the division of fractions. Moreover, they still could not generate an appropriate representation of division of fractions after they had graduated from their respective preparation programs.
Ma studied groups of elementary school teachers in China and the United States. This deeper understanding both of mathematics content and its application allowed Chinese teachers to promote mathematical learning and inquiry more effectively than their counterparts in the United States, especially when students raised novel ideas or claims that were outside the scope of the lesson being presented in class. Specifically, most of the Chinese teachers only taught mathematics, up to three or four classes per day.
Much of the rest of their day was unencumbered, allowing for reflection on their teaching and, perhaps more importantly, for shared study and conversation with fellow teachers about content and how to teach it. Their teaching assignments also permitted them to gain over time a better grasp of the entire elementary.
The ability to sequence appropriately the introduction of new concepts; 2. The ability to make careful choices about problem types to be given to students in terms of number, context, and difficulty; 3. Brief but significant opportunities for students to encounter conceptual obstacles; 4.
Solicitation from and discussion by students of multiple points of view about a problem; 5. Anticipation of more complex and related structures; 6. However, the world is currently facing a massive shortage of teachers. According to the UIS, if we are to fulfill our promise and achieve SDG 4, we need to recruit 69 million teachers by This gap is even more pronounced in low- and middle-income countries.
The greatest teacher shortages are in sub-Saharan Africa, where about 17 million more teachers are needed to achieve universal primary and secondary education by A number of factors contribute to the current high demand for teachers.
The rapid expansion of participation in primary and secondary education, population growth and age distribution can explain part of the existence for a teacher shortage. In some countries, addressing teacher shortages, while at the same time providing universal access to a growing number of children and youth, has meant increasing class sizes. The number of students per teacher in low-income countries was an average of 41 for primary education and 23 for secondary education in , in comparison to 14 and 13 for primary and secondary education, respectively, in high-income countries.
Often countries must resort to filling the teacher gap by hiring teachers on non-permanent contractual arrangements. Indeed, contract teachers, who tend to be younger and less experienced, receive lower salaries and have limited access to pre-service or in-service training.
Research also shows that the lack of teachers is resulting in an uneven distribution of teachers that is further exacerbating inequalities. For example, schools in rural and remote areas have more difficulties in attracting qualified teachers than their counterparts in urban areas. Teachers who are deployed to remote or rural areas tend to be less experienced on average and often do not speak or understand the local language of the community.
Teacher shortages in hard-to-staff areas are often most severe in specialized subjects, such as maths and science, and when less experienced teachers are deployed to high-needs areas, they often lack the pedagogical skills to work with students with special needs or learning disabilities.
Increasing the supply of teachers also poses a problem of a qualitative nature. A qualified teacher is one who receives an academic qualification, while a trained teacher is one who has completed the minimum organized teacher training requirements whether during pre-service training or in-service. More importantly, there is a lot of variability in the design of teacher training programs. Teacher training programs can range from 12 months to 4 years.
They can include a practical component e. Well qualified teachers are able to offer a variety of different techniques and methods for students to learn. This may include hands-on teaching, allowing the student to interact with what they are learning, or having them explain it back in their own words.
Well qualified teachers have been trained more than anyone else when it comes down to how people learn differently from person to person. They know how to teach the individual well qualified teachers and have been trained more than anyone else when it comes down to how people learn differently from person to person. They know how to teach the individual. They know how each child learns best, which is an important skill as a teacher. Well qualified teachers have the ability to connect with their students on a personal level.
Well qualified teachers are able to teach multiple subjects if need be. Well qualified teachers also help students develop self esteem and personal responsibility. They do so by instilling the importance of these two qualities throughout. CST Register Now. Link to twitter Link to facebook Link to youtube Link to instagram. The University of Kansas prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, national origin, age, ancestry, disability, status as a veteran, sexual orientation, marital status, parental status, retaliation, gender identity, gender expression and genetic information in the University's programs and activities.
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