From “learning to learn” to “training to teach”:

Changing the culture of teacher preparation

Wing Institute SymposiumApril 2014

The problem

Source: Gordon, R., Kane, T.J., and Staiger, D.O., “Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job” (Hamilton Project Discussion Paper). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution (April 2006).

“Teaching is today where medicine was in 1910, when Abraham Flexner conducted the famous study of medical education that led to its overhaul.”

Linda Darling-Hammond, The Flat World and Education (2010)

Inspiration

4

Results

• 1/3 of all medical schools closed or consolidated by 1920

• Higher admissions standards• Higher academic and clinical standards

Foundation laid for most effective medical profession in the world

Flexner II:NCTQ’s Teacher Prep Review

1,130 institutions

2,420 programs

Rankings updated annually in U.S. News & World Report

Examining four key areas:• Selectivity • Preparation in subject matter• Preparation in effective teaching practices under

expert guidance• Program outcomes and performance management

6

Flexner and Teacher Prep Review in context

Flexner• Public health as huge

area of concern• Small “proprietary”

med schools run by individual physicians

• Elite support – particularly in medical profession

• Culture of scientific progress

Teacher Prep Review• Public education as

huge area of conern• Ed schools as “cash

cows” of powerful institutions

• Support from foundations, K12 leaders and teachers

• Culture of “developmentalism”

7

“An industry of mediocrity”

8

If teacher prep programs aren’t training teachers,

what do they think they are doing?

9

Regnant worldview of ed schools:Learning as development

E.D. Hirsch: The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them

From 1920s on, ed schools increasingly define “learning” as a natural unfolding of individual’s most important mental characteristics:• A capacity to adapt to novelty rather than an activity to

build knowledge and domain-specific skills• A capacity that can be refined through generic mental

strategies – “learning to learn”• A capacity that can be diminished by diverting the

individual from what is of innate or practical interest• A capacity whose main program is to determine an

individual’s place in the social world (“identity formation”)

• A capacity varying in kind and modality for individuals and groups

American culture: The seedbed of developmentalism

• Cult of individual• Anti-elitism• Celebration of differences• Practical over academic

ChildrenClassrooms

SchoolsTeachersDistrictsCurriculaStandards

Fidelity to best practice

All of these educational conditions and more really do vary.

So it is not surprising that the field has embraced an approach that makes a virtue out of what appears to be

an unavoidable necessity.

Variability is the friend of developmentalism

If ed school professors believe that education of students is really “developmental” . . .

. . .then wouldn’t they conceptualize and organize the training of teachers along the same lines?

Teacher Prep Review as means of testing this hypothesis• Do programs embrace domain-specific,

effective educational techniques?• Are the techniques programs do train

teachers to use generic – “learning to learn”?• Do programs focus on developing teachers’

“philosophies,” “styles” and “identities?”

Finding the teacher withinYou must break down all that you will teach into

manageable lessons. While so much of this is something you learn on the job, a great measure of it must be inside you, or you must be able to find it in a resource. 

This means that if you do not know the content of a grade level, or if you do not know how to prepare a lesson plan, or if you do not know how to do whatever is expected of you, it is your responsibility to find out how to do these things. Your university preparation is not intended to address every conceivable aspect of teaching.

 Do not be surprised if your Cooperating Teacher is

helpful but suggests you find out the “how to” on your own. Your Cooperating Teacher knows the value of owning your way into your teaching style. 

Indifference to findings of National Reading Panel

15

296

72 65 78 935

Elementary programs (N=609)

Tellingly, the one component taught more than any other (in 58% of programs) is comprehension – generic, “meta-cognitive” strategies students use to learn how to understand texts. This is also the component with the weakest support in research.

“Develop your own philosophy to teach reading.”

“Articulate a personal theoretical position and philosophy of reading/literacy that will provide a foundation for literacy instruction in your classroom.”—syllabus excerpt

Classroom management training: Seemingly ubiquitous

17

3%Programs (N=122)

Address classroom managementDo not address classroom management

18

The “Big Five”: Fundamental tenets of classroom management training

Three recent authoritative literature reviews, examining 150 studies over six decades, converge on five strategies for classroom management:• Rules: Explicitly teach positive expectations for behavior• Routines: Teach and practice procedures for common

activities• Praise: Reinforce good behavior through public

recognition• Consequences: Impose consequences for breaking rules

rapidly and fairly• Engagement: Make instruction interesting and

encourage student participation

Classroom management training: Gaps in the fundamentals

19

30%

9%

29%

11%

21%

Programs (N=105)

0 or 1 strategy2 strategies3 strategies4 strategies5 strategies

Which of the “Big Five” are being covered?

21

If there was a commitment to training in classroom

management . . .• Candidates should learn the why and how of “Big Five”• Lectures and textbook

• Candidates should be given “controlled” assignments• Paper-and-pencil exercises based on cases, video

observations• Practica with small groups of students

• Candidates should be given guidance on implementation in “real” classroom situations• Student teaching observations should ensure

consistent feedback

What classroom management “training” actually looks like

• No relationship between coursework and feedback given to student teachers (N=93)• Indeed, programs that devote lectures to

application of consequences are less likely to provide feedback to candidates on this strategy in student teaching.

• Intensive cross-program analyses of nine programs reveals similar picture:• Lectures sometimes cover “strategies” but no

assignments given to practice them• Candidates held accountable for using

strategies in student teaching they never learned in prior coursework

Why not insist on mastery of effective classroom management strategies?

Insistence on primacy of context:

“[NCTQ’s] simplistic view of teaching and learning assumes that input X always results in outcome Y. In fact, thirty years ago the Effective Schools research (see Hallinger & Murphy, 1986) provided empirical evidence that outcome Y usually did not result from the same inputs, but from different inputs, especially when the schools were situated in different contexts. Similarly, researchers operationalizing how teachers demonstrate care note differences between schools and even within schools among individual students. . .”-Deborah Schussler and Lisa Johnson, “A House Built on Sand? Commentary on NCTQ’s Classroom Management Report” (Teacher’s College Record, March 2014), emphasis added

Instructional virtuosity as panacea

Linda Darling-Hammond on model teacher education programs in Powerful Teacher Education (2006):

“Only one program offers a specific course in classroom management, but they all teach candidates how to manage many kinds of learning and teaching, through effective means of organizing and presenting information, managing discussions, organizing cooperative learning strategies, and supporting individual and group inquiry . . . They learn how to create a purposeful and productive classroom, with strategies for supporting appropriate student behavior, rather than focusing first on student discipline and behavior in the absence of concerns for teaching and learning.”

Future research: Ed schools’ easy A’s

Cory Koedel, . http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/905

High grades: Result of affirmation of individual teacher

Education courses overwhelmingly call for subjective responses in assignments:• Personal reflections• Development of “style” or “philosophy”• Written observations, untethered by criteria,

of classrooms that instructors cannot see. How can an instructor say what a student is “missing?”

Not surprisingly, GPA of these types of courses routinely higher than courses where students asked to master body of knowledge and technique.

Every year, 100,000 newly minted teachers enter classrooms.

Most quickly learn that their training is inadequate – particularly in classroom management.

But many continue to insist that what works in studies, or for other teachers, won’t work for them and their students. They view practice through the lens of developmentalism.

Education schools have undermined the very premises necessary for training.

27

Bottom line: Teacher education inoculating new teachers against

evidence-based practice

Theory of change of Teacher Prep Review

Change culture of teacher

prep

Public recognition

and opprobrium:

Annual rankings in U.S. News

Market pressure: Get districts and

students to use Review to

choose programs

Accountability:Work with states to

measure right inputs and outcomes

Why it will work: IHEs will protect their cash cows

As IHE leadership sees that prospective students enroll in higher rated programs, they will pressure their programs to change their practices.

Why it will work: District dissatisfaction with training of teachers they hire

100+ superintendents have endorsed the Review.

Districts annually spend tens of millions of dollars in remedial professional development.

NCTQ is working to integrate findings in software districts use to manage teacher hiring.

Why it will work: Teacher education is not monolithic

108 programs made our honor roll – and a number of them acknowledge our recognition

116 institutions working with us for second edition of Review.

Developmentalism inclines programs to resist rather than reject evidence-based practice – and that resistance is weakening.

Arthur McKee

Managing Director, Teacher Preparation Studiesamckee@nctq.org

202.393.0020 x.114

32