Approaches To Teaching And Teacher Education

This popular text continues using the format of the three approaches—The Executive, The Facilitator, and The Liberationist. For theFifth Edition, the authors add four new case studies: “Scripted Teaching,” “Accountability and Merit,” “What Is the Value of Caring Relationships?” and “School Funding.” Using these and other realistic case studies, they explore the strengths and weaknesses of each approach so that teachers can critically assess their own philosophical positions on teaching. Teachers are urged to ask themselves such questions as: What is the main goal of teaching? What is the most important purpose of education? What do I expect my students to eventually become? Is the way I structure my teaching influenced by how I view my role and goals? This updated edition also adds a new section called “Topics and Resources” to encourage further inquiry into teaching. Approaches to Teachingis one of the five books in the highly regarded Teachers College Press THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION SERIES, now in itsFifth Edition. All of the books in this series are designed to help pre- and in-service teachers bridge the gap between theory and practice. Gary D Fenstermacheris Professor of Education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Jonas F. Soltisis William Heard Kilpatrick Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.Matthew N Sangeris Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations at Idaho State University. "

Learning to teach is complex. Teacher candidates begin a preservice program with powerful tacit assumptions about how teachers teach based on lengthy apprenticeships of observation over many years as students. Virtually all teacher education programs provide a mixture of coursework and classroom experience. Much has been written about the theory-into-practice approach in teacher education, an approach that assumes teacher candidates who have been provided with instructions about how to teach will be able to recall and apply them in a school setting. In reality, teacher candidates report considerable difficulty enacting theory in practice, to the point that many question the value of coursework. This book takes an in-depth look at five future teachers in one teacher education program, analyzing and interpreting how they and their teacher educators learn from experience during both coursework and practicum experiences. Many assumptions about the complex challenges of teaching teachers are called into question. Is the role of a teacher educator to synthesize research-based best practices for candidates to take to their field placements? Does the preservice practicum experience challenge or reinforce a lifetime of socialized experiences in schools? Must methods courses always be seen by most teacher candidates as little more than sites for collecting resources? Where and how do candidates construct professional knowledge of teaching? The data illustrate clearly that methods courses can be sites for powerful learning that challenges tacit assumptions about how and why we teach.

This title aims to make life easier for educators by gathering together the theoretical approaches informing the modern principles and practices of western education. The authors are committed to the view that theory has many practical implications and to its value in supporting, confirming and optimising best practice.

This book is an argument for reflexivity in the act of teaching, which means to acknowledge that intention guides the act of teaching. Teaching must create attention towards processes of collectivity in the classroom. Today, teaching is both acts of expressing knowledge and acts of securing justice to all students through a mediation of knowledge. Teaching therefore expresses both knowledge with reference to school subjects, and justice according to the distribution of this knowledge. The authors argue for teaching as the driver of education. To pay attention to teaching is to pay attention to that which is inside the system of education. To consider education as a mediation of knowledge between generations, places teaching as an act of performing the content of education, in a class in a school. The complexity of these processes is easily overlooked when education is used as a means in competitive economies. The approach taken in this text is that deliberations about teaching must be based on historicity. The support for this argument builds on a reading of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. The book addresses teaching as an integral part of the learning process. In education today, everything seems to be concentrated around learning, as if teaching no longer takes place. Teachers and teacher educators need a language to discuss and understand teaching, both as personal and institutional actions. A Ricoeurian approach to a discussion on teaching as a reflexive and institutional practice, provides a timely approach to important questions related to teaching in our day and age.

Self-study in teacher education is a growing field and a natural progression from the concept of reflective practice for pre-service teachers. This book is designed to introduce teacher educators to the theory and practice of self-study, in order to explore, understand and improve their teaching about teaching. With studies from an international range of contributors, this book illustrates a variety of approaches to self-study. It describes the issues that teacher educators have chosen to study, how they carried out their research and what the learning outcomes were. Throughout, the emphasis is on placing teacher educators' knowledge and practice at the centre of their academic work. This book will be of interest to all teacher educators wishing to improve their knowledge and practice.

Pressures for reform in teacher education have begun to take on the same sense of urgency as school reform. Those faculties of education who have been strong advocates for change in the schools now find themselves the subject of similar pressures from governmental policy makers. Attempts at change have taken place in many different countries and jurisdictions around the world.; This book details, through a series of international vignettes, how teachers are responding to the changing times and social contexts in which they do their work. The authors hold the view that changes are inevitable in teacher education but what is not clear is who will control the changes and whether the end result will actually improve the preparation of teachers. The theme of the book is that the reform of teacher education should be informed by intelligent debate and that any attempt to restructure teacher preparation should result from a careful reconceptualisation of it purposes and processes.