Woodring 1975 The Development of Teacher Education

8/12/2019 Woodring 1975 The Development of Teacher Education

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century when efforts to extend public education to all social classesgreatly increased the demand for teachers. During that century, itwas Prussia that led the way. Although Frederick the Great hasoften been given the credit, it was his father, Frederick Williamthe First, who first promoted a compulsory school law, and in 1734issued his Principia Regulativa which prescribed the training ofteachers as well as the school curriculum. 1

After Frederick the Great came to power, Baron von Zedlitz,who was his minister of public instruction from I771 to 1798established pedagogical institutes and also promoted the universitystudy of pedagogy. He was responsible for the establishment ofthe first chair of pedagogy at Halle. 2

The Napoleonic wars caused a hiatus, but during the period ofFrench occupation that followed the Treaty of Tilsit, in 18o7young Prussians were sent to study with Pestalozzi in preparationfor their participation in the development of normal schoolsthroughout Prussia.

In the British Isles, where Scotland led England in providing

opportunities for elementary education, David Stow of Glasgowwas responsible for the establishment of a normal school at DundasVale in 1836. The school was well financed, the first rector wassent to visit normal schools in Germany and France in preparationfor his work, and graduates of the school were soon in great demand.3 Within a few years normal schools or similar institutionswere established in other European nations and in the Americas.

NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES

The founding fathers, well aware that a self-governing nationcould not survive without a literate electorate, began shortly afterthe Revolution to expand the systems of public schools that hadbeen established during the colonial period. Several decades were

1 . Thomas Alexander, he Training of Elementary Teachers in GermanyC ~ York: Teachers College Press, 1929), p. 2 ff

z. \Villi2m Boyd, he History of Western Education 7th ed. NewYmk: Barnes and Noble, 1965 , p. 3

3 Abrjorie Cruickshank, A History of the Training of Teachers in Scot- md London: University of London Press, 1970), p. 46.


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W O O D R I N G 3to elapse, however, before any concrete effort was made to pre-pare teachers for those schools.

During the I 8zos a few private academies began offering amodicum of teacher training and in 1834 the New York regentswere authorized by the state legislature to subsidize teacher train-ing in selected academies in that state. During the two decades thatfollowed the establishment of the first publicly supported normalschool at Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1839 normal schools wereestablished in Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey,Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota. 4 Most of them

were poorly supported, however, and enrollments remained small.Prior to the Civil War the great majority of elementary teacherscontinued to teach without professional preparation and in mostcases without much education of any kind.

After the Civil War new normal schools were established allacross the nation. The National Education Association Proceedingsfor 1874 reports 67 state and 54 private normal schools while theProceedings for 1898 reports 166 state and 165 private ones. Manycities also supported their own normal schools and county normalswere established in some states. Wesley estimates that normal schoolenrollments grew from ten thousand in 1870 to seventy thousandin I9oo. 5

Although reliable statistics are hard to come by, it appears thatby I9oo the majority of teachers in urban elementary schools hadreceived at least a short period of normal school instruction. Ruralschools, however, continued to employ many teachers who hadonly an elementary school background plus perhaps a few weeksattendance at a teachers institute.

All the early normal schools offered instruction of a practicalnature in schoolkeeping as well as a review of the commonbranches, with discussion of the methods of teaching them. Someoffered much more. In I 8 I Henry Barnard reported that the nor-mal schools in Massachusetts were offering courses n algebra,geometry, astronomy, natural philosophy, intellectual philosophy,

4 Charles A. Harper, A Century of Public Teacher Education (Washing-ton, D.C.: National Educational Association: 1939), p. 8.

Edgar Wesley, NEA The First Hundred Years New York: HarperRow Publishers, 1957), pp. 79-So.


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natural history; a critical study of the English language, an outlineof the history of English literature; the history of the UnitedStates; and historical geography. 6 This, plus a review of the common branches, some professional courses, and practice teachingseems a great deal to cram into a program of at most two years.Probably the subjects listed were not pursued in any great depth,but at any rate it seems clear that an effort was made to provideliberal as well as professional education.

The early normal schools admitted students who had only anelementary education, but during the last three decades of the nine

teenth century the rapid development of public high schoolsin

allparts of the nation made it possible for most normal schools tobegin requiring a high school diploma for admission. As a result,they were able to extend their programs, upgrade their instruction,and offer instruction at the college level.

NORM L SCHOOLS BECOME TEACHERS COLLEGES

fter 1900 the number of private normal schools declined

sharply because they were unable to compete with the publiclysupported schools that charged little or no tuition to the students.Meanwhile, the state normal schools began transforming themselves. Nineteen changed their names to teachers colleges or colleges of education between 1911 and 1920, sixty-nine more between 1921 and 1930, and most of the others between 1931 and1940, by which time the term normal school had become obsolete. Consequently, the entire history of American normal schools

spans only a single century-approximately 1840 to 1940.Several forces contributed to the change to college status. Par

ticularly in the western states, where liberal arts colleges were lessabundant than n the East, normal schools had for a long time attracted many students who did not plan to teach but were seekingpostsecondary education at low cost. Such students naturally wantedtheir schools to become real colleges, and state legislators thoughtit reasonable that a state-supported school should offer the kinds of

prograxns that the people wanted. And although some professional

6 Henry Barnard, Normal Schools nd Other Agencies and Means De-signed for the Professional Education o Teachers (Hartford: Case, Tiffany

o ~ ts 51 > I: s9 6t. '


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educators insi5ted that the normal schools should be devoted exclusively to teacher education, many of the teachers in those

schools thought it would be more prestigious to be professors ina college than instructors in a normal school.American institutions, like individual Americans, have always

enjoyed greater opportunity for upward mobility than their counterparts in Europe. Where such opportunity exists, both institutions and individuals become concerned about status. And normalschools, even at their best, lacked status. A speaker before an academic group or a radio announcer of football scores) could al

ways get a laugh merely by mentioning Slippery Rock StateNormal School. Students and faculty members in such institutionswere sensitive to their lack of status and hence eager to transformthe normal schools into colleges.

The change from normal school to college status was madelegitimate by the fact that most of the twentieth-century normalschools admitted only high school graduates, and, by 1925 or 1930most of them offered four years of college-level work, a major

portion of which was academic in nature. Many of them offeredcollege degrees even before they changed their names. And asteadily growing number of the faculty members held the master'sdegree and the Ph.D. in the various academic disciplines.

State teachers colleges, however, had a short life. Within twentyyears after they had emerged out of the normal schools they beganchanging themselves into multipurpose state colleges or state universities which granted liberal-arts and other degrees as well as

degrees in education. The change came first in the Far West andMidwest and later in the Northeast, where private colleges resistedthe efforts of teachers colleges to take on new responsibilitieswhich would bring them into competition with private institutions.

After the teachers colleges became multipurpose institutionsthe proportion of their graduates who were prepared for teachercertification declined rapidly, but, because their total enrollmentsincreased very rapidly between 195 and 1970 the actual numberof certified teachers graduating from these institutions continuedto increase. These colleges continued to be a major source of supply for elementary teachers and an important source of high school


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teachers. By I970, the single-purpose teachers college had becomealmost as obsolete as the normal school.

TEACHER EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITIES

After the establishment of the first university chair of pedagogy at Halle in I779 similar positions were created in other European universities, in most cases in departments of philosophy.Herbart was called to the chair of philosophy and pedagogy atKonigsberg in r8o6 and held that position for nearly a quarter ofa century. 7

In the United States, several universities offered professionalcourses for teachers during the r84os and rBsos but on an occasional basis and without the formal establishment of special chairsin pedagogy. Horace Mann was offering instruction in pedagogyat Antioch College in r 8 52 but this was in addition to his manyother duties, including the presidency of the college.

Different historians give credit to various American universitiesfor being the first to establish chairs or departments of education.In part the disagreement is a matter of definition. When the StateUniversity of Iowa created a chair of didactics in 1873 it was careful to explain in its catalogue: Didactics, in the higher sense, isa liberal study. It includes the philosophy of mind, the laws ofmental development, and all those branches of study and methodsof instruction that are employed in general education. 8

Between I88o and 1900 nearly all the state universities, as wellas several private ones, created professorships of education or pedagogy. Many of them were within departments that combined education with psychology and philosophy. Although it now seemsarchaic, such a combination had the advantage of promoting adegree of integration that is now made difficult by the specialization of university departments.

For a-time it was not unusual for a single professor to teachall the courses for teachers, but after 1900 the discipline of didactics, pedagogy, or education was divided in most universities into

7 William Boyd, op. cit., p. 311

8 Ernest Stabler, ed. he Education of the SecondaT y School Teacher(Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University Press, 1962 , p. 37


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at least three subdisciplines: philosophy of education, history ofeducation, and educational psychology. Courses in methods and n

classroom management werelso

offered and practice teaching wasavailable.The first professors of didactics, pedagogy, or education, had

to be recruited from the older academic disciplines, most oftenphilosophy, for the obvious reason that advanced degrees in edu-cation were not yet available. fter candidates with doctoral de-grees in education became available, early in the twentieth century,more and more of the professorships of education were filled with

men and women holding the Ph.D. in education or later) theEd.D. Such individuals were more likely than their predecessors tohave had some public school teaching experience and to be com-mitted to education s a career. But their appearance on universityfaculties led to complaints from members of the older disciplinesthat professors of educational philosophy were not really philoso-phers, and that professors of the history of education were n-sufficiently grounded in history. Some universities responded by

creating joint professorships, recruiting educational historians, forexample, who were acceptable to both the department of educa-tion and the department of history.

When psychology broke away from philosophy and became aseparate department, it became necessary to decide whether pro-fessors of educational psychology should work within the depart-ment of education or the department of psychology. Some univer-sities took one course, others took the alternative. Even today

educational psychologists in some universities and colleges workwithin the department of psychology while those in others are inthe department of education.

During the first half of the twentieth century, most of the stateuniversities developed large and comprehensive schools or collegesof education, offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees ineducation for school administrators, specialists, and future profes-sors of education, s well s for classroom teachers. Some private

universities followed the same course.Teachers College of Columbia University played a special role.

Chattered in 1889 s The New York College for the Training ofTeachers, i t changed its name to Teachers College n 1892 and


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shortly afterwards became associated with Columbia University,although 12oth Street which separates it from the University has

been called the widest street in the world. T.C., as it waswidely known, soon took on a national and international character,playing a major role in preparing men and women for positionsof educational leadership throughout the world.

Instructors in normal schools throughout the United Statesflocked to Teachers College to get their master's degrees, ordoctorates. They chose T.C. over other graduate schools becausethat institution was more sympathetic with their problems, less

rigorous in its demands upon them (no thesis or oral examinationswere required for the M.Ed.), and more willing t let them domost of their work during summer sessions. During the 1920s itwas not unusual for a normal school to boast that more than halfits faculty held degrees from Columbia's T.C.

The large T.C. faculty, which included many famous names,offered an enormous variety of courses in every conceivable education specialty. A wide range of educational philosophies was ex

pounded by educators as diverse as Bagley, Kilpatrick, Counts, andRugg. But after about 1925 conservative voices were in the minority and T.C. came to be widely recognized as the fountainhead of progressive education. And T.C. impressed its own philosophy on normal schools and teachers colleges throughout thenation. When progressive education became a target for attack,T.C. received most of the blame, or credit, for whatever was considered bad or good about progressive education.

Departments and schools of education within universities havebeen victims of recurrent attacks from academic professors in otherdisciplines. Regardless of the attacks, most state universities havecontinued to accept teacher education as one of their proper responsibilities and to suppon it in proportion to the need for teachers. Private universities have not felt the same compulsion-different universities and university presidents have reacted differentlyto the criticism. During the 193os President Conant of Harvardsaved and rebuilt the Harvard Graduate School of Education at atime when the President of Yale was rejecting teacher educationas a university responsibility and was liquidating his own schoolof education. Stanford and Chicago, like Harvard and Columbia's


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T.C., no longer give primary attention to the preparation of beginning teachers. They have become exclusively or primarily graduate

schools of education, stressing research on teaching and learning,on administration, and on the social and psychological foundationsof education.

Throughout much of our nation s history, private and churchrelated liberal arts colleges not associated with universities provided a high proportion of secondary school teachers. Since 1900,the proportion of students in such colleges preparing to teach hassteadily declined. In 1975 only 5 percent of ll American college

students are enrolled in nonpublic institutions and half of these arein universities rather than separate liberal arts colleges. Meanwhilethe proportion of secondary teachers coming from state-supportedinstitutions has continued to expand. Some of the most prestigiousliberal arts colleges no longer show much interest in educatingteachers. In the future it seems certain that most of our secondary

s well s elementary teachers will come from state colleges anduniversities.

hanging Philosophies and e w Psychologies

NINETEENTH CENTURY EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHIES

The men who established the first American normal schoolswere not strong on pedagogical theory. Most of them were ministers or statesmen rather than educators. They saw the need formorality, literacy, and a modicum of factual knowledge, but werenot greatly interested in promoting creativity, imagination, or independent thought in children. They wanted the United States tobecome a politically stable nation of thrifty, virtuous, hard-working citizens and saw the public schools s instruments for promoting that goal.

It was not their intention that normal schools should becomeinstitutions of higher education. They did not think it necessarythat an elementary teacher should be liberally educated; it wasenough that the teacher should have a sound knowledge of thesubjects taught in the elementary school, be virtuous, industrious,dedicated to the work, and obedient to superiors.

Some of the principals and faculty members in the early nor-


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mal schools had broader views at least a few of them had readRousseau's mile and the works of Pestalozzi and Froebel but the

impact of European pedagogical theory was not felt in any substantial degree prior to the establishment of the normal school atOswego in 186o.

Because Pestalozzianism came to be known in the United Statesby way of Oswego, it came to be known as the Oswego Method.From Pestalozzi came a new concept of the worth, dignity, andindividuality of the child. Oswego Pestalozzianism also gave newemphasis to the role of the senses in learning and stressed a basic

reform known as object teaching. From about 186o until 188o theOswego version of Pestalozzianism was dominant in American normal schools.

Herbartianism came later. Although Johann Friedrich Herbarthad died in 1841 his influence did not become significant in American normal schools until the last two decades of the nineteenthcentury. In this country it radiated from the school at Normal,Illinois, and for a time replaced Pestalozzianism. Teachers of pedagogy who had formally stressed sense perception, oral language,and the object lesson shifted their attention to apperception andbecame convinced that sound teaching must consist of five formalsteps: preparation, presentation, association, generalization, and application.

But Herbart's influence was dominant for less than two decades.By 1895 John Dewey was challenging some of his views. By 1900the teachers of American teachers were becoming aware of thework of William James and G. Stanley Hall and were ready todevelop the first truly American educational theories.

PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Americanteacher education-particularly the education of elementary schoolteachers was greatly influenced by a complex, and sometimescontradictory set of theories, points of view, attitudes, and practices that came to be known as progressive education. Progressivism had many sources. Although John Dewey has often beencalled the father of progressive education he denied the paternity and later became highly critical of some of the theories


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and practices he observed in progressive schools. Cremin, in hisdefinitive history of progressive education, says, throughout

its history progressive education meant different things to differentpeople 9

Professor Bode of The Ohio State University, an early leader inthe movement and later one of its thoughtful critics, said in 1938,While the movement has never been sharply defined, its most

prominent connotation has been one of 'child centeredness' in thesense that it has been guided largely by such concepts as 'interest,''freedom,' and 'self-activity.' In its psychology, progressive edu

cation has leaned toward the point of view indicated, somewhatvaguely, by the phrase 'learning by doing.' In its social philosophyit has stressed the importance of superseding habits of competitionwith habits of cooperation.'' IO

Progressivism in education was related in a loose way to socialand political progressivism-it meant using the schools to improvethe lives of people. It meant adapting the schools to children instead of requiring the children to adapt themselves to the schooL

It proposed to give the school responsibility not only for academicinstruction but for the total development of the whole child.

In the normal schools and teachers colleges the effect of theprogressive movement was to encourage teachers to become morepermissive and less authoritarian, and to accept more responsibilityfor the social and personality development of children as well asfor their recreational activities. Teachers were urged to adapt thecurriculum to the interests of children and to make less use of

competition as a motive.Campus and laboratory schools become far more progressive

than the public schools in which the students were preparing toteach. They could do this because classes were small, superior facilities were available, and in many cases the pupils in campusschools were highly selected by virtue of the fact that preferencewas given to faculty children. But when graduates completed their

9 Lawrence A. Cremin, he Transformation of the School New York:Alfred A. Knopf, Random House, 1961), p. x

10 Boyd H. Bode, Progressive Education t tbe rossroads New York:Newson Co., 1938), p. 3


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practice teaching and moved into public school teaching positions,they often discovered that neither . he principal nor the children

were ready for the kinds of teaching and curricular changes theyhad been taught to believe were desirable. Some graduates tried tochange the schools but many adapted themselves to the schools inwhich they worked and complained that the instruction they hadreceived in teachers college was unrealistic or too theoretical.

During the 192os and 193os educational progressivism as a reform movement splintered into many separate groups, some ofwhich took on a distinctly cultish nature, and because the leaders

of these cults were professors of education, the prestige of education as an academic discipline suffered within the academic community. Critics complained that professors of educational philosophy had become propagandists rather than true philosopohers.

By 1940 progressive education was losing influence in the colleges of education, partly because educators had become reluctantto be identified with the movement. In 1955 the Progressive Education Association closed its doors and gave an official closing date

to the movement that had dominated educational thinking inAmerica for half a century.

The influence of the movement continues, however, becauseprogressive education was to some extent a victim of its ownsuccess. By mid-century all schools, whether or not they calledthemselves progressive, had become more humane institutions.Nearly all teachers had become aware of individual differences inlearning capacity, of the imponance of interest in learning, and ofthe fact that a child learns what he does rather than what theteacher says. All schools had become more child centered thanthey were in 1900. nd nearly all programs for teacher educationhad incorporated some of the best features of progressive educationwhile discarding the excesses of the movement.

THE INFLUENCE OF NEW PSYCHOLOGIES

Twentieth-century educators have made a determined effon tobase their pedagogical practices on the latest psychological theories,assuming that latest must mean best. The task has been complicated by the fact that the theoretical underpinnings of Americanpsychology have shifted from structuralism and functionalism to


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associationism, to Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis, and therito a sort of eclectic, functionalistic behaviorism-all within seventy

five years.William James' Talks t Teachers first delivered orally and

then published s a book in 1899, was widely read in teacher-training institutions. James offered many applications of psychologicalprinciples to the teaching-learning process and his combination ofpsychological knowledge and common sense provided a sound b sisfor teaching. He saw, however, the danger in trying to reduceteaching to a science. Psychology is a science, he said, teachingis an art, and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves. An intermediary inventive mind must make the application,by use of its originality. n

At about the same time a group of psychologists under theinfluence of G. Stanley Hall focused their attention on evolutionary theories of the development of mind and the related problemof maturation. Partly s a result, child study became a requiredsubject for instruction in normal schools. Also s a result of Hall'swriting, secondary teachers became aware of adolescence s a special period in an individual's life.

In 1909, Henry H. Goddard, one of Hall's students, broughtthe Binet test to America, translated it into English, and restandardized it on American children. In 1916 another of Hall's students,Lewis Terman, published the Stanford Binet and the testing movement was off and running. Within the next twenty years hundredsof tests were developed for the measurement of intelligence, specialaptitudes, achievement of various kinds, interest, and personalitytraits and many of these were widely used in the schools. As aresult, courses in tests and measurements came to be included innearly ll programs for teacher education.

The behavioristic revolution that swept over American psychology between 1914 and 1920 had profound implications forteacher education. The early behaviorists, under the leadership ofJohn B Watson, not only reformed psychology. They redefinedi t -as the science of behavior rather than the science of conscious-

11. William James, Talks to Teachers New York: W. W. Norton Co.,1958), pp. 13-14.


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ness or of mind. To many educational psychologists it seemed tofollow that the teacher's job is not to help the child enhance hisunderstanding, improve his insight, or increase his knowledge-since these are vague and mentalistic terms not easily reduced tobehavior but rather to teach him to behave in certain ways.

But educational psychologists found it difficult to accept all therestrictions that the early behaviorists would place on their re-search. Partly for this reason they turned to Edward L Thorndikewho, during the 192os became a leader in educational psychology.Althougli he placed the major emphasis on learning, Thorndike

did not ignore the importance of inherited individual differences,as Watson did, and although he had begun as an animal psycholo-gist, Thorndike was more willing than the behaviorists to moveexperimentation out of the laboratory and into the classroom.Thorndike's many publications were widely read by professors ofeducation and students in teachers colleges.

In the late 1920s and early I9JOS the Gestalt psychology ofWertheimer, Kohler, and Koffka, which had been influential in

Germany since 1914 began to influence American psychology andeducation. Gestalt principles were particularly attractive to pro-gressive educators because they seemed to justify the position thatprogressives had already taken against rote learning and in favorof insight as an educational goal. Gestalt psychology also made itunnecessary to rely on the conditioning process to explain all hu-man learning.

The interest of educators in Gestalt psychology remained high

during the 1930s but after 1940 it gradually declined, partly be-cause Gestalt psychology was being absorbed into the mainstreamof American psychology and partly because of the difficulties thateducators encountered in trying to develop effective institutionaltechniques based upon the concepts of closure and insight.

Psychoanalysis, although it had its origins before 1900 first hada substantial influence on American education during the 1920sand 1930S. This was a time when educational theory was moving

away from an exclusive emphasis on academic learning and towarda more comprehensive view of education which held the schoolsresponsible for the child's social development and emotional health


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as well as for his intellectual development. Psychoanalytic interpretations of personality development and psychoanalytic explana

tions of maladjustments had wide appeal.In 1938 behaviorism was given a new lease on life by B F.

Skinner who enlarged the field by distinguishing between respondent behavior which is elicited by particular stimuli and operantbehavior which is emitted by the organism without any specificidentifiable stimulus to account for it. The new concept of operantor instrumental conditioning offered a possible explanation f o r -or at least a description of many varieties of classroom learning

that could not be adequately explained by classical conditioning.By 1940 most of the authors of textbooks on educational psy

chology had become convinced that they must present a varietyof psychological theories-behavioristic, association theories, Gestalt, and psychoanalytical interpretations including those of Jungand Adler as well as of Freud. But educational psychologists, likeother psychologists, found it impossible to integrate these conflicting points of view into a single system. As a result, textbooks ineducational psychology became eclectic, presenting conflictingtheories of child development, learning, motivation, and emotion,and leaving it to students to achieve an integration which the professors and the textbook writers had failed to achieve.

The 1950s and 196os saw a renewed interest in the thoughtprocesses and learning experiences of young children. The workof Piaget, which had been well known to educators during the193os was rediscovered. Creativity replaced intelligence as a traitto be investigated and as a basis for selecting talented children forspecial attention in the schools. At the same time an increased concern for socially disadvantaged children resulted in vigorous attempts to find ways of compensating for early childhood deprivation.

During the first three quarters of the twentieth century a vastamount of research, ranging from the trivial to the profound, hasbeen reported in the literature. Though further definitive researchis always appropriate, the primary need now is for a better analysisand interpretation of evidence already available in order that theconclusions from research may be applied to classroom practice.


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Teacher Education Comes to Maturity 1950 75

A DECADE OF CRITICISM

Soon after the end of World War II the public schools cameunder sharp attack from dissatisfied parents, academic professors,journalists, university presidents, a famous admiral, and a popularwriter who was convinced that someone named Johnny was notlearning to read. Much of the criticism was focused on teachersand the kind of education they were receiving.

It was charged that, because of excessive requirements of pro-

fessional courses prior to certification, teachers were not beingliberally educated and that they had insufficient knowledge of thesubjects they were teaching. It was also charged that teachers werebeing indoctrinated with educational philosophies unacceptable tothe majority of American people.

Although a substantial number of professional educators wereaware of weaknesses in existing programs of teacher education,and were eager to correct them, the vigor of the criticism threw

them on the defensive. As a result, many educators spent more timefending off the attacks than in improving programs. Some wentso far as to insist that nothing at all was wrong either with theschools or with teacher education and to countercharge that allthose who offered criticism were enemies of the schools.

In fact only a very few of the critics were enemies of goodeducation, as they themselves defined it, but some were indeed mis-informed. And many of the charges made were greatly exagger-

ated.The critics who charged that the schools had become too soft

and permissive and who blamed the sofmess on the teaching ofDewey's philosophy, obviously had never read Dewey. Althoughthere was legitimate room for debate concerning the methods ofreading being taught in 1950 it was not true that any large pro-portion of school children were unable to read. The charge thatgraduates of European secondary schools were better educated thangraduates of our high schools ignored the fact that the word sec-ondary has different meanings in different nations as well as thefact that European secondary schools were far more selective thanours


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Many of the critics of teacher education seemed to believe thatall or most teachers were graduates of teachers colleges, whereasn fact, of all those newly certified in 1950 only 335 percent of the

elementary teachers and z6.8 percent of the secondary teachers weregraduates of teachers colleges. 12 The others came from colleges ofliberal arts or general studies and from universities, both public andprivate.

The novelist who wrote in ife (under the pseudonym of JohnWilliam Sperry) that he had visited many teachers colleges and hadfound that all were distinctly inferior to every liberal arts collegethat I have even seen, 13 apparently had never been west of theHudson. The most effective reply to the latter charge came from aformer president of Harvard, James B. Conant, who said, Nothingrevealed by a close study of institutions designated as 'teachers colleges,' compared to those designated as 'liberal arts colleges,' justifiesa sweeping assertion that one type of institution consistently givesthe student a better education than the other. 14

But the fact remained that many programs for teacher education in colleges of all kinds were highly vulnerable to criticism.Standards were much too low. Many of the colleges preparingteachers-church-related liberal arts colleges as well a state colleges- h a d no entrance requirements other than high school graduationand admitted all or nearly all applicants into teacher education programs. Universities that held to high standards for entrance into theother learned professions were all too willing to admit poorly qualified students into teacher education programs. In the programs required there was too much trivia, and sometimes what passed foreducational philosophy was really propaganda for one point of view.In the larger schools of education the number of different professional courses had multiplied to such an extent that duplication ofcontent was inevitable.

At mid-century, certification laws often were specific in requir-

n Timothy M. Stinnett, Accreditation and the Professionalization ofTeaching, Journal of Teacher Education 3 (March 1952): 30-38.

13. John William Sperry, Who Teaches the Teachers? Life 29 (October 16 1950): 146-54

14. James B. Conant, he Education of merican Teachers (New York:McGraw-Hill, 13) , p. 77


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ing professional courses for teachers but extremely vague about theacademic requirements, even for high school teachers who were

preparing to teach the academic subjects. In this, some academicscholars thought they saw a conspiracy on the part of professionaleducators to take the responsibility for teacher education away fromacademic scholars and to impose an educational philosophy whichdeemphasized scholarship and smacked of anti-intellectualism.

While there was, of course, no real conspiracy, it was quite truethat the responsibility for the education of elementary and secondary teachers had been allowed to slip out of the hands of academic

scholars. During the first half of the twentieth century, while academic scholars were loftily ignoring the problems of teacher education, a group of school administrators, professors of education,and educators in state departments of education with the supportof the National Education Association had come to agreementamong themselves on the necessity for professional preparation forteachers and had transmitted their convictions into certification laws.It was during this same period that many educators, faced with the

problem of educating children of all social classes and all intellectuallevels, had come to accept a philosophy of education that differedsharply from the traditions of higher education-one that placedless emphasis on academic scholarship and more on understandingthe child and the learning process. This new philosophy also wasreflected in the certification laws.

When academic professors became aware of what had happened,some of them saw a need to return the control of teacher education to the total academic community. Bestor, one of the foremostcritics, but one who was far better informed than most, said in1955 The training of teachers for the public schools is one of themost important functions of the American university. t ought always to be treated as a function of the university as a whole. In recent times it has not been so treated. The blame rests squarely uponthe faculties of liberal arts and sciences, who have simply abdicatedtheir responsibilities. 15

In the late 1950s a growing number of academic scholars were

15. Arthur Bestor, he Restoration o earning (Alfred A. Knopf, Random House, 1955), p. 141.


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willing to accept Restor s challenge and to give attention to teachereducation. And a growing number of professional educators had

become willing towork

with professors from other departmentson the improvement of teacher education.

STEPS TOWARD RECONCILIATION

During the controversy of the 195os many academic scholarsgained the unfortunate impression that professional educators wereso preoccupied with professional training that they had no interestin the liberal education of teachers and no concern for their knowl-

edge of subject matter. Meanwhile, some professors of educationgained the impression that their academic critics were opposed toll professional education for teachers. In both cases these were the

,;ews of only the extremists, but it was the extremists who hadreceived most of the attention from 1950 until about 1957

Three conferences called by the National Commission onTeacher Education and Professional Standards TEPS) in 19581959 and 1960 went a long way toward dispelling these erroneous

impressions. These differed from previous TEPS conferences in thatmany of the participants were academic scholars from disciplinesother than education.

When educators and their critics sat down together around theconference tables they quicky discovered that they were not as farapart as many had thought. Participants from varied backgroundsand many academic departments were able to agree that prospectivereachers should be both liberally educated and professionally pre-

pared. The clear consensus was that a sound program of teachereducation must include: a broad and liberal general education, asrudy in depth of at least one academic field, solid preparation inprofessional education, plus an internship or an extended period ofpractice teaching.

There was agreement, too, that it would be a mistake to emas-culate one important element of teacher education in order tostrengthen another. And since it appeared that four college years

were insufficient to provide all the ingredients essential to soundreacher education, these TEPS conferences gave support to thealready existing trend toward extending the period of preparationto at least five years beyond high school.


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It was agreed at these conferences that scholars from the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences, should cooperate with

professorsof

education in planning programs for teachers.The

immediate result was the development of interdepartmental committees on teacher education in many universities and liberal artscolleges. Such committees had existed in teachers colleges for along time.) For a time, academic professors played an active part.By 1970 however, the interest of academic scholars in teacher education, particularly in the larger and more highly departmentalizeduniversities, was again declining. Having established their right to

participate in planning programs for teachers, many found the tasktoo demanding and time-consuming. Retaining the assistance andsupport of academic scholars remained a continuing problem forschools and departments of education.

EXPERIMENTATION AND REFORM

During the 195os and 196os numerous efforts were made tofind new and better ways of educating teachers. Some of the new

programs prepared individuals for team teaching instead of for selfcontained classrooms. Some prepared teachers to make better useof television, teaching machines, and other new kinds of equipment.Some substituted extended internships for the traditional period ofpractice teaching. Some replaced conventional courses in educationwith seminars taught in conjunction with the internship. Somepostponed all professional courses until the fifth college year. Andall these new programs met opposition from one or another pro

fessional organization or group because they challenged deeplyheld convictions of older educators and of professional organizations.

Many of the innovative programs,_ including some of those mostcontroversial, received support from philanthropic foundations. In1951 the Fund for the Advancement of Education, which had recendy been established by the Ford Foundation, lent its support toa plan to reorganize teacher education throughout the state ofArkansas a plan to which the Fund eventually committed nearlythree million dollars. The intent of the plan was to provide, for allfuture teachers, a four-year program of broad liberal education,followed by a period during which an internship would be com-


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bined with professional studies. All colleges in the state-state teachers colleges, liberal arts colleges, and the state university-were to

participate.The plan met with angry response from professional organizations and professional leaders who resented the fact that they hadnot been consulted in advance. It ran directly counter to the prevailing trend toward integration of professional and liberal education during the undergraduate years. Because the grant came fromoutside the state and because it involved a substantial amount ofmoney, it was labeled The Arkansas Purchase by bitter educa

tors.In the face of opposition, the plan was repeatedly modified tosuch an extent that the original plan cannot be said to have beenadequately tested. t stirred widespread interest in teacher education that led to reforms in other states, but when the assistance fromthe Fund terminated, most of the colleges in Arkansas went backto more conventional programs.

Other innovative programs, in many parts of the nation, were

designed to tap an additional source of teacher supply-older liberal arts graduates who wanted to become elementary teachers butwere reluctant to enter upon the programs of professional studiesrequired for certification. In these programs the number of professional coursfjS required was reduced and a paid internship replacedthe traditional practice teaching. When the teacher shortage ended,in the late 196os most of these programs were absorbed into thegeneral programs for teachers, but the certification requirementsfor older beginning teachers remained somewhat more flexible thanthey previously had been.

The Master of Arts in Teaching program, which gained widespread attention during the 1950s had its origins two decades earlier.n 1936 President Conant of Harvard, who had become aware of

th conflict of view between academic scholars and professionaleducators, saw a need for a new kind of preparation for secondaryteachers which would incorporate the best thinking of both groups.

e initiated a proposal for a new program,, first described in theOfficial Register of the Graduate School of Education for 1936-37.

The purpose was to provide a graduate-level program open toarefully selected liberal arts graduates, which combined advanced


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smdy of a scholarly discipline with a sequence of professional seminars and a period of internship.

During the early years the program did not attract many students. The demand for teachers was limited and salaries were toolow to attract able liberal arts graduates into teaching. But afterWorld War II the simation changed. The demand for teachers wasmuch greater and salaries were higher. Some of the better-payingschool systems were located in affiuent suburbs where most of theparents were college graduates who preferred teachers with a substantial background of liberal education.

In 1951 the Fund for the Advancement of Education made itpossible for Harvard to enlarge its M T program by providingfinancial support for a plan under which twenty-nine distinguishedliberal arts colleges agreed to carry on a vigorous recruitment campaign to arouse interest in secondary school teaching on the part ofliberal arts graduates. After receiving the A.B. degree these smdents entered Harvard for graduate work and, during their internships, received an annual stipend of 1500 out of a Fund grant.

Other universities from New England to California developed similar programs with assistance from the Fund and other philanthropicfoundations.

Although leaders of the movement hoped and predicted thatthe M T program would become the primary source of secondaryteachers, it soon became apparent that the number of graduates ofprestigious, private, liberal arts colleges who were eager to becometeachers was far too small to provide more than a small percent of

the teachers needed by the public schools. However, some of theprinciples basic to the M T were accepted into the programs offered by graduate schools of education which recruited many oftheir students from state colleges and which offered the M.Ed. ratherthan the MAT. The emphasis on academic subject matter; for secondary school teachers was substantially increased and, in manyinstimtions, extended internships (often with partial salary) replacedthe old practice teaching.

Numerous other innovations appeared in teacher education during the 196os and early 1970s. Microteaching spread from Stanford to many other institutions. Teachers were prepared to teachthe new mathematics and to use new and improved techniques


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for the teaching of foreign languages. Many candidates for teachingbecame familiar with programed learning.

The Supreme Court ruling on racial segregation of 1954 andthe civil rights movement of the 196os led to a new emphasis onpreparing teachers for work with socially disadvantaged children.An effort was made to recruit more teachers from minority groupsand to provide all teachers with a more sympathetic understandingof the problems of minority groups.

During the late 196os the schools and teacher educationcame under fresh attack from a group of critics whose views were

almost directly opposite to those of the critics of the early 195os.These new critics, Paul Goodman, John Holt, and Edgar Friedenberg, among others-who were variously described as liberal,radical and romantic -held a view of individual freedom and

of the corrupting influence of society that was reminiscent of Rousseau and some of the early progressive educators of the 192os. Someof them contended that, because schools often do more harm thangood, attendance should not be compulsory. All of them were highly

critical of the way teachers were educated and contended thatconventionally educated teachers were prone to force childreninto conventional molds. They supported the development of freeschools with teachers selected on the basis of their personal traitsand social attitudes rather than their professional or academic education. These critics achieved a large following among those whowere, r t the time, highly critical of the establishment but theirinfluence on teacher education was restricted by the utopian flavorof their proposals and their reluctance to work cooperatively witheither the academic or the professional groups within colleges anduniversities.

After 1970 the growing oversupply of teachers made it possible for the colleges educating teachers to shift the emphasis fromnumbers to quality. Some of the innovations of the 1950s and 196oswere incorporated into the standard programs. In a number ofstates, five-year programs became the standard for permanent certification for both elementary and secondary teachers. Entrance standards gradually rose, though not rapidly enough to reduce thesupply to the limited demand.

But a new generation of educators, who had forgotten the past,


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or had never become familiar with it reopened many of the oldcontroversies: liberal vs professional and vocational education con-

tent vs process freedom vs restrictions whole vs part learningsociety vs the individual and even heredity vs environment as abasis for individual differences in learning capacity. As we enterthe last quarter of the twentieth century it seems clear that teachereducation like education itself will remain a subject for contro-versy.

Woodring 1975 The Development of Teacher Education

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Transcript of Woodring 1975 The Development of Teacher Education