Senior teachers deepen their knowledge by serving as mentors, adjunct faculty, co-researchers, and teacher leaders. Darling-Hammond, These new programs envision the professional teacher as one who learns from teaching rather than as one who has finished learning how to teach.
Countries like Germany, France, and Luxembourg have long required two to three years of graduate-level study for prospective teachers on top of an undergraduate degree in the subject s to be taught. Education courses include the study of child development and learning, pedagogy, and teaching methods, plus an intensively supervised internship in a school affiliated with the university. In France, all candidates now complete a graduate program in newly created University Institutes for the Preparation of Teachers that are connected to nearby schools.
In Japan and Taiwan, new teachers complete a year-long supervised internship with a reduced teaching load that allows for mentoring and additional study. By Japanese law, first-year teachers receive at least twenty days of inservice training and sixty days of professional development.
Master teachers are released from their classrooms to advise and counsel them. National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, In their study of mathematics teaching in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States, Stigler and Stevenson note: "One of the reasons Asian class lessons are so well-crafted is that there is a very systematic effort to pass on the accumulated wisdom of teaching practice to each new generation of teachers and to keep perfecting that practice by providing teachers the opportunities to continually learn from each other.
Without these supports, learning to teach well is extremely difficult. Most U. After entry, teachers are expected to know everything they will need for a career, or to learn through occasional workshops mostly on their own, with few structured opportunities to observe and analyze teaching with others.
As one high school teacher who had spent twenty-five years in the classroom once told me: "I have taught 20, classes; I have been 'evaluated' thirty times; but I have never seen another teacher teach.
Some school districts have begun to create new approaches to professional development that feature mentoring for beginners and veterans; peer observation and coaching; local study groups and networks for specific subject matter areas; teacher academies that provide ongoing seminars and courses of study tied to practice; and school-university partnerships that sponsor collaborative research, inter-school visitations, and learning opportunities developed in response to teachers' and principals' felt needs.
For example, at Wells Junior High, a Professional Development School working with the University of Southern Maine, the whole notion of staff development was turned on its head.
The emphasis shifted from outside consultants to in-house experts. Problem-posing and problem-solving supplanted the recipes and prescriptions for effective schools that teachers had heard for years and never managed to implement. Miller and Silvernail, , pp. Similarly, at Fairdale High School in Louisville, Kentucky, teachers' research coupled with shared decision making produced major changes.
As part of a self-study, ten teachers followed ten children through a school day. When it was over, teachers said things like, "It was boring," or, "You know, this isn't a very humane place to be. Even before participative management was initiated at Fairdale, the teachers started changing things.
Professional development strategies that succeed in improving teaching share several features. Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin, They tend to be:. On a list of things every learner needs every day, this may be the most crucial. Feedback should enable and inspire learning to progress.
Whenever possible, use it to make learners feel good about where they are followed by getting them excited about where they can go. Making time for exercising creativity is absolutely essential to our learners' growth and progress.
No matter what avenues they use to express it, we must offer them that freedom regularly. Students thrive when given the opportunity to challenge their creative abilities in safe environments with the necessary scaffolding.
As a result, they take ownership of their learning and are motivated to find solutions, deriving personal satisfaction from the process. Our students are diverse and unique, and a broad range of workable strategies for learning is something every learner needs. One of the things every student needs from their learning is a sense of purpose and relevance. In fact, one of the most common questions they ask and always have asked is, "Why are we learning this?
What they're asking is only for their learning to be useful to them, and to be something they can benefit from in life beyond school. It's here we have the opportunity to provide context and relevance to lessons, thereby showing them they're doing something beyond a simple compliance task. In the past, we may have either punished or been punished for mistakes.
However, that's no way to learn meaningfully and constructively. It's actually a great way to end up with a fear of learning. At every juncture we must ensure learners get ample room to embrace mistakes and turn them into chances to learn and grow.
There are plenty of things every students needs to thrive and succeed, but these rank among the most important. The experiences they'll have with strategies like these are ones they'll carry for a lifetime. As with any meaningful learning we give them room for, they'll benefit from the wisdom gained anywhere in life. Editor's note: This post was originally published in and has been updated for comprehensiveness. Teaching is a calling. Many teachers take up the challenge every day to do whatever it takes to..
These groups of students need programmes adapted and organised to provide access to relevant opportunities, meet their individual needs, and contribute to the development of their awareness of their personal identity and their sense of self-worth. The teachers who identify students with special needs should consult with parents, other teachers, and specialist educators before designing and implementing special learning programmes.
Students with disabilities should be provided with means of access to all school facilities. Search all of TKI. Search community.
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