From “learning to learn” to “training to teach”: Changing the culture of teacher preparation

1. From “learning to learn” to “training to teach”:Changing the culture of teacher preparation Wing Institute Symposium April 2014

2. 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).

3. “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)

4. Inspiration

5. 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

6. 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

7. Flexner and Teacher Prep Review in context Flexner 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” • 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

8. “An industry of mediocrity”

9. If teacher prep programs aren’t training teachers, what do they think they are doing?

10. 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

11. American culture: The seedbed of developmentalism • Cult of individual • Anti-elitism • Celebration of differences • Practical over academic

12. Variability is the friend of developmentalism Children Classrooms Schools Teachers Districts Curricula Standards 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.

13. 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?”

14. Finding the teacher within You 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. 

15. Indifference to findings of National Reading Panel 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.

16. “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

17. Classroom management training: Seemingly ubiquitous

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

19. Classroom management training: Gaps in the fundamentals

20. 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

22. 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

23. 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 Yusuallydid 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

24. 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.”

25. Future research: Ed schools’ easy A’s Cory Koedel, . http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/905

26. 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.

27. Bottom line: Teacher education inoculating new teachers against evidence-based practice 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.

28. Theory of change of Teacher Prep Review

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. Arthur McKee Managing Director, Teacher Preparation Studies amckee@nctq.org 202.393.0020 x.114