Educating Preservice Teachers: The State of Affairs
Preservice Teacher Education Programs Under the Spotlight
Across the country, schools of education and teacher education programs are the focus of policymakers and legislators. Schools of education can respond to the many pressures and queries by first aligning their programs with established national standards delineated for the preparation of teachers responsible for students' literacy development. Such standards have been developed by the International Reading Association (1998), National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (2000), and National Council of Teachers of English (1996). Teacher preparation programs also should be aligned with the teacher certification and licensure standards of their individual state departments of education. Most important, those responsible for teacher preparation programs must respond to the queries they receive with sound empirical information that supports the need for developing well-rounded, comprehensive teacher-education programs. This alignment would elevate the status of the teaching profession to one with standards that produce highly qualified teachers. These teachers would then be prepared to meet the challenges of eliminating reading failure and the academic achievement gap across the country.
To meet these challenges, the science and art of teaching should be carefully analyzed. Teaching is more than using strategies, best practices, good classroom management, or certain instructional materials. Preservice teachers need to understand the theories of reading and how they are significantly interwoven with strategies, best practices, and instructional materials. Teachers also must have the ability to solve problems and determine individual student needs.
Information in the education field provides insight concerning the need for linking research to practice in teacher education (Zeichner & Liston, 1990). Hollingsworth (1989) and Zeichner and Tabachnick (1981) reveal the importance of theory in producing effective decision-making teachers, who in turn transfer their knowledge of theory into practical teaching experiences. In teacher preparation, however, there have been theoretical debates concerning the value and efficacy of certain theories and their linkage to instructional practice (Aaron, Chall, Durkin, Goodman, & Strickland, 1990a, 1990b). Teacher educators realize the impact of these debates as they strive to prepare prospective reading teachers through preservice teacher-education programs.