Theory and Practice in the Education of Teachers

Abstract

COLLEGES of Education have retained, throughout their years of development, a system of concurrent education whereby students combine theoretical work in college with periods of practice in schools. The overall arrangements regarding length of practice are well known: the college studied in this research was typical in having fifteen weeks of practice distributed between each of the three years of the course. Students were on 'school practice' for two weeks in the autumn and three weeks in the summer terms of their first year, four weeks in the summer term of their second year and for six weeks in the spring term of their third year. In addition, most students taught as one of a group for an afternoon a week in one term in their second year. All practices were supervised by college staff.The recommendations of the McNair (1944) Report-that the colleges should supervise the full or half day sessions while the longer periods should be left to the school staffs, thus remedying what appeared to be the defects of the concurrent system-have not been generally adopted, although experiments are being made with such arrangements. It should further be noted that, across the period of this study (from 1961 to 1965), the annual intake of students into the colleges rose from seventeen thousand to over twenty-nine thousand, placing a great strain on the present organizational pattern of teaching practice (Price, 1964). The time seems appropriate, therefore, for an examination of the objectives, attainments and organization of this concurrent course. Theory and practice todayThe interaction between theory courses and teaching practice involves two sets of factors, material and motivational. College work is seen to benefit from dealing with actual problems faced by the students while teaching, while this teaching is enriched by information received in the college. More important, performance in the classroom and lecture is improved because of the student's drive to become a good teacher. Thus the Robbins Report states that'.. for many students, a strongly felt purpose is a great incentive to the education that should accompany training in a liberal profession'. However, neither material conditions nor the influences on motivation are adequately controlled.The analysis that follows is based on a wider examination of the Worcester College of Education in a period of rapid expansion from 1961 to 1965, with certain aspects being followed up beyond this (Shipman, 1965). While the focus was primarily on the social structure of the college, successive intakes of students were followed through their course to investigate the formation and change of attitudes. The attitudes of students were measured by a combination of questionnaires and interviews designed to facilitate cross checking of responses from the same students and to find out why contradictory replies were made. The questionnaire on which Table 1 is based was filled in by students in all years. The third year group filled it in again after leaving, when they had been teaching ...

Pre-Service Teachers' Metaphors of Teaching and Literacy

“…Two participants chose political metaphors to describe their metaphor of literacy. (Authors, 2005;Shipman, 1967;Zeichner & Tabachnick, 1981). Therefore, our findings were incongruous with previous research since 44% of our preservice teachers seemed open to program ideas and related their metaphors to course content.…”

“…Zeichner and Tabachnick (1981) looked at the literature regarding the effects of teacher education programs and learned that university preparation has minimal impact. Shipman (1967) concluded there was a lack of college influence; the pre-service teachers possibly aligned their opinions with the prevailing university culture in a veneer-type layer to insulate themselves, but there was no real change. Authors (2005) found the persistence of ideas that beginning teachers bring to their university preparation and those beliefs extend into actual classroom practice.…”

Early Changes in Teacher Attitude

“…Shipman (1966Shipman ( , 1967 has reported similar findings, but he suggests that the changes that occur during training are really only superficial. Students, Shipman says, employ 'impression management' to insulate them from college influence and to retain the attitudes they entered with, attitudes more in line with those found in schools than those the training institution would like to transmit (Shipman, 1967, p. 209).…”

The Role of the Primary and Secondary School Teacher

“…Research has concentrated on one particular age level (Steele, 1958); or with a particular issue such as corporal punishment (Kissack, 1958); or with an examination of attitudes towards educational beliefs and practices, without specifying particular age levels (Butcher, 1965;Evans, 1967;Herbert and Turnbull, 1963;Dickson, 1965;Mclntyre and Morrison, 1967;Finlayson and Cohen, 1967;Shipman, 1967). There is, in these studies, a general consensus that students preparing to teach younger children tend to hold a more liberal, child-centred view of the role than students preparing to teach older children, but there have been no investigations into the degree and nature of differences between primary and secondary teacher role conceptions.…”