Session Information
SES C 02, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
: It is widely believed that the quality of teachers and teaching are among the most important factors affecting the learning outcomes of students, and the impact of which, goes beyond student academic achievement.
Since our public education always hardly satisfy the demand of our society, mounts of criticisms concentrate on the social system of teacher preparation. And the challenge focus on the quality of teacher. So the questions to teacher educators and policy makers are who is prepared teachers, what kind of factors determine or affect the process of learning to be a teacher and how can we prepare teachers for the changing context and society.
This paper explores the conflicting visions of teacher education and counterposes two different models of analyzing the process of learning to be a teacher, to find out the possible direction for reflecting the practice and improving the effectiveness of teacher education.
One is the competent standard model, which attains a dominant position in the official, policy-oriented discourse, and popular in the education practices of US, UK, Australia, also China, Thailand, and so on. Through the statutorily enforced standards, it defines learning to teach as the acquisition of a set of common pedagogical skills and subject content knowledge. The process of learning to teach is treated as the easy equation of qualifying to teach.
Another is the sociocultural, situated model of workplace learning proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991), which originated from the conventional apprenticeship professional learning, but now is ideal for learning within institutional education system. They locate learning in increased access to participating in community of practice. Learning, which means “legitimate peripheral participation” , is kind of situated activity. Rogoff(2003, p.37) also points out that “human development is a process in which people transform through their ongoing participation in cultural activities, which in turn contribute to changes in their cultural communities across generations”.
This paper tries to examine the differences between these two models theoretically, reified with Chinese experiences. It questions the value of those discrete assessment criteria items, which is narrowing the conception of the teacher’s role; and put the hope on the inspiration from situated learning theory ---situates students learning in the form of social engagement, school-based learning; provides the proper social and cultural context for learning to take place.
In fact, China have take some measures to reform or restructure the teaching practice system of preservice teacher education from 2006, although it is initiated by the shortage of teaching force in rural area. There are some good experience and also some arising problems. This paper will also look into these.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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