The changing
teaching profession and you
A teacher named Ashley
reflects: She looked around the classroom, enjoying a blessed moment of quiet
after the students left at the end of the day. “Ashley, the teacher, that’s me”,
she said proudly to the empty room. “But why am I doing this?” she asked
herself quietly—and realized she wasn’t always sure of the answer. But then she
remembered one reason: she was teaching for Nadia, who
sat at the table to the left,
always smiled so well and always (well, usually) tried hard. And another reason:
she was teaching for Lincoln, tired old Lincoln, who needed her help more than
he realized. She remembered twenty other reasons—twenty other students. And one
last reason: she was also teaching for herself, challenging herself to see if
she really could keep up with twenty-two young
people at once, and really
accomplish something worthwhile with them. She was teaching so she could keep
growing as a person, keep connecting with others, keep learning new ideas. That’s
why she was teaching.
The joys of teaching
Why be a teacher? The short answer is easy:
• to witness the diversity of growth in young people, and
their joy in learning
• to encourage lifelong learning—both for yourself and for
others
• to experience the challenge of devising and doing
interesting, exciting activities for the young
There is, of course, more than this to be said about the
value of teaching. Consider, for instance, the “young people” referred to
above. In one class they could be six years old; in another they could be
sixteen, or even older. They could be rich, poor, or somewhere in between. They
could come from any ethnic background. Their first language could be English,
or something else. There are all sorts of possibilities. But whoever the
particular students are, they will have potential as human beings: talents and
personal qualities—possibly not yet realized— that can contribute to society,
whether as leaders, experts, or supporters of others. A teacher's job—in fact a
teacher's privilege—is to help
particular “young people” to realize their potential. Another teacher reflects: Nathan paused for a deep breath before
speaking to me. “It’s not like I expected
it to be,” he said. “I’ve got five kids who speak English as a second language.
I didn’t expect that. I’ve got
two, maybe three, with reading disabilities, and one of them has a part-time
aide. I’ve
had to learn more about using
computers than I ever expected—they’re a lot of curriculum materials online
now, and the computers help the kids that need more practice or who finish
activities early. I’m doing more screening and testing of kids than I expected,
and it all takes time away from teaching.
1. The changing teaching profession and you “But it’s not all surprises. I expected to
be able to ‘light a fire’ under kids about learning to read. And that has actually happened, at least
sometimes with some children!” As a teacher, you will be able to do this
by laying groundwork for lifelong
learning. You will not teach any one
student forever, of course, but you will often work with
them long enough to convey a crucial message: that there is much in life to
learn—more in fact than any one teacher or school can provide in a lifetime.
The knowledge may be about science, math, or learning to read; the skills may
be sports, music, or art anything. Whatever you teach, its immensity can be a
source of curiosity, wonder and excitement. It can be a reason to be optimistic
about life in general and about your students in particular. Learning, when
properly understood, is never-ending, even though it often focuses on
short-term, immediate concerns. As a teacher, you will have an advantage not
shared by every member of society, namely the excuse not only to teach valuable
knowledge and skills, but to point students beyond what they will be able to learn from you. As an old
limerick put it (before the days of gender-balanced language), “The world is
full of such a plenty of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” Jennifer Fuller, a third teacher reflects: “OK”,
suddenly getting businesslike in her tone. “Here’s my typical day teaching tenth grade: I get up
at 6:30, have a quick breakfast, get to school by 7:45 if the
traffic’s not bad. Then I
check my email—usually there’s a little stuff from the principal or some other administrator,
may be one or two from parents concerned because their child is doing poorly in
one of my classes, maybe one or two from students—“I’m going to be sick today,
Ms Fuller!”—that sort of thing. Now it’s 8:15 and I have two hours before my
first class—this term I teach only biology, and I only teach periods 2, 3, and
5. Maybe I have marking to do before class, or maybe I have to get a lab demonstration
ready. Or maybe we all have to troupe down to the library for a staff meeting (groan…).
Whatever I don’t finish in the morning, I have to finish after school. But that’s
also when I meet with the Ecology Club (I’m the faculty advisor), so I might
have to finish stuff in the evening. I
try not to do it then, but a
lot of times I have to. But I always quit by 9:00—that’s always when I watch TV
for an hour, or just “vegetate ” with a book.” Whatever you teach, you will be able to feel the
satisfaction of designing and orchestrating complex activities that communicate
new ideas and skills effectively. The challenge is attractive to many teachers,
because that is where they exercise judgment and “artistry” the most freely and
frequently. Your students will depend on your skill at planning and managing,
though sometimes without realizing how much they do so. Teachers will need you
to know how to explain ideas
clearly, to present new materials in a sensible sequence and at an appropriate
pace, to point out connections
between their new learning and their prior experiences. Although these skills
really take a lifetime to
master, they can be practiced successfully even by beginning teachers, and they
do improve steadily with continued
teaching over time. Right from the start, though, skill at design and
communication of curriculum is one of the major “perks” of the job. The very complexity of classroom
life virtually guarantees that teaching never needs to get boring. Something new and exciting is bound to occur
just when you least expect it. A student shows an insight that you never expected
to see—or fails to show one that you were sure he had. An activity goes better
than expected—or worse, or merely differently. You understand for the first
time why a particular student behaves as she does, and begin thinking of how to
respond to the student's behavior more helpfully in the future. After teaching
a particular
9
learning objective several times, you realize that you
understand it differently than the first time you taught it. And so on. The job
never stays the same; it evolves continually. As long as you keep teaching, you
will have a job with novelty.
Are there also challenges to teaching?
Here, too, the simple answer is “yes”. Every joy of
teaching has a possible frustration related to it. You may wish to make a
positive difference in students' lives, but you may also have trouble reaching
individuals. A student seems
not to learn much, or to be unmotivated, or unfriendly,
or whatever. And some teaching problems can be subtle: when you call attention
to the wonderful immensity of an area of knowledge, you might accidentally discourage a
student by implying that the student can never learn “enough”.
The complexity of designing and implementing instruction can sometimes seem
overwhelming, instead of satisfying. Unexpected events in your classroom can become
chaos rather than an attractive novelty. To paraphrase a popular self-help
book, sometimes “bad things happen to good teachers” (Kushner, 1983). But as in
the rest of life, the “bad things” of teaching do not negate the value of the good. If anything, the undesired
events make the good, desired ones even more satisfying, and render the work of
teaching all the more valuable. As you will see throughout this book, there are
resources for maximizing the good, the valuable, and the satisfying. You can
bring these resources to your work, along with your growing
professional knowledge and a healthy dose of common
sense. In this sense you will not need to “go it alone” in learning to teach
well. You will, however, be
personally responsible for becoming and remaining the best teacher that you can
possibly be; the only person who can make that happen will be you. Many of the resources for making
this happen are described in this book in the chapters ahead.
Teaching is different from in the past
In the past decade or two teaching has changed
significantly, so much in fact that schools may not be what some of us remember
from our own childhood. Changes have affected both the opportunities and the
challenges of teaching, as well as the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed
to prepare for a teaching career. The changes have influenced much of the
content of this book. To see what we mean, look briefly at four new trends in
education, at how they have changed what teachers do, and at how you will
therefore need to prepare to teach:
• increased diversity: there are more differences among students
than there used to be. Diversity has made teaching more fulfilling as a career,
but also made more challenging in certain respects.
• * increased instructional technology: classrooms,
schools, and students use computers more often today than in the past for
research, writing, communicating, and keeping records. Technology has created new
ways for students to learn (for example, this textbook would not be possible
without Internet technology!). It has also altered how teachers can teach most
effectively, and even raised issues about what constitutes “true” teaching and
learning.
• greater accountability in education: both the public and educators themselves
pay more attention than in the past to how to assess (or provide evidence for)
learning and good quality teaching. The attention has increased the importance
of education to the public (a good thing) and improved education for some students.
But it has also created new constraints on what teachers teach and what
students learn.
1. The changing teaching profession and you
• increased professionalism of teachers: Now more than ever, teachers are able to
assess the quality of their own work as well as that of colleagues, and to take
steps to improve it when necessary. Professionalism improves teaching, but by
creating higher standards of practice it also creates greater worries about
whether particular teachers and schools are “good enough”. How do these changes
show up in the daily life of classrooms? The answer depends partly on where you
teach;
circumstances differ among schools, cities, and even
whole societies. Some clues about the effects of the trends on classroom life
can be found, however, by considering one particular case—the changes happening
in North America.
New trend #1: diversity in students
Students have, of course, always been diverse. Whether in
the past or in the present day, students learn at unique paces, show unique
personalities, and learn in their own ways. In recent decades, though, the
forms and extent of diversity have increased. Now more than ever, teachers are
likely to serve students from diverse language backgrounds, to serve more
individuals with special educational needs, and to teach students either
younger and older than in the past.
Language diversity
Take the case of language diversity. In the United
States, about 40 million people, or 14 per cent of the population are Hispanic.
About 20 per cent of these speak primarily Spanish, and approximately another
50 per cent speak only limited English (United States Census Bureau, 2005). The
educators responsible for the children in this group need to accommodate
instruction to these students somehow. Part of the solution, of course, is to arrange
specialized second-language teachers and classes. But adjustment must also
happen in “regular” classrooms of various grade levels and subjects. Classroom
teachers must learn to communicate with students whose English language
background is limited, at the same time that the students themselves are
learning to use English more fluently (Pitt, 2005). Since relatively few
teachers are Hispanic or speak fluent Spanish, the adjustments can sometimes be
a challenge. Teachers must plan lessons and tasks that students actually
understand. At the same time teachers must also keep track of the major learning
goals of the curriculum. In Chapter 4 (“Student Diversity”) and Chapter 10 (“Planning
Instruction”), some strategies for doing so are described. As you
gain experience teaching, you will no doubt find
additional strategies and resources (Gebhard, 2006), especially if second-language
learners become an important part of your classes.
Diversity of special
educational needs
Another factor making classroom increasingly diverse has
been the inclusion of students with disabilities into classrooms with
non-disabled peers. In the United States the trend began in the 1970s, but
accelerated with the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
in 1975, and again when the Act was amended in 2004 (United States Government
Printing Office, 2005). In Canada similar legislation was passed in individual
provinces during the same general time period. The laws guarantee free,
appropriate education for children with disabilities
of any kind—whether the impairment is physical,
cognitive, emotional, or behavioral. The laws also recognize that such students
need special supports in order to learn or function effectively in a classroom
with non-disabled peers,
so they provide for special services (for example,
teaching assistants) and procedures for making individualized educational plans
for students with disabilities.
11
As a result of these changes, most American and Canadian
teachers are likely to have at least a few students with special educational
needs, even if they are not trained as special education teachers or have had
no prior personal experience with people with disabilities. Classroom teachers
are also likely to work as part of a professional team focused on helping these
students to learn as well as possible and to participate in the life of the
school. The trend toward inclusion is definitely new compared to circumstances
just a generation or two ago. It raises new challenges
about planning instruction (such as how is a teacher to
find time to plan for individuals?), and philosophical questions about the very
nature of education (such as what in the curriculum is truly important to
learn?). These questions will come up again in Chapter 5, where we discuss
teaching students with special educational needs.
Lifelong learning
The diversity of modern classrooms is not limited to
language or disabilities. Another recent change has been the broadening simply
of the age range of individuals who count as “students”. In many nations of the
world, half or
most of all three- and four-year-olds attend some form of
educational program, either part-time preschool or fulltime child care
(National Institute for Early Education Research, 2006). In North America some
public school divisions have moved toward including nursery or preschool
programs as a newer “grade level” preceding kindergarten. Others have expanded
the hours of kindergarten (itself considered a “new” program early in the 20th
century) to span a full-day program.
The obvious differences in maturity between preschoolers
and older children lead most teachers of the very young to use flexible,
open-ended plans and teaching strategies, and to develop more personal or
family-like relationships with their young “students” than typical with older
students (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997). Just as important, though, are the
educational and philosophical issues that early childhood education has brought
to public attention. Some educational critics ask whether preschool and day care
programs risk becoming inappropriate
substitutes for families. Other educators suggest, in contrast, that teachers
of older students can learn from the flexibility and open-ended approach common
in early childhood education. For teachers of any grade level, it is a debate
that cannot be avoided completely or permanently. In this book, it reappears in
Chapter 3, where
I discuss students’ development—their major long-term,
changes in skills, knowledge, and attitudes. The other end of the age spectrum
has also expanded. Many individuals take courses well into adulthood even if they
do not attend formal university or college. Adult education, as it is sometimes called, often takes place in
workplaces, but it often also happens in public high schools or at local
community colleges or universities. Some adult students may be completing high
school credentials that they missed earlier in their lives, but often the
students have other purposes that are even more focused,
such as learning a trade-related skill. The teachers of adult students have to
adjust their instructional strategies and relationships with students so as to
challenge and respect their special strengths and constraints as adults (Bash,
2005). The students’ maturity often means that they have had life experiences
that enhance and motivate their learning. But it may also mean that they have
significant personal responsibilities—such as parenting or a full-time job—which
compete for study time, and that make them impatient with teaching that is
irrelevant to their personal goals or needs. These advantages and constraints
also occur to a lesser extent among “regular” high school students. Even
secondary school teachers must ask, how they can make sure that instruction
does not waste students’ time, and how they can make it truly efficient,
effective, and valuable. Elsewhere in this book (especially in Chapters 9
through 11, about assessment and instruction), we discuss
these questions from a number of perspectives.
1. The changing teaching profession and you
New trend #2: using technology to support learning For
most teachers, “technology” means using computers and the Internet as resources
for teaching and learning. These tools have greatly increased the amount and
range of information available to students, even if their benefits have
sometimes been exaggerated in media reports (Cuban, 2001). With the Internet,
it is now relatively easy to
access up-to-date information on practically any subject
imaginable, often with pictures, video clips, and audio to accompany them. It
would seem not only that the Internet and its associated technologies have the
potential to transform traditional school-based learning, but also that they
have in fact begun to do so.
For a variety of reasons, however, technology has not
always been integrated into teachers’ practices very thoroughly (Haertel &
Means, 2003). One reason is practical: in many societies and regions,
classrooms contain only one or two computers at most, and many schools have at
best only limited access to the Internet. Waiting for a turn on the computer or
arranging to visit a computer lab or school library limits how much students
use the Internet, no matter how valuable the Internet may be. In such cases,
furthermore, computers tend to function in
relatively traditional ways that do not take full
advantage of the Internet: as a word processor (a “fancy typewriter”), for
example, or as a reference book similar to an encyclopedia. Even so,
single-computer classrooms create new possibilities and challenges for
teachers. A single computer can be used, for example, to present upcoming
assignments or supplementary material to students, either one at a time
or small groups. In functioning in this way, the computer
gives students more flexibility about when to finish old tasks or to begin new
ones. A single computer can also enrich the learning of individual students
with special interests or motivation. And it can provide additional review to
students who need extra help. These changes are not dramatic, but they lead to
important revisions in teachers’ roles: they move teachers away from simply delivering
information to students, and toward facilitating students’ own constructions of
knowledge. A shift from “full-frontal teaching” to “guide on the side” becomes
easier as the amount and use of computer and Internet technologies increases.
If a school (or better yet, a classroom) has numerous computers with full
Internet access, then students’ can in principle direct their own learning more
independently than if computers are scarce
commodities. With ample technology available, teachers
can focus much more on helping individuals in developing and carrying out
learning plans, as well as on assisting individuals with special learning
problems. In these ways a strong shift to computers and the Internet can change
a teacher’s role significantly, and make the teacher more effective. But
technology also brings some challenges, or even creates problems. It costs
money to equip classrooms and schools fully: often that money is scarce, and
may therefore mean depriving students of other valuable resources, like
additional staff or additional books and supplies. Other challenges are less
tangible. In using the Internet, for example, students need help in sorting out
trustworthy information or websites from the “fluff”, websites that are unreliable
or even damaging (Seiter, 2005). Providing this help can sometimes be
challenging even for experienced teachers. And some educational activities
simply do not lend themselves to computerized learning—sports, for example,
driver education, or choral practice. As a new teacher, therefore, you will
need not only to assess what technologies are possible in your particular
classroom, but also what will actually be assisted by new technologies. Then be
prepared for your decisions to affect how
you teach—the ways you work with students.
13
New trend #3: accountability in education
In recent years, the public and its leaders have
increasingly expected teachers and students to be accountable for their work, meaning that schools and teachers
are held responsible for implementing particular curricula and goals, and that
students are held responsible for learning particular knowledge. The trend
toward accountability has increased the legal requirements for becoming and
(sometimes) remaining certified as a teacher. In the United States in
particular, preservice teachers need more subject-area and education-related
courses than in the past.
They must also spend more time practice teaching than in
the past, and they must pass one or more examinations of knowledge of subject
matter and teaching strategies. The specifics of these requirements vary among
regions, but the general trend—toward more numerous and “higher” levels of
requirements—has occurred broadly throughout the English-speaking world. The
changes obviously affect individuals’ experiences of becoming a teacher— especially
the speed and cost of doing so. Public accountability has led to increased use
of high-stakes testing, which
are tests taken by all students in a district or region that have important
consequences for students' further education (Fuhrman & Elmore, 2004).
High-stakes tests may influence grades that students
receive in courses or determine whether students graduate or continue to the
next level of schooling. The tests are often a mixture of essay and
structured-response questions (such as multiple-choice items), and raise
important issues about what teachers should teach, as well as how (and whether)
teachers should help students to pass the examinations. It also raises issues
about whether high-stakes testing is fair to all students and consistent with
other ideals of public education, such as giving students the best possible
start in life instead of disqualifying them from educational opportunities.
Furthermore, since the results of high-stakes tests are sometimes also used to
evaluate the performance of teachers, schools, or school districts,insuring
students’ success on them becomes an obvious concern for teachers—one that affects instructional decisions
on a daily basis. For this reason we discuss the purpose, nature, and effects
of high-stakes tests in detail in
Chapter 12.
New trend #4: increased professionalism of teachers
Whatever your reactions to the first three trends, it is
important to realize that they have contributed to a fourth trend, an increase
in professionalism of teachers.
By most definitions, an occupation (like medicine or law—or in this case teaching)
is a profession if its members take personal responsibility for the quality of
their work, hold each other accountable for its quality, and recognize and
require special training in order to practice it. By this definition, teaching
has definitely become more professional
than in the past (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2005). Increased expectations of
achievement by students mean that teachers have increased responsibility not only
for their students’ academic success, but also for their own development as teachers.
Becoming a new teacher now requires more
specialized work than in the past, as reflected in the increased
requirements for certification and licensing in many societies and regions. The
increased requirements are partly a response to the complexities created by the
increasing diversity of students and increasing use of technology in
classrooms. Greater professionalism has also been encouraged by initiatives
from educators themselves to study and improve their own practice. One way to
do so, for example, is through action research (sometimes also called teacher
research), a form of investigation carried out by teachers about their own
students or their own teaching.
1. The changing teaching profession and you
Action research studies lead to concrete decisions that
improve teaching and learning in particular educational contexts (Mertler,
2006; Stringer, 2004). The studies can take many forms, but here are a few
brief examples:
• How precisely do individual children learn to read? In an
action research study, the teacher might observe and track one child’s reading
progress carefully for an extended time. From the observations she can get clues
about how to help not only that particular child to read better, but also other
children in her class or even in colleagues’ classes.
• Does it really matter if a high school social studies
teacher uses more, rather than fewer, open-ended questions? As an action of
research study, the teacher might videotape his own lessons, and systematically
compare students’ responses to his open-ended questions compared to their
responses to more closed questions (the ones with more fixed answers). The analysis
might suggest when and how much it is indeed desirable to use open-ended
questions.
• Can an art teacher actually entice students to take more
creative risks with their drawings? As an action research study, the teacher
might examine the students’ drawings carefully for signs of visual novelty and innovation,
and then see if the signs increase if she encourages novelty and innovation
explicitly.
REFERENCE
Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton(2009), Educational
Psychology Second Edition, Copyright 2009 © Kelvin Seifert
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