Why We Need a Complete Redesign of Teacher Education.

Abstract

How will we accomplish school reform if beginning teachers are not well prepared to participate in bringing about meaningful change? John Goodlad explains why and teacher training institutions need to join together in a common mission. During 1980s, policymakers trotted out virtually every panacea for school reform ever recommended. Large numbers of educators criticized most of these recommendations as superficial and inadequate. But, by end of decade, policymakers and educators were close to agreement on an impor tant concept: The individual school is a natural and most promising focus for effecting significant improvement.' The idea that school-based educa tional reform requires empowerment of principals and teachers opens way for serious consideration of charge that educational bureaucracy is villain and that decentralized schools of choice are hope of future.2 But regardless of how far one takes concept of decentralizing educational authority, idea of the school as a center of change conjures up a vision of principals and teachers as change-oriented stewards of schools. An accompanying question, however, one that up to now has been on periphery of discourse, is: Are a large percentage of these educators thor oughly grounded in knowledge and skills required to bring about mean ingful change? Judging from research my colleagues and I conducted several years ago on nature of inservice education in school districts, answer is no.3 My recent informal forays into staff development lead to same negative conclusion: The primary focus of district-driven staff development remains teachers' individual teaching competencies, not capability of an entire staff to renew school. The conventional paradigm of staff develop ment lags far behind contemporary