Studying Teacher Education Programs Enriching and Enlarging the Inquiry

8/6/2019 Studying Teacher Education Programs Enriching and Enlarging the Inquiry

1/21

The SAGE Handbook forResearch in Education

Studying Teacher Education Programs:Enriching and Enlarging the Inquiry

Contributors: Clifton F. ConradRonald C. SerlinPrint Pub. Date: 2006Print ISBN: 9781412906401Online ISBN: 9781412973359DOI: 10.4135/9781412973359Print pages: 78-90

This PDF was generated from SAGE Research Methods Online. Please note, thepagination does not follow the pagination of the print book.


2/21

SRMO Beta TesterCopyright 2010 Sage Publications, Inc.

Page 2 of 21 The SAGE Handbook for Research in Education:Studying Teacher Education Programs: Enriching

and Enlarging the InquirySage Research Methods Online

Studying Teacher Education Programs:Enriching and Enlarging the InquiryThis chapter builds on and enlarges the study of an enduring problem in teachereducation, namely, the nature and impact of different kinds of teacher educationprograms at the preservice level. It reviews the ways in which the effects of differentteacher education programs have been studied in the past, and it offers suggestionsfor how to conceptualize and conduct studies that (a) illuminate the nature and impactof different approaches to educating teachers and (b) differentiate selection effects

and influences of teaching and policy contexts from those of the teacher educationprograms. The integration of quantitative and qualitative research methods withincoherent research programs is recommended as the optimal way in which to illuminatethe complexity and impact of specific aspects of various pathways into teaching.

Teacher Education As A Field Of StudyI begin by examining the nature of research in teacher education as a whole anddescribing the major genres of research in the field. I then focus on one particular

aspect of the research, namely, studies of teacher education programs. Following adiscussion of problems with existing research on teacher education programs, I drawon the work of the American Educational Research Association's (AERA) Panel onResearch and Teacher Education (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2005; Zeichner, 1999) tooffer suggestions for how to strengthen this research so that it will be better able toilluminate the impact of different pathways into teaching on teachers and their pupils.

Compared with other research areas in education, such as the history of education,the psychology of learning or literacy, and mathematics education, research on teachereducation is a relatively young area of study in the United States. Although therehas been research about teacher education since the early part of the 20th century(Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2005; Zeichner, 1999), only since the 1970s has teachereducation research emerged as a legitimate area of doctoral study in graduate schoolsof education. Prior to 1984 when Division K was founded within AERA, researchers
http://srmo.sagepub.com/http://www.sagepub.com/


3/21




who studied aspects of teacher education either identified solely with the disciplinesin which they received their training (e.g., sociology, history) or identified with a verysmall special interest group within the association (Zeichner, 1999). Now many researchuniversities in the United States have at least one doctoral-level course in the studyof teacher education, and several institutions have full-fledged doctoral programs thatinclude a series of courses examining the research literature in the field.

During its early phases, teacher education research was dominated by surveys ofwhat practices existed in the field (e.g., Conant, 1963; Evenden, 1933), studies ofchanges in student teacher attitudes during their participation in teacher educationprograms (Cyphert & Spaights, 1964), and studies that indirectly sought to identify

the characteristics of good teachers by surveying those in the field about what traitsand abilities good teachers possessed (e.g., Barr, 1929; Charters & Waples, 1929).There was very little direct study of the process of teacher education at this early stage(Denemark & Macdonald, 1967).

Several scholars have attempted to identify the different programs of research incontemporary research concerning preservice teacher education. For example, Koehler(1985) identified six different categories of research in the field: (1) studies of theskills, competencies, and attitudes of practicing classroom teachers that reflect onpreservice teacher education; (2) studies of the skills, competencies, and attitudes ofteacher education students that reflect either on their current or past education or on thefuture quality of the workforce; (3) evaluations of teacher education courses, methodswithin courses, or complete programs; (4) studies of teacher educators; (5) studies ofinstitutions; and (6) studies of studies and research reviews (see also Katz & Raths,1985; Kennedy, 1996; Lanier & Little, 1986; Turner, 1975).

Cochran-Smith & Fries (2005), in an analysis of research syntheses, identify a shift inemphasis in research on preservice teacher education from the late 1950s onward.Their analysis argues that there has been a shift from an emphasis on research onteacher education as a training problem, to research on teacher education as a learningproblem, to research on teadier education as a policy problem, even though all threekinds of research have existed throughout this whole period of time.


4/21




This shifting set of priorities in the research has involved an expansion in researchmethodologies used to study teacher education and in the disciplinary lenses throughwhich teacher education has been viewed. Following the nearly exclusive use ofexperimental and quasi-experimental comparisons of different behavior trainingmethods during the 1960s and early 1970s (Peck & Tucker, 1973), research on teachereducation began to incorporate naturalistic and interpretive methodologies, such asethnography, case study, narrative inquiry, biography, and life history (e.g., Carter,1992; Weber, 1993), as well as various critical, feminist, and poststructural analyses ofdifferent aspects of teacher education (e.g., Britzman, 2003; Giroux & McLaren, 1987;Maher & Rathbone, 1986; Popkewitz, 1998).

In addition to the educational psychology-trained researchers who had dominatedteacher education research up to the 1980s, researchers from other disciplines, suchas sociology, anthropology, history, economics, and philosophy, also began to devotetheir attention to the study of teacher education (e.g., Clifford & Guthrie, 1988; Labaree,2004; Steiner, 2004). In addition to a concern with the impact of teacher educationon the behavior of teachers in classrooms (Gage & Winne, 1975), researchers beganto incorporate outcomes that addressed the cognitive, moral, and ethical aspects ofteacher development (e.g., Feiman-Nemser, 1983; Zeichner & Gore, 1990) and focusedon the connections between various policy levers, such as teacher testing and courserequirements, and a variety of outcomes related to teacher quality and pupil learning

(e.g., Mitchell, Robinson, Plake, & Knowles, 2001). Since the early 1990s, much ofthe research on teacher education has involved self-studies by teacher educators oftheir own practices and programs (Loughran, Harris, Laboskey, & Russell, 2004). Onereason for the prevalence of self-study research is the lack of access to funding forlarger-scale studies of multiple programs (Zeichner, 2005). Teacher educators whohave conducted these studies argue, however, that they and their programs benefitgreatly from these inquiries (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 1998) and that self-study researchprovides a unique perspective on teacher education not obtainable from the outside(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993).

This chapter discusses a particular segment of research in teacher education that hasconnections to all three of Cochran-Smith and Fries's (2005) categories of researchemphasistraining, learning, and policyand that is a subset of Koehler's thirdresearch category. Specifically, I discuss the study of the nature and impact of different


5/21




preservice teacher education program models or pathways into teaching since circa1985, when this became a major policy issue in the United States. Before doing this, Iplace this body of research on teacher education programs within my own version of thefield of teacher education research.

Varieties Of Current Research OnPreservice Teacher EducationMy own view of the current variety of research on preservice teacher education in the

United States is based on a reformulation of the framework that I presented in my vice-presidential address to AERA in 1998 (Zeichner, 1999). There are several major kindsof research that have been focused on the preservice education of teachers in theUnited States. These include (a) surveys of current practices; (b) conceptual, historical,and comparative studies of teacher education; (c) studies of the process of learningto teach; (d) studies of teacher education participants, that is, teacher educators andteacher candidates; and (e) studies of the nature and impact of teacher education(as a whole; specific programs, courses, and program components; and instructionalstrategies) and of policies that affect teacher education. Following a brief descriptionof each of these research genres, I discuss the central issue for this chapter of doing

empirical research on teacher education programs.The first type of contemporary research on teacher education consists of largelydescriptive survey studies that provide information to the research, policy, andpractitioner communities about the current status of teacher education in the UnitedStates and sometimes in comparison with other countries. This includes both large-scale national studies that seek to identify patterns in teacher education throughoutthe nation and studies that focus on documenting teacher education in specific regionsor in particular specialty areas such as elementary education and bilingual education.Prominent examples of this work include the Research About Teacher Education(RATE) studies, sponsored by the American Association of Colleges for TeacherEducation beginning in 1987, which described various characteristics of U.S. teachereducation programs, teacher candidates, and teacher educators (Howey, 1997); regularcompilations of teacher education policies in different states such as the National


6/21




Center for Educational Information annual reports on alternative teacher certificationpolicies (e.g., Feistritzer, 2004); the ERIC Clearinghouse on Teacher Education'sreports about the status of professional development school partnerships (Abdal-Haqq,1995); and the Educational Testing Service's report on teacher education policies indifferent countries (Wang, Coleman, Coley, & Phelps, 2003).

The second major category of research on teacher education consists of conceptual,historical, and comparative studies that go beyond presenting demographic data andexamine various issues of teacher education through different theoretical lenses. onesignificant line of conceptual research in teacher education has sought to identifyand discuss substantively different approaches to teacher education. This work has

distinguished teacher education programs from one another based on the visions ofteaching, learning, schooling, and society that they emphasized. Several differentversions of alternative orientations to teacher education have been proposed byscholars in different countries (e.g., Avalos, 1991; Feiman-Nemser, 1990; Kirk, 1986;Liston & Zeichner, 1991; Zeichner, 2003).

In addition to the work on different orientations to teacher education, there have beenphilosophical analyses of the different tensions in teacher education, such as thetension between theory and practice and that between liberal and technical, as wellas critical analyses of some of what McWilliam (1994) referred to as the folkloricdiscourses of teacher education, for example, that coherent programs, more schoolexperience, and more academic content courses are necessarily desirable (Buchmann& Floden, 1993; Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985; McDiarmid, 1992). There has alsobeen a considerable amount of effort devoted to conceptual analyses of various popularslogans in teacher education that have dominated the discourse such as reflectiveteaching and social justice teacher education (e.g., Valli, 1993). In addition, there havebeen some studies that analyzed the content of the teacher education curriculum indifferent programs or teacher education textbooks or course assignments in terms ofthe academic rigor associated with them and/or in relation to the biases they contain(e.g., Steiner, 2004; Zeichner, 1988).

Another aspect of conceptual work in teacher education has been analyses of theimpact of external influences on teacher education programs such as state and federalgovernment policies, philanthropic foundations, commercial publishers, test designers,


7/21




national program accreditation standards, and economic factors. Examples of this workinclude Labaree's (2004) analyses of the effect of market forces on the character andquality of teacher education programs, Early's (2000) analysis of federal policymaking inthe United States, and Popkewitz's (1993) international research project that examinedthe role of the state in teacher education in several different countries. Some of thiswork has employed critical, postructural, and feminist lenses to analyze the variousways in which patterns of reasoning, norms, and patterns of communication (e.g., thosestressing technical and managerial definitions of teaching) have been subtly imposed onteacher education structuring in certain possibilities while filtering out others (e.g., Gore,1993; McWilliam, 1994).

There has also been a great deal of important conceptual and empirical work doneunder the label of multicultural teacher education that has soundly critiqued currentpractices in teacher education programs for their lack of attention to various aspectsof cultural diversity, documented the ineffectiveness of much of what is currently beingdone in this area, and offered analyses as to why these problems exist and what can bedone about them (e.g., Irvine, 2003; Villegas & Lucas, 2002).

Finally, within the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in historicalstudies of teacher education that have provided new and important insights into the roleof various factors such as the feminization of teaching and the social class backgroundsof teachers and teacher educators, developments in higher education generally, and thedevelopment of teacher education in the United States. Some of this work has linkedthe continued marginal status of teacher education in U.S. universities to the femalenature of the occupation (Clifford & Guthrie, 1988; Herbst, 1989), to differences in socialclass background between teacher education faculty and other faculty (Lanier & Little,1986), and to reward systems that discourage faculty from working in a sustained wayin teacher education programs (Liston, 1995).

The third major category of research in teacher education is work that has soughtto illuminate the processes of learning to teach in different settings. These studies(e.g., Borko & Putnam, 1996; Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Feiman-Nemser& Remillard, 1996; Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998) have used a variety ofdisciplinary frameworks to examine how prospective teachers knowledge, skills, anddispositions are influenced by their participation in a teacher education program or by


8/21




particular components of a teacher education program such as student teaching. Thiswork has shown how difficult it is to change the often tacit beliefs, understandings,and worldviews that students bring to teacher education programs. In some cases, wehave learned that prospective teachers transform the messages given in their programsto fit their preconceptions (e.g., Holt-Reynolds, 1992). This work has begun to tell ussome things about how to increase the impact of a teacher education program onprospective teachers through means such as the organization of students into cohortgroups, more connected relationships between schools and university-based courses,and the use of particular instructional strategies under certain conditions such ascommunity field experiences, portfolio development, and action research. There havebeen an increasing number of longitudinal studies that follow candidates through theirprograms and into their early years of teaching, tracking their learning and attempting toattribute changes detected to various influences in and outside of the teacher educationprograms (e.g., Grossman et al., 2000; Kennedy, 1998). Some of this work has resultedin the generation of theories about the process of learning to teach (e.g., Grossman,Smagorinsky, & Valencia, 1999).

The fourth area of research on teacher education includes studies that focus onthe participants in teacher education programs, namely, the candidates and theirteacher educators. These studies go beyond merely describing the characteristicsof these groups and attempt to identify the consequences of these characteristics.

For example, Zumwalt and Craig (2005a, 2005b) analyzed the demographic andquality indicators associated with candidates in preservice teacher education programsin the United States and attempted to link particular characteristics to a variety ofindicators associated with teacher quality and student learning. Lanier and Little (1986)discussed the consequences of the social class and gender patterns that exist amongteacher educators for the status of teacher education in universities and for the teachereducation curriculum.

The final major area of research in teacher education is concerned with illuminatingthe nature and impact of different approaches to educating teachers at the preservicelevel and of policies that are affecting these approaches. For many years, there havebeen debates about the efficacy of different kinds of teacher education programs (e.g.,Denemark & Nutter, 1984; Hawley, 1987; Tom, 1987; Von Schlichten, 1958), and duringrecent years, many alternatives to university- and college-based teacher education


9/21




programs have emerged and been given legitimacy by state education departments,including private for-profit programs (e.g., Dill, 1996; Morey, 2001). Although muchof the discourse about the value of different pathways into teaching does not drawon evidence from empirical research, a body of research that emerged during themid-1980s has examined the consequences for teachers and/or their pupils of enteringteaching through different kinds of programs. There has also been a body of workfocusing on the nature and impact of different program components, such as methodsand foundations courses, and field experiences or specific instructional strategies,such as microteaching, action research, and case studies on different aspects ofteacher quality and/or pupil learning (e.g., Clift & Brady, 2005; Floden & Meniketti,2005; Grossman, 2005). Finally, a small body of research has focused on the impactof particular teacher education policies such as those related to teacher testing andprogram accreditation (Wilson & Youngs, 2005). This chapter focuses on researchrelated to teacher education programs. Because of the variety of ways that now existfor people to enter teaching, it is important to begin to develop a better understandingof the consequences of entering teaching through different kinds of teacher educationprograms. As is shown in what follows, currently there is very little solid research aboutthe impact of different pathways into teaching that can inform policy and practice.

The Idea Of A Teacher Education ProgramOne of the most important steps in doing research about teacher education programsis to define what is meant by a program type. Teacher education programs have beendistinguished from one another in several different ways in the literature. The mostcommon distinction used in research studies has been in terms of the structure of aprogram. Programs have been distinguished from one another by their length (e.g., 4years, 5 years), by when they are offered (e.g., graduate level, undergraduate level),and by the institutions that sponsor them (e.g., college or university, school district,state education department, for-profit company). Programs have also sometimes beendefined in terms of their admissions requirements and curricular emphases such as

the amount of coursework in the arts and sciences versus education courses, whetherthey require a major in an academic subject, and the amount of time spent working inschools versus spent taking classes.


10/21




As mentioned earlier, teacher education programs have also been distinguished fromone another in terms of their conceptual orientations (e.g., Feiman-Nemser, 1990;Liston & Zeichner, 1991) or whether they have coherent themes that tie togetherthe various program components (Barnes, 1987). Others have defined programs interms of whether or not they have particular features such as student cohort groupsand professional development school partnerships (Arends & Winitzky, 1996). Veryfew dimensions beyond the general structural labels (e.g., graduate/undergraduate,alternative/traditional) have been used by researchers who have studied the nature andimpact of programs.

The Inadequacy Of Defining TeacherEducation Programs By Structural LabelsThere are several reasons why defining a teacher education program solely by astructural label, such as alternative or traditional, is a problem. First, Goodlad's (1990)national study of teacher education programs documented the ways in which the typeof institution in which a teacher education program is located influences the substanceof the program. Goodlad and his collaborators studied programs in 29 institutionsacross the United States that were representative of the different kinds of higher

education institutions that offer teacher education such as liberal arts colleges, regionaluniversities, and research universities. The high degree of institutional influence onteacher education that was found in this study strongly suggests that a 4-year programin a liberal arts college is very different from a 4-year program in a research university,for example, and that institutional type is an important factor in influencing the characterand quality of teacher education programs.

Similarly, differences in state policy contexts with regard to teacher education suggestthat the state in which a program exists also strongly influences the character andquality of the program. For example, a program in Texas, where the state has placedsevere credit limits on professional education courses in teacher education programs,is different from a program in a state such as Wisconsin, which has encouraged theexpansion of the professional education component of programs. In addition, a programin a state that has mandated the national accreditation of teacher education programs,


11/21




such as New York, is not the same as a program in a state that does not requirenational accreditation of teacher education programs.

In addition, the character and quality of teacher education programs and the outcomesassociated with them are also affected by the subject areas for which teachers arebeing prepared to teach. For example, Natriello and Zumwalt (1993) studie d a varietyof alternative and traditional teacher education programs in New Jersey and found thatthe greatest influence on teacher retention for the graduates of the different programswas the subject areas of the programs rather than their structural type (alternative ortraditional). For example, secondary mathematics teachers who had good opportunitiesfor higher-paying jobs outside of education left teaching at much higher rates than

did elementary and English education graduates (see also Murnane, Singer, Willett,Kempe, & Olsen, 1991).

A final limitation in describing teacher education programs by their structural type aloneis that teacher candidates frequently experience their programs in ways that deviatefrom the program labels. For example, during the 1980s, I studied a so-called 5-yearpreservice teacher education program at the university of Florida as part of a nationallongitudinal study of several programs that followed teaching candidates through theirprograms and into their early years of teaching (Kennedy, 1998). We were interested inlearning more about how teachers learned to teach writing and mathematics to diversepupils and the ways in which specific aspects of teacher education contributed to thislearning. One of the things I discovered in this study was that very few of the studentsin this 5-year program actually spent 5 years in the program. Many students spent theirfirst 2 years in various community colleges around the state, and because of the teachershortage in Florida at the time of the study, a significant number of teacher educationstudents left the program early and completed their final student teaching experienceas full-time teachers of record. This movement of students across institutions is not anuncommon occurrence, according to a survey of teacher education students conductedby Howey and Zimpher (1989).

All of these factors mean that it does not make much sense to describe teachereducation programs by only their structural characteristics, such as their length, the typeof institutional sponsorship, and whether it is undergraduate or postgraduate, withoutconsidering things such as the substance of their curricula, the institutional and policy
http://srmo.sagepub.com/http://srmo.sagepub.com/http://www.sagepub.com/


12/21




contexts in which they exist, their admissions requirements, and the characteristicsof teacher candidates. Unfortunately, researchers who have studied and compareddifferent kinds of teacher education programs and their relationships to various kinds ofoutcomes have rarely paid attention to these other factors.

The Empirical Research On TeacherEducation ProgramsBetween 2000 and 2004, Hilary Conklin and I conducted a review of peer-reviewed

empirical studies on teacher education programs published between 1985 and 2004as part of AERA's Panel on Research and Teacher Education that was charged withconducting an impartial and rigorous analysis of the research on various topics inteacher education (Zeichner & Conklin, 2005). In the review, we analyzed 37 studiesthat used a variety of research designs and methodologies and that attempted to linkvarious kinds of teacher education programs to a variety of outcomes associated withteacher quality and pupil learning. Most of the studies were set up as comparisons ofthe outcomes associated with different program models. The studies were grouped intothe following seven categories based on how teacher education programs were definedby researchers:

Studies of 4-year programs versus 5-year programs Studies of state-sponsored alternative programs versus traditional programs Studies of university-sponsored alternative programs versus traditional

programs Studies of school district-sponsored alternative programs versus traditional

university-based programs Studies of Teach for America Comparisons of multiple alternative and traditional programs In-depth case studies of teacher education programs

Because of the complexity of the ways in which teacher education programs differfrom one another, and because of the focus of the research on only a few structuralcharacteristics, we were faced with the problem of defining the teacher education


13/21




programs in a way that would enable us to accumulate knowledge across the individualstudies. We settled on a definition of different kinds of programs that were limited bythe ways in which data were presented in the studies. For example, we defined analternative teacher certification program, which was the most ambiguously definedtype of program in the studies we reviewed, as a program that allows persons to enterthe teaching profession without completing a traditional 4- or 5-year university-basedprogram. This definition included university-based postbaccalaureate programs withinthe category of alternative. Because of the different ways in which researchers haddefined alternative and traditional programs in their studies, this definition did notenable us to use all of the data from the studies in the way we preferred, but it camethe closest to doing so among all of the possible definitions. If the data had beenavailable, we would have preferred to distinguish teacher education programs based ondifferences in their assumptions about what teachers need to know and be able to do tobe effective instructors and how they can best acquire this knowledge and these skills(Stoddart & Floden, 1996). Clearly, there is a need for those who do research aboutteacher education programs to use clearer and more consistent definitions of programdimensions and types.

The studies that we reviewed examined the impact of the different types of teachereducation programs on a variety of outcomes related to teacher quality and studentlearning. These included the numbers of teachers from different programs who entered

teaching following program completion, where they taught (e.g., in schools that weredifficult to staff), teachers projected commitment to teaching as a career, and howlong they actually stayed. There were also a variety of measures of teaching quality,including teachers own sense of efficacy; their ratings of their own teaching andleadership practices; assessments of teaching based on various kinds of classroomobservations done by supervisors, principals, and others; and pupil ratings of the qualityof instruction. There were also a few studies that attempted to link teacher educationprograms to the learning of pupils taught by the graduates of different teacher educationprograms based on pupils standardized achievement test scores. Finally, in some ofthe studies, teacher education graduates were asked to evaluate the effectiveness oftheir preservice programs in preparing them to do particular things in the classroom(e.g., assessment, teaching English-language learners).


14/21




Without getting into the details of the individual studies here beyond providing examplesfrom studies of particular patterns in the research, I summarize what we learned fromour analysis of the research and how I think that research on the nature and impact ofteacher education programs can be improved to yield more useful knowledge. Doingresearch about the efficacy of different kinds of programs has become more importantas the number of pathways into P-12 teaching has increased.

Problems With The Existing ResearchIn our review of peer-reviewed research on teacher education programs (Zeichner

& Conklin, 2005), we saw several problems with how research on teacher educationprograms has been designed and carried out that limit its usefulness in generatingknowledge that is useful to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. First, individualresearch studies have been carried out as if in a vacuum. There is very little evidencein this work of researchers building on one another's work, of clear and consistentdefinitions of key terms, and of the use of common research instruments across studies.The result is that it is very difficult to look across the studies on teacher educationprograms and draw any conclusions about what we have learned about the impact ofparticular kinds of programs.

Second, most of the studies have examined the impact of programs that are vaguelydefined according to a few structural characteristics. We know very little from thesestudies about the curriculum and instructional strategies used in the programs or aboutthe social relations among candidates and between candidates and their teachereducators. We also know very little about the characteristics of the teacher candidatesbeyond their level or subject areas of preparation or about the contexts in whichprograms exist (e.g., schools used for clinical experiences, state policy contexts).

The typical study compares graduates of Program A with graduates of Program Bin terms of some subset of the outcomes just listed and then draws conclusionsabout the efficacy of the different programs. For example, in one widely cited study,Andrew (1990) compared graduates of 4- and 5-year programs at the university ofNew Hampshire and concluded, The nature of the internship and the additional coursework required for the master's degree [in the five-year program] result in more effective


15/21




learning about teaching (p. 50). To some degree, the data that were presented in thisresearch report supported this conclusion and showed more favorable results for 5-year program graduates than for 4-year program graduates in a number of areas suchas entry into teaching, career satisfaction, and retention. However, there are severalproblems with the way in which this study was conducted that illustrate why it hasbeen hard to conclude anything definitive from existing studies on teacher educationprograms.

Specifically, although on the surface the numbers indicate that the 5-year programis better than the 4-year program in terms of the outcomes of interest, there is notclear evidence in the study that the teacher education programs were responsible for

these differences. Andrew (1990) recognized this problem and concluded, We cannoteliminate the possibility that differences observed between four- and five-year programgraduates in this study are not simply the result of differences in academic ability (p.50). Similarly, the findings of this study related to the higher retention rates of graduatesof 5-year programs are of limited use because of the failure of the research reportto provide information about the nature of the schools in which the graduates of thedifferent programs taught. Teaching in schools in New Hampshire, where many of theseteachers probably taught, is vastly different from teaching in, for example, Chicago orLos Angeles, and it does not make much sense to talk about the quality of teachingperformance or retention without situating these data in relation to the demographic

characteristics of schools.These problems of not providing adequate information about the entering characteristicsof teacher education candidates (e.g., their knowledge, skills, and dispositions relatedto various aspects of teaching) or about the contexts in which teachers work arecharacteristic of the research about teacher education programs, including in the mostexpensive and ambitious of these studies such as Decker, Mayer, and Glazerman's(2004) national study of Teach for America (TFA).

Another problem that is characteristic of this body of research is the consistentfailure of researchers to describe the substance of the preservice programs that wereattended by teachers. For example, in several of the studies of TFA, the achievementof pupils taught by TFA graduates was compared with that of pupils taught by non-TFA graduates (e.g., Decker et al., 2004; Laczko-Kerr & Berliner, 2002; Raymond


16/21




& Fletcher, 2002). In addition to the problem of not describing the nature of the TFAprogram in the specific parts of the country where it was studied, these studies providelittle or no information about the preparation received by the non-TFA comparisongroups. Although the studies suggest that comparisons are being made of theconsequences of preparing teachers in an alternative program such as TFA andtraditional university-based programs, some of the non-TFA teachers could in fact havebeen prepared for teaching in fast-track programs such as TFA. A number of elementsof the TFA curriculum resemble those in traditional university-based programs. In manyof the studies comparing outcomes associated with different kinds of programs, it isunclear how the contents of the programs being compared are similar to and differentfrom one another.

In every type of teacher education program, there will inevitably be a range of qualityand the search for the most effective structural model of teacher education is doomedto failure, just as the quest for the most effective set of teaching behaviors was boundto fail (Kliebard, 1973). Defining a program as 5-year or 4-year, or as alternative ortraditional, reveals very little about the key elements of the program and does notenable researchers to link the achievement of desired outcomes to particular programcharacteristics.

A final limitation of the research on teacher education programs is the lack ofconsistency in the methods and instruments that are used to assess particular aspectsof teacher education and various outcomes associated with teacher quality andpupil learning. For example, a number of the studies on teacher education programshave sought to connect the type of program experienced to the quality of teachingperformance of program graduates. There are a wide variety of ways in which thequality of teaching performance has been assessed, including surveys of principals,supervisors, and mentors; use of classroom observation instruments; use of self-reports of the teachers; and ratings of teaching quality by pupils. other than the useof rating scales that ask someone (e.g., a supervisor, a mentor) to assess the qualityof a graduate's teaching in comparison with other beginning teachers accordingto unstated criteria, there is almost no overlap between the ways in which teachingperformance has been assessed across the studies. The same problem exists withregard to most of the outcomes that have been included in the studies.


17/21




A second weakness in the assessment of outcomes associated with experiencingdifferent kinds of teacher education programs is the narrowness of the way in whichpupil learning has been assessed. In the few studies that have attempted to connectthe type of teacher education program attended to the quality of the learning of pupilstaught by program graduates, there has been nearly exclusive use of standardizedachievement tests in defining student learning. The use of growth in standardizedachievement test scores as a measure of pupil learning represents only a narrow rangeof academic performance. Although national attention is currently focused on cognitivemeasures of academic performance, a look at the broader history of the United Statesshows a strong and recurrent interest of the public in other outcomes such as studentssocial, emotional, aesthetic, and civic development (Goodlad, 1984).

In-Depth Case Studies Of TeacherEducation ProgramsMost of the studies that we reviewed compared the graduates of different kindsof teacher education programs in the manner described in the preceding sections(Zeichner & Conklin, 2005). However, we also examined two in-depth case studiesof sets of teacher education programs that sought to get inside the programs and

illuminate their specific features that were linked to the achievement of variousoutcomes. In both of these studies (Darling-Hammond, 2000; National Center forResearch on Teacher Education, 1991), a variety of program structures were examinedand teams of researchers spent time observing classes and field experiences andinterviewing the teacher candidates and their teacher educators. The researchreports provide a much clearer picture than the studies discussed previously of boththe programs and the contexts in which they are embedded. Both of these studiesidentified various program characteristics that were related to a variety of outcomesassociated with teachers knowledge, beliefs, and practices and concluded that aprogram's substance, rather than its structure, had the major influence on teacherlearning. In the Teacher Education and Learning to Teach (TELT) study, for example,Kennedy (1998) reported that programs that had similar structures sometimes hadremarkably different influences on teacher candidates, whereas programs that had


18/21




different structures sometimes had similar influences on teachers, depending on theirsubstantive characteristics.

In the TELT study and the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future(NCTAF) case studies (Darling-Hammond, 2000), researchers generated lists ofprogram characteristics that they believed were related to the achievement of desiredteacher learning outcomes. Neither study sought to connect teacher education andteacher learning to student learning. Examples of these characteristics include ashared and clear understanding among faculty, students, and school personnelabout good teaching that permeates all courses and field experiences; a clear set ofpractice and performance standards against which candidates coursework is guided

and assessed; and courses that are taught in a manner that relates learning to realproblems of practice (Darling-Hammond, 2000). Although there is some question aboutthe adequacy of the evidence that is presented to support these conclusions (Zeichner& Conklin, 2005), these studies have begun to provide the basis for eventually beingable to link specific teacher education program components to desired outcomes.

Another problem with the lists of the characteristics of good teacher education programsthat have emerged from these studies is that they are stated in very general terms. Forexample, one of the characteristics of a good program that appears in most accounts isthe presence of mentoring. Nothing is said in the presentation of these characteristicsabout the conditions under which these features were effective in achieving desiredoutcomes. For example, with regard to mentoring, we need to know things such ashow the mentors were chosen, whether they work in the same schools and subjectareas as their mentees, how they were prepared and are supported for their roles, andthe relationship between the mentoring and teacher evaluation. Despite the limitationsof the in-depth case studies of programs, they provide the basis for further researchinto the program characteristics that make a difference in terms of teacher and learneroutcomes.


19/21




Enlarging And Enhancing Research OnTeacher Education ProgramsGiven all of these problems with research that attempts to study teacher educationprograms and link particular outcomes connected to teacher quality and pupil learning,what can be done to raise the quality of research in this area so that it will produceknowledge useful to other researchers, policymakers, and teacher educators? Thefirst thing that needs to be done is for researchers to consciously build on the work ofother researchers and to view themselves as part of a research community. I have tried

to convey in this chapter the complex factors that influence how a teacher educationprogram contributes to both teacher learning and student learning. Both teacherlearning and student learning are affected by a number of factors beyond the specifictype of teacher education program a teacher attends. These include the individualattributes brought by prospective teachers to their programs, the specific features ofthese programs and their components (e.g., curriculum, instruction, social relations), thetypes of institutions in which the programs are located, and the like. obviously, no singleresearch study can adequately deal with all of this complexity. These are characteristicsthat can be addressed only in coherent programs of research (Shulman, 2002).

Programs of research involve researchers taking on various aspects of a generalproblem and adding new understandings with each new study. The general problemof the relationships between teacher education and teacher and student outcomescan be represented by the graphic in Figure 5.1. So far, I have argued that the existingresearch has largely sought to connect teacher education programs to aspects ofteacher and student learning without taking into account the characteristics that teachercandidates bring to their programs and the many factors in and outside these programs.If researchers begin to focus on these neglected factors, better coordinate their studies,use clear and consistent definitions of key terms related to the programs and teacherand student learning, and use common research instruments and protocols, thisresearch will begin to produce knowledge and theoretical explanations for the waysin which teacher education influences teachers and student learning. Some of theinstrumentation used in studies of teacher education programs has been made public


20/21




for others to use (e.g., Kennedy, Ball, & McDiarmid, 1993), but there needs to be muchmore effort to develop greater consistency across studies in how various aspects ofteacher education programs and their outcomes are studied.

A variety of methodological approaches are needed to implement this program ofresearch on the relationships between teacher education and teacher and s tudentlearning. Although it is expensive and out of the reach of most individual researchersto conduct in-depth program case studies such as the TELT and NCTAF studiesdiscussed earlier, or to conduct large-scale studies using both quantitative andqualitative methods such as the study of alternative pathways into teaching in New YorkCity (Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2003) and the Mathematica Policy

Research Institute study of TFA (Decker et al., 2004), individuals and small groups ofresearchers can address some of the problems in the existing research even in thesmall-scale self-studies that dominate research in the field.

In addition to situating their own research in relation to other similar research anddiscussing what piece of the research program is being added by their research(e.g., theoretically, methodologically), researchers need to carefully describe theprogram or programs that are being studied in terms of the areas identified in Figure5.1. Specifically, researchers need to describe and examine the institutional andpolicy contexts in which the program(s) exist; relevant characteristics of the teachercandidates and teacher educators; and enough detail about curriculum, instructionalpractices, and social relations in the program(s) and program organizationalcharacteristics that the potential exists to be able to link the achievement of certainoutcomes to particular program characteristics. The outcomes and the ways that aredeveloped to assess them need to be clearly defined and linked to other work that hasfocused on the same issues (e.g., the development of teachers cultural competence).Finally, if the research includes a focus on the teaching performance or the retentionof program graduates, the nature of the schools in which those graduates teach needsto be described in enough detail so that the findings can be compared with those fromother studies.

Figure 5.1 Studying the Relationships Between Teacher Education and Teacher and Student Learning


21/21




These recommendations apply whether the research is a small-scale study of one'sown program or a large-scale national case study of many programs. They also applywhether the researchers employ sophisticated quantitative research methods (e.g.,hierarchical linear modeling), ethnographic methods, or some combination of differentmethods. Because of the complexity of the problem of studying teacher educationprograms and their outcomes, I argue that the research program as a whole shouldinclude a variety of different methodological approaches. Some of the most interestingwork now going on involves qualitative researchers and economists working together inresearch teams employing a variety of methodologies within the same study (Boyd etal., 2003). I believe that these research recommendations, if followed, can significantlyenhance our understanding of the consequences of teachers entering teaching throughdifferent pathways and that they will enable us to differentiate, in ways that are notcurrently feasible, the ways in which individual teachers attributes, institutional andpolicy contexts, and particular features of teacher education programs all contribute todesired outcomes.

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Documents

Studying Teacher Education Programs Enriching and Enlarging the Inquiry