Given this fact, it gives very good support to an argument like “we should scrap Masters programs in education”. But it could also give very good support to “we should try out a few variations on Masters programs in education to see if any of them would do better than the current one, and if we find one that actually works, we should change our current one to that thing. If and only if we try a bunch of different variations and none of them work, we should scrap Masters programs in education.”
I mean, if we could create a program that consistently made people better teachers, that would be a very worthwhile endeavour. If our current program aiming to make people better teachers is utterly failing, maybe we should scrap that particular program, but surely we should also have a go at doing a few different programs and seeing if any of those succeed?
Very true. We should task them with creating a better program, and if they don’t produce results, we should fire them and find new professors. Just the same as firing any employee who is incapable of doing their job, really.
The thing I disagree with would be if we scrapped the positions and programs entirely; I am entirely on board with the idea of firing the people currently holding the positions and running the programs, and finding new people to hold the positions and run the programs differently. I think that I now understand your position better and you’re advocating the latter, not the former, in which case I entirely agree with you.
There are many different ways to teach knowledge. Academia isn’t the only way.
You could have a education system where teachers don’t go to university to learn how to teach but where they do apprenticeships programs. They sit in the classrooms of experienced teachers and help.
Decrease the amount of time that teachers spend in the classroom to allow for time where teachers discuss with their colleagues what works best.
Different people learn in different ways. I’m really good at textbook learning and hate hands on learning (and suspect that is common among introverted intellectual people). Ideally, why not offer both a university course that qualifies you as a teacher and an apprenticeship system that qualifies you as a teacher, and allow prospective teachers to decide which best suits their learning style? We could even do cognitive assessments on the prospective teachers to recommend to them which program would be best for what their strengths seem to be.
Although, as someone who lives with a teacher—we definitely don’t need to reduce the time they spend in the classroom, we need to change the fact that they spend double that time marking and planning and doing pointless paperwork.
The job of being a teacher is not ideal for introverts. At the core teaching is about social interaction.
You can’t learn charisma through reading textbooks. Textbooks don’t teach you to be a authority in the classroom and get the children to pay attention to what you are saying.
They don’t teach empathy either. Empathy is a strong predictor for success of psychologists in therapy session and likely also useful for teachers.
“Learning styles” are a popular concept but there no good research that suggests that giving different students different training based on learning style is helpful.
Although, as someone who lives with a teacher—we definitely don’t need to reduce the time they spend in the classroom, we need to change the fact that they spend double that time marking and planning and doing pointless paperwork.
I agree. Get rid of the whole business of giving students grades outside of automatically graded tests to allow a teacher to focus on teaching.
Given this fact, it gives very good support to an argument like “we should scrap Masters programs in education”. But it could also give very good support to “we should try out a few variations on Masters programs in education to see if any of them would do better than the current one, and if we find one that actually works, we should change our current one to that thing. If and only if we try a bunch of different variations and none of them work, we should scrap Masters programs in education.”
I mean, if we could create a program that consistently made people better teachers, that would be a very worthwhile endeavour. If our current program aiming to make people better teachers is utterly failing, maybe we should scrap that particular program, but surely we should also have a go at doing a few different programs and seeing if any of those succeed?
Who’s responsible for creating such a program? The current professors. Given that they don’t do so, we need different people.
Very true. We should task them with creating a better program, and if they don’t produce results, we should fire them and find new professors. Just the same as firing any employee who is incapable of doing their job, really.
The thing I disagree with would be if we scrapped the positions and programs entirely; I am entirely on board with the idea of firing the people currently holding the positions and running the programs, and finding new people to hold the positions and run the programs differently. I think that I now understand your position better and you’re advocating the latter, not the former, in which case I entirely agree with you.
There are many different ways to teach knowledge. Academia isn’t the only way. You could have a education system where teachers don’t go to university to learn how to teach but where they do apprenticeships programs. They sit in the classrooms of experienced teachers and help.
Decrease the amount of time that teachers spend in the classroom to allow for time where teachers discuss with their colleagues what works best.
Different people learn in different ways. I’m really good at textbook learning and hate hands on learning (and suspect that is common among introverted intellectual people). Ideally, why not offer both a university course that qualifies you as a teacher and an apprenticeship system that qualifies you as a teacher, and allow prospective teachers to decide which best suits their learning style? We could even do cognitive assessments on the prospective teachers to recommend to them which program would be best for what their strengths seem to be.
Although, as someone who lives with a teacher—we definitely don’t need to reduce the time they spend in the classroom, we need to change the fact that they spend double that time marking and planning and doing pointless paperwork.
The job of being a teacher is not ideal for introverts. At the core teaching is about social interaction.
You can’t learn charisma through reading textbooks. Textbooks don’t teach you to be a authority in the classroom and get the children to pay attention to what you are saying.
They don’t teach empathy either. Empathy is a strong predictor for success of psychologists in therapy session and likely also useful for teachers.
“Learning styles” are a popular concept but there no good research that suggests that giving different students different training based on learning style is helpful.
I agree. Get rid of the whole business of giving students grades outside of automatically graded tests to allow a teacher to focus on teaching.