Remaking teacher education: Train teachers like doctors
A national panel of education leaders, teachers and researchers in Washington today called for turning teacher education “upside down” by shifting focus to clinical practice and creating deeper partnerships with school districts to track teacher performance in the real world.
Holding out the medical school model, a series of experts called for an infusion of clinical practices for prospective teachers from the minute they begin their training. (I listened via conference call to the two-hour panel.)
“That clinical practice has to be infused in every facet of teacher education through dynamic ways, none of this waiting to the end to student teach,” said Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York and panel co-chair.
Zimpher cited pedagogical labs, such as the ped lab at Boston College that simulates the classroom experiences teachers will face in the classroom. No one would consider sending a new pilot into a real cockpit without simulation training at the controls, she said. Teachers need those same simulations, with mentors serving as co-pilots.
Zimpher also cited the grand rounds in medical school residency training in which a team of experienced doctors works with new doctors on challenging clinical problems. Teachers need
