Student teaching criticized in new study; schools of education fire back
Knowing the subject matter is all well and good, but one skill that many new teachers lack as they embark on their first year of teaching is how to control a classroom, or so say many critics of teacher education. This critical skill along with the other practical aspects of teaching — how to teach a new concept to a room of students with varying levels of ability, and then make sure they all understood, for example — aren’t typically figured out until teachers try out the book-learning they do in their courses in an actual classroom. For most teachers, this first attempt is during their student teaching.
A new study by the National Council on Teacher Quality out this week finds fault with the way many schools of education run their student teaching programs, however. Among other issues, the NCTQ criticizes a common set up in many teacher training programs where schools, not the colleges, get to pick which mentor teachers will get student teachers assigned to them. (The NCTQ would prefer that schools of education pick the teacher