CURMUDGUCATION: Competency Based Ed for Teachers

CURMUDGUCATION: Competency Based Ed for Teachers:

Competency Based Ed for Teachers

Competency Based Ed (or Proficiency Based Learning or Outcome Based Education) is increasingly and alarmingly all the rage, but so far we've been talking about it mainly as a content delivery system for K-12 students. Well, says Patrick Riccards at Real Clear Education, why not use it as an approach to training teachers as well?

Riccards is the chief communications and strategy officer for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and he lays a foundation here of reformy building blocks. Here's the Bellwether Partners report on how we don't know how to unpack "the black box of good teaching." Here's a charmingly trusting assertion that Charlotte Danielson " has clearly identified the knowledge and skills that beginning teachers need to both succeed in those formative years and remain in the classroom for many years to come." Has she? Has she really? Why, bless her heart, and yours too, if you believe in her so hard.

But Riccards is here to argue against inputs, against the traditional teacher prep program that measures hours and lists the courses one must take.

There is nothing magical about 36 credit hours of graduate education that ensures one will be an effective teacher. Instead, it is about understanding content and pedagogy, as well as being able to put that understanding to use in a classroom of your own.

Well, no. There's nothing "magical" about 36 credit hours, just like there's nothing "magical" about studying human skeletal structure on your way to mastering physiology for your physical therapy degree. But Riccards want us to see as necessary and inevitable a shift from lecture halls to actual CURMUDGUCATION: Competency Based Ed for Teachers: