Last night I attended my English teacher preparation class, where we were given the second of two relatively major assignments. Amongst the requirements for the paper was the criterion that we cite six scholarly sources, at least half of them from peer-refereed journals in the last year or two. The outcry was tremendous. �Why such an emphasis on theory in a practical course?� �How are we supposed to have time to teach and go to the library?� �How will that help me teach my class tomorrow?� I was stunned. If teaching is indeed a profession, like medicine or law, one of its hallmarks should be the need to keep abreast of current developments by reading professional journals. They should be reading them anyway, or at least regretting that they're not. I don�t know what to say to these teachers or how to face the public and claim teachers deserve to be treated as professionals after such a show. I am merely heartbroken.
An Update from the World of Education:
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don't worry, christine, my cohort and i are reading enough current education articles to cover both our programs, believe me. hey, you are smart and seemed to know a lot about nclb. could you point me in the direction of any thoughtful and/or straightforward resources about it? we're thinking of doing a project about it to better inform ourselves and the class.
That is sad. I wonder what is indicated by the perceived irrelevence of theory to practice. That seems to me to indicate, in any discipline, someone who is having difficulty coping. But there are people struggling and avoiding research in every class and occupation.
Anyway, dinner tomorrow! i'll likely be back at 8, but you may arrive before then for food, food preparation, fun, pre-dinner lemonade (or similar liquids) etc!
If you want to do a report, I would start with the department of ed's website (http://www.ed.gov/nclb/), the frontline report (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/), which has great interviews, James Popham's book about standardized testing from ASCD "The Truth About Testing: An Educator's Call to Action", In Schools We Trust by Deborah Meier and her references section, and then look for anything by Linda Darling-Hammond (especially on meeting the need for "hightly-qualified" teachers). There's also a Brookings Institute Report called No Child Left Behind? edited by Peterson and West. Fairtest (http://www.fairtest.org/nattest/bushtest.html) which though biased is one of the only organizations watching the testing industry. Then I would do a firstsearch search. Eric doesn't often turn up as much as I would like.