Introduction Essay - 2,714 words

Introduction Body Importance of professional development programs Program implementation Classroom management Teacher education Problems faced by teachers Teacher training impact Conclusion How Can Professional Development Improve Classroom Management for Teachers? Good education demands good teachers. Over the course of the twentieth century, as the teaching profession has grown, so have its standards risen. Many teacher-training courses now last for four years and follow after 12 years of schooling: teachers have now had four more years of full-time education than used to be the norm. Society has steadily expected more of teachers in the variety of tasks they have to perform, in the skills they need to master and in the imagination required for their work. Rising expectations have brought rising quality. Thus, while teacher education has dramatically expanded, it has done so within an economic straitjacket, pulled tighter by the strings of demography. It is small wonder that it has barely kept pace with the demands for initial teacher training for new teachers, let alone dealing with the backlog of those already in service; teacher-training colleges have generally had too much to do in their main job of initial training to take on the extra job of continuing education for those who have already passed through their gates.


Effective programs of pre-service teacher education need to overcome these barriers. Where significant numbers of teachers are untrained then there is one further barrier: if you take the experienced but untrained teachers out of the schools for training, their replacements are likely to be less experienced and less competent. In-service training is likely to be needed alongside pre-service. Pre-service and in-service training alike pose complex demands. Trainees need to acquire both the skills of teaching and an adequate knowledge of the subject matter they are to teach. Few of the public school headmasters would co-operate in this endeavor, feeling the training of public-school masters was pointless. Furthermore, many critics faulted current teacher training programs for mixing the primary and secondary teachers in the same lessons, feeling their teaching experiences were not similar.


However, good pedagogy was not dependent upon the level of education one taught, but the teaching skills one took to that level. Primary and secondary teachers classroom experiences would be much the same and he strove to achieve a consistency in their teaching habits. The general trend was to teach teachers courses in relevant knowledge domains, for example the psychology of learning. Gradually, however, it became clear that teachers did not carry much of this knowledge base into practice and more was needed. The knowledge base should become visible in the skills that teachers used in the classroom. This led to the introduction of competency-based teacher education (CBTE). The idea underlying CBTE was the formulation of concrete and observable criteria for good teaching, which could serve as a basis for the training of teachers. For some time, process -- product research studies, in which relations were analyzed between concrete teacher behavior and learning outcomes of students, were considered a way to nurture this approach to teacher education. From this research, long lists of trainable skills were derived and became the basis for teacher education programs.


Both experienced and newly qualified teachers accept the doctrine of individualism without question, and one teacher said that if only they could do it better they would achieve the ideal. One young teacher talked about wanting to teach children as individuals and made the poignant comment that she didnt manage it very well and said, I just feel like Im failing. (Tauber) Teachers rarely question the practical reality of planning for and teaching thirty individuals. For example, they may struggle to find the balance between treating children as individuals, fostering small group work and maintaining a consistent set of rules and routines that experts in classroom management say are essential. When teachers try to implement active learning strategies without thinking through issues for childrens behavior, then there may be increases in troublesome behavior. One problem is that children may experience two competing sets of demands for learning and behaving.


Encouraging children to be active learners may not fit well with requiring children to be compliant students. Teachers find that managing frequent disruptive behaviors every day erodes teaching and learning time in their classrooms, which leaves them feeling frustrated. Dealing with annoying behaviors over and over again increases teachers dissatisfaction with their work. Some teachers worry about their capacity to deal with the range of psychological and sociological problems that children bring to school, and feel they are being pushed into the roles of counselors or social workers without proper training. Teachers find that their additional pastoral roles erode time for teaching and many feel that this is not part of their work, but is it time to redefine teachers work? Many teachers are surprised when they analyze their working week to find that their traditional ideas of teaching have to be broadened to include other elements that are central to their role as teacher. (Carroll) Schools that avoid judging teachers competencies on the basis of an individuals personality, training or experience are more likely to accept responsibility for teacher development and to examine the ways in which the context might contribute to the teachers actions. Some schools accept responsibility for teacher growth and engage with the teacher to construct creative solutions, assess school management practices, facilitate the schools work with families or provide a mentor to help the teacher to develop new understandings.


Important aspects of the school culture are revealed through the ways that management practices support teachers and assist them to deepen learning. Large numbers of studies, however, have taken the sole point of view of the teacher. It is the teacher, it is assumed, and who possesses power within the classroom. Because the concomitant of power is responsibility, it is also the teacher who is responsible for what happens in the classroom. This is certainly the perspective of the literature of recent educational reform. The teacher is powerful, the teacher is responsible, and the most effective way to facilitate educational change is by changing the teacher. Such change may be effected through motivation, through evaluation, or through training, but it is assumed that if the teacher changes, the outcomes of education will also change.


What this study proposes is an understanding of power that makes it relational, that locates it among the participants in the classroom. This would suggest to educational researchers that looking at teachers as the source of classroom power is an inadequate approach and needs to be supplanted by more studies looking at the interaction among students and teachers in the enclosed space of the classroom. Many teacher educators think that a professional teacher should acquire more than just practical tools for managing classroom situations and that it is their job to present student teachers with a broader view on education and to offer them a proper grounding in psychology, sociology, and so on. This is called the sacred theory-practice story: teacher education conceived as the translation of theory on good teaching into practice. (Brophy, Good) The resulting type of discussion is dangerous because it focuses on the question of whether teacher education should start with theory or practice instead of how to integrate the two within the teacher. If we do not address this more fundamental question, then it is uncertain whether institutions for teacher education may survive in the future. On the other hand, we should not close our eyes to the fact that more realistic approaches in teacher education ask a lot from individual teacher educators and from institutional structures.


I think the realistic approach will only gain ground if there is willingness among those responsible for teacher preparation to accept that traditional teacher education has lost its legitimacy in a society where change is the central notion. Nowadays, education is faced with an immense responsibility. This may lead to a willingness to invest in curriculum development in teacher education, in close connection with staff development programs. Teacher education courses should include provision of learning basic content in mathematics to remedy an obvious deficiency. There is a risk that should teacher training become more school-based, the necessary teaching of content knowledge will be minimized. Content knowledge is a too imp ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: teacher education, teacher's, classroom management, classroom, training program

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