Can teaching be taught? Do individuals learn to teach or are they endowed with an innate gift for pedagogy? Are certain individuals born teachers? Do individuals learn about teaching from copying others, from listening to lectures, from reading about it? Are some ways of preparing teachers better than others? These and related questions about teaching and teacher education persist.

Didactic and Evocative Teaching

Joseph Axelrod describes two types of teaching as "the didactic modes, employed by teacher-craftsmen, and the evocative modes, employed by teacher-artists" (p. 5). Didactic teaching implies passing on traditional knowledge or lore, or teaching how to do something. Teachers use lecture to inculcate knowledge or demonstration to model actions, after which students demonstrate they have learned what was taught either by reciting or writing the material or by repeating the demonstration, as in a science class experiment. Much state and national testing relies on rote recall of material. In this context, learning means being able to reproduce what has been taught or demonstrated. For example, students should recall key facts of American history such as the order of the American presidents. Emphases are often on learning facts and conditions, not on understanding complexity and drawing conclusions.

Early in human history, most teaching was didactic. Poets recited ancient myths and stories and a few listeners learned them by rote. Individuals acquired skills by observing their elders who were fishers, artisans, lawyers, or anything else, and emulating what they saw. Seeing teaching as a process of passing on knowledge has persisted. Paul Woodring argues that "The oldest form of teacher education is the observation and emulation of a master. Plato learned to teach by sitting at the feet of Socrates. Aristotle, in turn, learned from Plato" (p. 1).

Much observation and emulation still go on. In The Teacher Educator's Handbook, Sharon Feiman-Nemser and Janine Remillard note that "Like much of our society, prospective teachers believe that teaching is a process of passing knowledge from teacher to student and that learning involves absorbing or memorizing information and practicing skills. Students wait like empty vessels to be filled and teachers do the filling" (p. 70).

Most teaching in early America was highly didactic. Teachers taught both the processes of learning to read and the morals attendant to a proper life through moralistic texts. Children learning their letters in the early nineteenth century read in the New England Primer under the letter A, "In Adam's fall, we sinned all"; under the letter F, "The idle fool Is wipt at school"; and under the letter J, "Job feels the rod Yet blesses God" (pp. 12 - 13). Students thus simultaneously learned their letters, religious lessons, and injunctions about behavior.

Not all teaching in the past was didactic; not all learning was rote. Socrates relied on the relationship between himself and his students to arrive at truths of human existence; he was, in Axelrod's sense, an evocative teacher. Socrates corrected occasionally and enjoined his students, but rarely taught didactically. The Socratic, or evocative, method places responsibility for knowledge growth on the students.

Using the evocative method, social studies teachers might teach geographical lessons from which they expect students to describe how communities develop relative to the natural world surrounding them. Teachers might present students with a computer program describing an environment near a river, with large forests, good soil, and a moderate climate. Students would then describe how they believe a community might evolve, given these circumstances. The teacher's role is to elicit conclusions, probabilities, and hypotheses from the students and have them assiduously pursue the most likely correct answers. Learning means being able to gather and assimilate data and evidence and draw conclusions based on sound thinking.

Neither didactic nor evocative teaching alone will suffice because learners vary widely in how they learn. Some individuals learn material effectively when teachers present it sequentially or chronologically; others may learn better when teachers present material thematically. Some learners have an affinity for concreteness while others prefer abstraction. Teachers require tolerance and understanding for these and other differences in learners. Although some learners may master a variety of ways of learning, teachers more often than not appeal to what they discern to be the learner's most comfortable way of learning. Ideally, teachers attach neither special praise nor stigma to different ways of learning. They recognize not all individuals learn in similar ways. However, in many classrooms, teachers fail to teach a variety of ways of learning. This can frustrate many learners.

Didactic teaching and evocative teaching are merely two modes of instruction among other related ways teachers teach and learners learn. Little exists to suggest one mode is superior to all others. Nearly all teachers use a variety of modes of instruction as they go about their daily teaching tasks. Teacher education must provide opportunities for prospective and practicing teachers to master a range of teaching modes.

Teaching and Teacher Education in Early America

In his biography of John Adams, David McCullough points out that in colonial America, teaching was something men did if they did not have anything better to do. He notes that in 1755 John Adams, not having the money for the fee to apprentice to a lawyer, although "untried and untrained as a teacher, immediately assumed his new role in a one-room schoolhouse at the center of town" (p. 37). It is interesting that McCullough uses the phrase "untried and untrained." The fact is there was no training for teachers in 1755. The first formal teacher preparation began in the 1820s with the establishment of "normal schools" in Vermont and Massachusetts.

The establishment of normal schools became a movement later in the nineteenth century; almost every state had at least one of them. The normal schools' purpose was perfectly straightforward: the preparation of teachers. Cities were desperate for teachers. By the early 1900s, nearly every city with a population of more than 300,000 had a normal school, often tied in with the high schools. Normal schools were technically oriented toward the practice of teaching. Modeled on earlier established European institutions for teacher training, these schools provided very specific training. In The Salterton Trilogy (1986), Robertson Davies pro a fictional but accurate picture of what transpired in many normal school classrooms. "They [normal school teachers] taught howteach; they taught when to open the windows in a classroo when to close them; … they taught ways of teaching children withtalent for drawing how to draw; they taught how a school could be formed and trained where there was no instrument but achpipe … they taught how to make hangings, somewhat resembling batik, by drawing in wax crayon on unbleached cotton, and pressing it with a hot iron" (p. 79). These examples illustrat didactic mode of teacher education in which prospective teachersrn how to do things, not how to thinkabout the and wherefores of doing things. Didactic teacher education treatsching as craft. It suggests that individuals can acquir essential skills to impart knowledge, facts, and even abilitiesough lecture and demonstration. By contrast, the evocative as applied to the education of teachers, suggests that teaching is an emergent art in which teachers evoke from students what they already know and lead them to the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. By the 1940s, most normal schools had expanded, into four-year state teachers colleges or liberal arts colleges hasizing teacher education, and then, during the higher educ expansion in the 1960s and 1970s, into state universities. For example, by the 1960s, the three former normal schools in Vermont had become four-year liberal arts colleges with new campuses and diminished teacher education programs.

Into the Twenty-First Century

As the normal schools morphed into four-year colleges and eventually state universities, established state universities that did not already have them began to develop teacher preparation programs. University and college teacher education programs grew rapidly as states developed specific licensure requirements often based on college level coursework. As accreditation of secondary schools grew, the need for teachers with college degrees also grew. The norm became a combination of a degree with a major in an academic subject and completion of required education courses. Scholars argue that universities were anything but altruistic in their development of teacher preparation programs. Reasons included a desire to show some public service commitment, a need to increase revenues from enrollment of teacher education students, and the development of graduate programs in educational administration. In 2002, most universities had firmly entrenched teacher preparation programs on their campuses. Campus programs remain the major place of preparation for teachers. State universities continue to be major sources of beginning teachers. Institutions such as Utah's Brigham Young University, South Florida University, Indiana University, and Wayne State University, in Detroit, Michigan, annually graduate hundreds of licensed teachers. In addition, liberal arts colleges with small teacher preparation programs consistently graduate licensed teachers. More than 1,200 institutions continue to provide teacher preparation programs.

During the last decades of the twentieth century a variety of nontraditional centers of activity evolved. The combination of the need for teachers in critically short areas such as mathematics and science and the public criticism of campus-based teacher education produced situations in which individuals and groups developed alternative routes for teacher preparation. Periodic shortages in teachers, particularly in urban and rural settings, led to a variety of ways of circumventing licensure regulations and university requirements. Teacher education was occurring through a variety of vehicles, including colleges and universities, public schools, state departments of education, special projects such as Teach for America, and district and university affiliated programs such as a New York City project for recruiting non-traditional candidates.

Intellectual Caliber and Content of Teacher Education

College and university-based teacher education is often the target of many critics contending that students in teacher education programs are academically weaker than students in other programs, that preparation programs are vacuous, and that the faculty are second-rate. Despite reliable studies responding to these criticisms and demonstrating some of the criticism as ill founded, the attacks continue. The alleged low quality of teacher education students has led to a lack of acceptance by higher education faculty of teacher education on the campus.

Burton Clark and Harry Judge have noted a certain university reluctance to own teacher education despite its major presence on campuses. Clark shows how faculty at state universities that had been normal schools or state teachers colleges resent the influence of "education people"; Judge believes that such institutions, their faculties, and their administrations have little respect for teacher preparation. He contends that the further away from direct involvement in teacher preparation the education faculty are, the better they feel about themselves. Thus, although teacher education has a long history on campuses, the relationship between it and the broader campus remains strained.

Chester Finn, a vitriolic critic of teacher education, argues that colleges of education "are the most-despised institutions in the education universe" (p.223). Even among the friends of teacher education, criticism is severe. In his 1990 book, Teachers for Our Nation's Schools, John Goodlad notes, "Teachers and teacher educators don't know enough about how to teach, and they don't know enough about how to understand and influence the conditions around them" (p. 108).

J. Palmer describes the tenuous nature of teacher education: "Training programs that were established tended to disappear after a few years. Then, as now, public universities were not certain how to deal with teacher education or if they wanted it. The low status of teacher education in state universities was established early, and it has persisted" (p. 52). A reason for the low status of teacher education faculty may be that they prepare people who work with the young in schools: preschool staffs, day care center employees, elementary and secondary school teachers - all groups that are held in low esteem by various segments of society.

Programs to prepare teachers remain remarkably consistent. They generally consist of a general arts and sciences component, advanced study in a discipline, a teacher preparation component, and field experiences. In The Teacher Educator's Handbook (1996), Barbara Senkowski Stengal and Alan Tom note that "Traditional teacher education programs are typically marked by three components: foundations of schooling and learning, teaching methodology, and practice teaching" (p. 593). Foundations of schooling and learning include the vital areas of psychology, philosophy, and learning principles, a pattern first established in the normal schools.

Teacher Education and Field Experiences

Teacher education has always provided opportunities for prospective teachers to practice teaching in school settings while still in their preparation programs. For decades, these experiences occurred during the last year of the preparation program and lasted approximately six to eight weeks. In many programs, this was the only experience that prospective teachers had in a school or with students. The typical experience included assigning the student to an experienced teacher in the school who would provide guidance and supervision. A teacher education faculty member would provide a minimum of three visits to observe the prospective teacher teach.

In the 1960s, programs began requiring early experiences in the schools for undergraduate students, often during their freshman year and continuing throughout the four years, culminating in a full semester of student teaching or internship. Preparation programs began placing clusters of four or five students in the same school so as to provide a collective experience rather than a private ordeal for future teachers.

Changes in the requirements of preparation programs regarding field experiences coincided with changes in what teacher education faculty were required to do and expectations of what schools should do. In 1986 and 1990 the Holmes Group argued for professional development schools (PDSs). In a PDS, a teacher preparation program or institution would commit to providing a school population with a cadre of prospective teachers, several higher education faculty, and curriculum assistance over a period of several years. The goals of a PDS are to provide better field experiences for the teacher education students, increased faculty cooperation with the schools, and sustained curricular improvement in schools and in teacher education programs.

Many variations have occurred and will continue to occur in the field experiences of prospective teachers. The reactions of student teachers to their experiences will likely continue to be consistent. Study after study reveals that the student teaching experience is rated most important of all their preparation programs. And why not? It is the one time that they have sustained interaction with the young people that they have professed a desire to spend their working lives with.

Teacher Education Faculty

Who teaches the teachers? Who is a teacher educator? The broadest conception of who is a teacher educator includes everyone who teaches prospective and practicing teachers, from their freshman English professors and those who teach special methods courses to those who supervise student teaching. Teacher educators may be defined specifically as "those who hold tenure-line positions in teacher preparation in higher education institutions, teach beginning and advanced students in teacher education, and conduct research or engage in scholarly studies germane to teacher education" (Ducharme, p. 6).

Research on teacher educators began in the 1980s as Heather Carter, Edward Ducharme and Russell Agne, Judith Lanier and Judith Little, and others began publishing research studies of teacher education faculty. In The Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, published in 1996, Nancy Zimpher and Julie Sherrill describe the teacher education professoriate as majority male and more than 90 percent Anglo. Summarizing several studies, they note that males dominate in the higher ranks, publish more than females, and work less in schools. Ducharme offers the observation that "there is a contradiction between a commitment to prepare a professional cadre of students, a majority of whom are female, to become powerful teachers and effective advocates for youth in which the female faculty are in roles and positions implying an inequity between the genders" (p. 120).

The ethnic makeup of the teacher education professoriate is heavily skewed toward white males. The Anglo population of the professoriate is between 91 and 93 percent. Candidates for teaching remain heavily white. With the exception of faculty in the historically black colleges, there are few black or other minority professors in teacher education. As the schools become more and more multicultural, those who teach teachers remain majority white and male; those who teach children in elementary schools remain mostly female and white; those who teach adolescents remain majority female and mostly white.

Teacher Education Themes

Many teacher education programs have defining characteristics. Programs generally lean toward one of several thematic patterns: behaviorist or competency-based, humanistic, and developmental. The 1960s and 1970s were the heydays of the competency-based teacher education (CBTE) and performance-based teacher education (PBTE) programs. In CBTE, researchers attempted to isolate what they perceived as the discrete tasks of teaching, develop protocols for training teachers to master the tasks, and produce tests to assess whether or not the teachers could perform the tasks. The CBTE movement soon degenerated into lists of hundreds of competencies as proponents attempted to outdo one another through elaborate lists. Instead of a system designed to help manage teacher education, it became an unmanageable process.

In Teacher Education (1975), N. L. Gage and Philip Winne defined PBTE as "teacher training in which the prospective or inservice teacher acquires, to a prespecified degree, performance tendencies and capabilities that promote student achievement of educational objectives" (p. 146). Both CBTE and PBTE derived from beliefs in relationships between teaching practices and student learning. Intensely behaviorist, both CBTE and PBTE grew in part from a desire for accountability in education, a concern that has persisted into the twenty-first century. Although the nomenclature of CBTE and PBTE has largely vanished from higher education teacher education syllabi, the concerns for accountability and the premises underlying the movements persist.

Other programs emphasize a more developmental approach, typically focusing on field experiences integrated with coursework, analyses of classrooms, journal writing, and reflective practice. The 1980s and 1990s saw emphasis on reflective practice as a program keynote in many institutions.

Accreditation

Teacher education, like other fields in higher education that prepare professionals, has used accreditation as a means of quality control. In 1948 the newly formed American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) began accrediting institutions that prepared teachers. By 1950 AACTE had issued the first of several versions of Revised Standards and Policies for Accrediting Colleges for Teacher Education. In 1954, perhaps recognizing the possible conflicts inherent in being the organization of those institutions preparing teachers and also being responsible for managing the accrediting process, AACTE gave up responsibility for accreditation. The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) was created and has dominated the accrediting process at the national level since. Over the years, several versions of its standards, policies, and practices have emerged. Most states have processes for accrediting teacher preparation programs and many work collaboratively with NCATE. Almost six hundred institutions are NCATE accredited.

The accreditation movement has not been without controversy, controversy that combined with concerns for quality produced a series of revisions of standards and practices over the years. Major controversies include the voluntary nature of NCATE accreditation; the standards used; and the complexity, costs, and time required to complete the process. Perhaps as a result of controversy over these and other issues, an alternative accrediting body, the Teacher Education Accreditation Council, began in the 1990s and by 2002 had more than sixty member institutions.

Thus institutions had two agencies from which to seek professional accreditation. However, the combination of NCATE's longevity and the number of states working together on accreditation suggest that NCATE will continue to be the major accrediting body.

Summary

Paul Woodring, quoting the seventeenth-century writer Comenius, notes that the main object of teacher education is "to find a method of instruction by which teachers may teach less but learners may learn more" (Woodring, p. 1). This brief article suggests the difficulties inherent in finding flawless ways of teaching and of preparing teachers. Despite many research studies purporting to show that one way of doing things is superior to others, finding a way to prepare teachers so that students will learn more remains problematic. Yet if the past is prologue to the present, teacher educators in the many preparation environments that exist and that will evolve will continue to seek better ways so that all may learn.

Bibliography

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Woodring, Paul. 1962. "The Need for a Unifying Theory of Teacher Education: A Reappraisal." In Teacher Education: A Reappraisal, ed. Elmer R. Smith. New York: Harper and Row.

Woodring, Paul. 1975. "The Development of Teacher Education." In Teacher Education, Seventy-fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, ed. Kevin Ryan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Internet Resource

Gettysburg College Special Collections. 2002. The New England Primer (1805). www.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/his341/colonialamer.htm.

— MICHAEL J. DUNKIN

Encyclopedia of Education. Copyright © 2002 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.