DOCUMENT RESUME ED 414 274 SP 037 678 AUTHOR Bates, Richard TITLE Preparing Teachers To Teach in 2007. PUB DATE 1997-00-00 NOTE 7p.; Paper presented at a Conference of the Australian College of Education Conference (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, April 30-May 1, 1997). PUB TYPE Opinion Papers (120) -- Speeches/Meeting Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Elementary Secondary Education; Females; Foreign Countries; *Futures (of Society); Higher Education; Politics of Education; *Preservice Teacher Education; Sex Bias; Sex Discrimination; *Social Change; *Social Influences; Social Responsibility; Teacher Educators; *Teacher Responsibility; Womens Education IDENTIFIERS Australia ABSTRACT The shape and purpose of teacher education is affected by what happens in schools, and what happens in schools is largely the result of the shape and purpose of four message systems: curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and discipline. Seven social issues are important in bringing about significant changes to the message systems of schools. They include: (1) the disorder of information; (2) symbolic analysis of information and the ordering of disorder (3) economic convergence and stratification; (4) the crisis of political ecology; (5) social diastrophism; (6) environmental degradation; and (7) the inequalities suffered by women. Teacher education for 2007 will need to develop in prospective teachers a holistic and global understanding of education; an understanding of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment as socially constructed and continually contested; and a commitment to engagement with not only classroom practice but also with the various agents and interests that shape the context of practice. (SM) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** Preparing Teachers to Teach in 2007 Richard Bates Deakin University Vic 3217 [email protected] U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS CENTER (ERIC) BEEN GRANTED BY This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization g, gis,Anz> originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) official OERI position or policy. 1 Australian College of Education Conference on the Status of Teaching Carlton Crest Hotel, Melbourne April 30-May 1 1997 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE Preparing Teachers to Teach in 200'7 There are currently a number of attempts to codify and prescribe the features that should characterise initial teacher education. The NPQTL 'National Competency Framework for Beginning Teachers', the various documents from the Queensland Board of Teacher Registration, the statement from the Victorian Standards Council for the Teaching Profession. Each of these documents presents a comprehensive, if not daunting, list of qualities required of beginning teachers. Not the least daunting a comprehensive account is that provided by the Australian Council of Deans of Education, the Australian Teacher Education Association and the now defunct Australian Teaching Council. There is one from the statement in this document that I particularly like as it causes us to lift our eyes long list of industrial particulars and address the issue of what kind of person we wish teachers to be and what kind of program would support that end. Programs should foster critical and reflective capacities, aesthetic sensibilities, an understanding of knowledge itself as a social construct, an appreciation of the diverse modes of human experience and expression, creativity and a deep valuing of ideas and lifelong learning. All teacher education students need to develop the capacity to understand and respond positively to the reality and challenge of a changing society (p7) I do not know who wrote this statement but I congratulate her. It seems to me to encapsulate the humane ideal which has inspired not only teachers but those members of the wider society who believe that human action can bring about the betterment of society and the improvement of life for citizens. and How, the realisation of such an ideal currently faces several impediments and it is these their possible resolution within programs of teacher education to which I wish to turn our attention for a few brief moments. What Schools Do. in The shape and purpose of teacher education is inevitably affected by what happens four schools. What happens in schools is largely the result of the shape and purpose of message systems: Curriculum: what knowledge is to be taught Pedagogy: how knowledge is to be taught Assessment: how knowledge is realised Discipline: the technology of authority, surveillance and control within which the other three message systems operate. These four message systems are essentially problematic and open to continuous debate. For instance while epistemology has been appealed to as a basis for determining the fundamental distinctions between the various forms of knowledge (see Hirst, Phoenix et al) the boundaries between forms of school knowledge (curriculum) continually shift and (see each practical realisation of these boundaries is an arbitrary and historical achievement Goodson). Curriculum is determined not so much by an epistemological distribution of knowledge but in social convention and administrative, if not political, convenience. The 3 shining example of this arbitrariness as is the current Key Learning Areas are a particularly National Curriculum in England. that curriculum is a social Teachers, and teacher education students need to understand construction. they also need to have an construction rather than a strictly epistemological battles that shape and appreciation of the social, cultural, political and administrative need to know how their voices can reshape the curriculum of schools. More than this, they be heard in these various battles. also contested. At the most basic Secondly, pedagogy, how knowledge is to be taught, is models of learning are themselves level, theories of intelligence which underlie various instance, would seem to support a universal contested. The idea of general intelligence, for theories of multiple intelligences support a pedagogy, convergent and standardised while the preferred way(s) to teach literacy significantly more diverse pedagogy. The battle over need to understand this and be able to is another exemplar. Teacher education students professional practice. develop a defensible and comprehensive knowledge by the learner is to be determined- Thirdly, assessment how the realisation of standardisation on the one hand, and is also bedevilled by notions of standards and the comparison and standardisation creativity and divergence on the other. Arguments over good example of these complexities. of scores of greatly differing subjects in VCE are a the other that of the disciplinary structures through which The fourth message system is constantly and the work of teachers and pupils managed- message systems are ordered alter such structures in England and subject to revision, witness the dramatic attempts to Wales or, indeed, in Victoria over the most recent past. the activities of schools then teacher If these message systems are the substance of is the form of the message systems current education students need to not only know what of the battles between ideas and interests in schools at any one time but also sufficient educational ideas and practice. which themselves help shape and re-shape contemporary major issue which will bring about This morning I want to mention some half dozen schools, indeed to the very notion of significant changes to the message systems of decade. Teacher education programs ignore schools and therefore teaching, over the next them at our peril. Teacher Education Making Chaos out of Order: Social Change and The disorder of information. social changes of the last decade is the Perhaps the most dramatic and immediately obvious of information and information explosion which, coupled with the convergence information madness whereby a surfeit of communications technologies is producing and learners can easily drown. I intend to information produces an ocean in which teachers and the effects are so obvious to us all. say little about this because Symbolic analysis and the ordering of disorder. from the disorder of information with One of the rather obvious requirements arising intellectuals whose employment is concerned which we are faced is the need for a cadre of its ordering in terms of social, cultural, with the symbolic analysis of information and of course, major centres of such economic and productive objectives. Universities are, initial teacher education occurs. It is symbolic analysis as well as the context within which 4 of educators to undertake their own assessment therefore a major responsibility of teacher articulate with which they are surrounded and to the various forms of symbolic analysis systems) of teacher education. these into the practices (the message indeed, they never sole centres Of symbolic analysis But universities are no longer the also major centres of kinds, public, industrial, commercial, are were. Bureaucracies of all and schools themselves. symbolic analysis as indeed are media Economic convergence and stratification. forms of economic interests which shape particular Partly as a result of the industrial and foreign exchange global scale (money markets and symbolic analysis on an increasingly being developed. The of economic convergence are markets for instance) various forms instance- machine tools and agriculture for globalisation of production in key sectors into increasingly (in that production is organised bring about both economic convergence nation states (that stratification both within and between larger units on a global scale) and of production between haves and have nots). This convergence is, a significant divergence significance. crisis of political ecology of some and divergence of wealth produces a The crisis of political ecology. produced, as Paul of markets and currency flows has The increasingly global organisation national and local of political crises at international, Kennedy (1995) observes, a series developed in response to political organisation has only slowly levels. Firstly, international such global of production and distribution. As yet, the globalisation of the organisation in terms of both and significantly under-resourced political organisation is embryonic remains largely with nation states. finance and political authority which economic or themselves able to exercise sovereign Nation states, however, are no longer different interests and as operates according to cultural authority as the global economy independence from the nation and ethnic communities assert, their more local geographic of the former mild examples while the break up France, Italy, Spain being relatively state dramatic instances. Here the fifth major Yugoslavia and Russian federations are more decade comes into play. I call it Social change that will shape the forthcoming Diastrophism. Social Diastrophism. deformation in is the process of movement and Diastrophism, as geographers will know, basins and large scale features such as continents, ocean the earth's crust that gives rise to movements and therefore, refers to large scale social mountains. Social diastorphism and the wars impact of the population explosion deformations and refers primarily to the and migrations that flow from it. further billion will be around 5 billion. Roughly a Our current population is somewhere in the third Most of these billion mouths will appear added to this population by 2007. Africa is likely to capacity to provide for them. While world- the world that has the least between countries difficulties, across Eurasia the disparities bear the brunt of the resulting and military economic growth and social, political and regions in population growth, and deformation well lead to significant movement development will be immense and may such Australia is already an inheritor of some of social structures on a large scale. challenges of dealing with difference displacement through migration and the consequent and diversity. 5 The global effect of such population growth and displacement is, however, significant also in another way as it provides one component in a deadly cocktail. The other ingredient is environmental degradation. Environmental degradation. One of the significant results of explosive population growth is the environmental impact impact is on forest cover, non-renewable resources and agriculture in particular. This further exaggerated by the fact that four fifths of global resources are consumed by the population of the first world. Moreover the translation of subsistence agriculture in the third world to cash crop monocultures for export to the first world further exacerbates the difficulties of third world governments and populations. The environmental consequences of continuing activity of this kind are patent and will become more so over the next decade. The inequalities of women. that of the Any approach to the mitigation of these problems must address a further issue redress of the inequalities suffered by women on a world wide scale, but particularly in those countries which severely restrict the education and social participation of women. The education of girls is perhaps the most significant global issue which is likely to impact decline as well as being a on fertility levels, agricultural production and environmental matter of fundamental social justice. The Order and Disorder of Teacher Education, Currently much of the debate concerning teacher education in English speaking countries is couched in terms of technology and content. The forms of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment to be developed through teacher education are directed towards establishing order in these message systems. However, the attempt to establish such order separate from the disorder of the surrounding global, national and local communities places too great a burden on schools and is unlikely to succeed. Neither schooling nor teacher education can be separated from their surrounding societies. Currently, however, the disciplinary systems of schooling and, by association, of teacher education, are focussed on forms of control that recoil from current sources of social disorder. Current moves to impose a modernist education in a post-modern world- such as while not in a prescriptive National Curriculum or back to basics in literacy and numeracy, themselves undesirable, miss the point entirely if they prevent teachers and teacher educators from addressing significant sources of social disorder. Teachers Voice. that is, they are not Teachers are, whether they like it or not, embedded intellectuals simply practitioners or technicians as many would like them to be. They are one of the foremost groups of symbolic analysts in society for they, in their day to day practice interpret curricular, pedagogical and assessment systems through their symbolic interaction with their pupils. Whatever is 'decided' elsewhere teachers are always in a situation of choice and interpretation for there are always contradictions to be resolved in the practice of teaching. Teacher education for 2007 will therefore need to develop in prospective teachers 6 of an underlying understanding of education and schooling within the context global social as well as epistemological change an understanding of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment as socially constructed and contested on a continuous basis a commitment to engagement not only with classroom practice but also with the various agents and interests that shape the context of that practice, not least in terms of the pursuit of equity, justice and opportunity In short, and returning to the affirmation made in the Draft Guidelines on Initial Teacher Education, the social responsibility of the teacher as a global citizen must be foundational in the teacher education of 2007. Or, to quote the eminent historian Paul Kennedy in his assessment of what is needed in Preparing for the Twenty-first Century (1993) ...education in the larger sense means more than technically 're-tooling' the workforce, or the emergence of professional classes, or even the encouragement of a manufacturing culture in the schools and colleges in order to preserve a production base. It also implies a deep understanding of why our world is changing, of how other people and cultures feel about these changes, of what we all have in common - as well as of what divides cultures, classes and nations. Moreover while this process of inquiry ought, if possible, to be tolerant and empathetic, it cannot be value- free. In the end, it is not enough merely to understand what we are doing to our planet....Because we are all members of a world citizenry, we also need to equip ourselves with a system of ethics, a sense of fairness, and a sense of proportion as we consider the various ways in which, collectively or individually, we can better prepare for the twenty-first century. (Kennedy, 1993:34-341) Teacher educators in 2007 must take cognisance of our responsibility to prepare teachers with the skills, nerve and sense of fairness that will enable them and their students in turn to take part in the remaking of an increasingly dangerous and disordered world but one which is still beautiful and full of possibilities. Reference Kennedy, Paul (1993) Preparing for the Twenty-first Century. London. Harper-collins. 7 ERIC U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERO Educational Resources information Center (ERIC) REPRODUCTION RELEASE (Specific Document) I. 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