http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21390594-12332,00.html
This article by Justine Ferarri links teacher retention rates to lack of practica in teacher education courses:
"The survey found almost half chose teaching as a second career, but one in four of all new teachers became so dispirited by the job that they intended to quit within the next five years"
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I don't know about other teacher educators, but I have found that when pre-service teachers learn about how excellent teaching addresses literacy, numeracy and classroom managament issues as a matter of course, their practicum supervisors then go and tell them to forget everything they learn at uni.
When we get rid of teachers' scepticism of university lecturers and anything that happens at uni, we might see some accord, and support for each others' points of view.
Beginning teachers become socialised by sceptical teachers, and taught to see what happened at university as having nothing to do with the 'chalk face'. Personally, my degree set me up beautifully. What I learned in unversity did indeed help with the real experience. My university learning just got deeper with the experience.
Why is it such a problem for people to realise that you don't finish a degree in teaching knowing everything there is to know about teaching??
Hi Graham, and welcome.
You raise a number of important issues. I agree with you, and especially with your last point.
The article certainly gives the impression that because beginning teachers don't know everything about teaching, they find themselves feeling underprepared, and this is attributed to apparently badly organised teacher education programs.
Certainly, there might be an argument for more practica, but the logistics of such an endeavour would be complicated. There is a lot of theory associated with education that does not get taught on the job, so theory-based courses are extremely important (for example, those that focus on educational psychology, or teaching strategies, or on prgramming and assessment techniques). When teachers find themselves out in the 'real world', they can often get taught these things in a way that conforms with the current practices of a particular school. Hence, if these things were tuaght in a school setting, beginning teachers are running the risk of not being aware of other (and perhaps better) ways of doing things.
So what might be done? Perhaps giving early career teachers a time allowance for at least one year so that they might be able to better plan, investigate, learn and adjust would work to alleviate some of this very real stress they feel about being thrown into the deep end would be a good idea?
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