As noted throughout this report, numerous commissions, committees, and state and national organizations have recently addressed the need for improving the teaching of science and mathematics in the United States and, hence, the preparation and professional development of teachers in these disciplines. The Committee on Science and Mathematics Teacher Preparation (CSMTP) has reached similar conclusions. Committee members strongly support the idea that leaders in national, state, and local governments, and all education communities must declare that the improvement of teacher education is a top priority. Most critically, our nation’s colleges and universities must embrace this imperative. Committee members concur with the recent statements of the American Council on Education (1999), the Presidents and Chancellors of the Association of American Universities (1999), and U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley (1998, 2000) regarding the role of higher education in improving teacher education: teacher education must become a central focus of the entire institution, not just of schools or departments of education. The committee also strongly supports the specific recommendation from the American Council on Education (1999), “Where teacher education programs operate at the periphery of the institution’s strategic interests and directions, they should be moved to the center—or moved out.”
The CSMTP’s examination of research data, recommendations, and current practices also has convinced members that significant improvement in recruiting, preparing, inducting, and retaining teachers for the teaching of science and mathematics in grades K-12 demands fundamental changes in our current systems of teacher education. Small adjustments cannot and will not result in sustainable improvement of science and mathematics. Nor will small changes improve science and mathematics teaching as a profession that attracts and retains the most qualified practitioners.
Improving teacher quality is at the heart of our national effort to achieve excellence in the classroom. This comes at a time when the very structure of education is going through a profound change. With knowledge all around us, available anytime and anywhere, the role of the teacher is going to be fundamentally transformed in the 21st century.
In the future, schools will be more fluid, teachers more adaptable and flexible, and students will be more accountable as the task of learning becomes theirs. The challenge of the modern classroom is its increasing diversity and the skills that this diversity requires of teachers. This is why we need to do some new thinking when it comes to the teaching profession.
We need a dramatic overhaul of how we recruit, prepare, induct and retain good teachers. The status quo is not good enough. And we must revamp professional development as we know it. New distance learning models can be powerful new tools to give teachers more opportunities to be better teachers.
Our efforts to improve education will rise or fall on the quality of our teaching force, and higher education has the defining role in preparing the next generation of teachers. I ask leaders in higher education across the nation to please make this their mission.
Richard Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education, 2000
Not long ago, a college chemistry professor grew angry with the way her daughter’s high school chemistry class was being taught. She made an appointment to meet with the teacher and marched with righteous indignation into the classroom—only to discover that the teacher was one of her own former students.
Yates, 1995
Source: http://books.nap.edu/
