The term teacher preparation program means “a state-approved course of study, the completion of which means that an enrollee has met all state educational or training requirements for certification or initial license to teach in the state's elementary or secondary schools. A preparation is a different individual course that you are teaching. If you are teaching 2 different sections of the same course in the same semester, that counts as only 1 preparation, but it counts twice towards your teaching load. Students admitted to teacher preparation programs learn educational pedagogy and participate in student teaching experiences.
Graduates are eligible for teacher licensing in early childhood, elementary or secondary education. There are many specializations available, including art education, mathematics, physics, or foreign languages. The solution, according to a growing group of innovative educators, is not a gradual improvement of the traditional model, but a completely new one. The new version does not come from the ivory tower, but from the solid K-12 classrooms.
In its clinical approach, it is more like a medical school than an education school. In fact, the new model recognizes teaching as a professional skill and a trade, such as medicine or law, and seeks to elevate it as a profession, partly through rigorous selection and training of candidates. Unlike the traditional model, the new wave of teacher preparation programs seeks to hold accountable for the results teachers achieve in the classroom. And while these programs offer training that lasts much longer than Teach for America's, they're based on some ideas from TFA and its progeny.
What do you think many teacher accreditation programs should teach that they may not be doing now?.
