Teacher Education

The evolving history of the role of teacher education in the United States reflects the changing purposes [Page 872]and characteristics of schools and schooling. Schools in the United States from colonial times to the middle of the 19th century were primarily focused on the basics of reading, writing, and skills in arithmetic. Values important to the emerging nation were clearly evident in daily lessons often conducted as group and individual recitations. During those years, most teachers in both rural and urban areas had no training for their position, and teachers often had little more than an eighth-grade education. Schoolmasters in the Latin grammar schools in major population centers, however, were often graduates of liberal arts study at universities founded in the early days of the new nation. Teaching was often a temporary position taken by men on their way to other callings or by women until marriage.

By the mid-1800s, common schools, or publicly supported schools that enrolled all children, began to take hold in communities, particularly in the northern United States. The primary goal of these schools was to strengthen the foundations of the United States by transmitting the cultural heritage and by creating a literate citizenry who could participate in the democratic processes. As industrialization and immigration dramatically increased in the mid- to late 19th century, the pressures on the common schools, and on finding teachers to teach in the common schools, also increased. In response, the first state-sponsored normal schools were created for the purpose of preparing teachers to meet the needs of the growing numbers of common schools. Many students were admitted to the first normal schools after completing the equivalent of an elementary education, and the curriculum was considered to be at the secondary level rather than at the collegiate level. By the beginning of the 20th century, most universities and colleges had established departments for teacher preparation. It is important to note, however, that by the 1930s, most teachers at the secondary level had university training, but fewer than 10% of elementary teachers held a bachelor's degree.

The 20th century brought global upheaval, with two world wars bridged by economic crisis. During that time teacher education, within both normal schools and universities, expanded curricula by enhancing professional, disciplinary, and general education studies. The final decades of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century have been marked by increasing criticism of teacher education programs. Documentation of program fragmentation, weak standards for admission and graduation, and poor connection to the real world of practice have supported the complaints targeted at schools and departments of education. The profession has responded through a broadly constructed reform agenda for improving teacher education that has been in motion from the 1980s to the present time.