Innovations in Teacher Education: A Social Constructivist Approach

INTRODUCTION

Constructivist teaching and teacher education has clearly arrived. Discussions of these topics dominate scholarly and practitioner journals in most subject areas. —Virginia Richardson, Constructivist Teacher Education, Building a World of New Understandings Preservice teacher education today is a site of contrasting trends. On the one hand, there are promising developments: theory–practice links, cohort groupings , teaching for understanding, reflective practice, school–university partnerships , and self-study research. On the other hand, however, we see cuts in funding, pressure to teach less theory, inadequate alternative certification, stifling accreditation rules, superficial exit tests, and evaluation of programs largely in quantitative terms. There are calls both to expand teacher education and to curtail it. As a result, teacher educators are experiencing both hope and despair. Faced with these conflicts and pressures, what are we to do? Should we opt for compromise, making concessions to the conservative, transmissionoriented forces? Should we settle for somewhat shorter, simpler, and cheaper programs? In our view, there is no alternative but to continue in the direction of innovation and enhancement of programs. In the case of schooling, it is increasingly clear that the move back to transmission is not resulting in significant gains even in standardized test results, let alone depth of understanding and general student growth (Berliner & Biddle, 1995; Meier, 2000). At the same time, evidence exists that the progressive alternative can be very effective (Darling-Hammond, 1997), and much contemporary educational theory indicates why this is so. Why should we, then, implement in teacher preparation an approach that does not work at the school level? Rather, we need to make a clearer and stronger case for the alternative approach and devise more effective ways to implement it. But what exactly is this progressive alternative? Our preference is to call it “social constructivism,” hence the subtitle of our book. This situates it in the tradition of Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky, but at the same time links it to fruitful new strands in sociocultural thought. The term social constructivism is used increasingly today to refer to progressive reforms in education. Virginia 1 I N T R O D U C T I O N Richardson (1997), a key figure in the field of teaching and teacher education, writes: “Constructivist teaching and teacher education has clearly arrived. Discussions of these topics dominate scholarly and practitioner journals in most subject areas” (p. 3). She describes constructivism as the position that “individuals create their own understandings, based upon the interaction of what they already know and believe, and the phenomena or ideas with which they come in contact” (p. 3). Although originally somewhat individualistic in orientation, constructivism has recently taken on a social emphasis: social factors are seen as crucial “in both the construction and appropriation of knowledge ” (p. 7). It is this latter version of constructivism that we wish to propose for utilization in preservice education. At the school level, social constructivism implies a form of learning in which students are fully engaged, find the process meaningful, and relate ideas to the real world to a considerable extent. Only in this way can they participate in constructing their knowledge and acquire the habits that make them lifelong learners. The teacher fosters a culture in the classroom that supports critical and productive inquiry. There is a strong sense of community and much collaborative learning. The learning experience is holistic: in addition to the social aspect, emotional, aesthetic, bodily, and other forms of expression are involved. This not only allows for broad personal development, but ensures the depth of understanding and experience needed for knowledge construction. At the preservice level, social constructivism involves a similar kind of culture and experience: meaningful, critical, social, holistic.This is necessary so student teachers can see firsthand what the approach means, learn “how to do it,” and grow intellectually and personally in ways necessary for social constructivist teaching. We believe that a small cohort program with its own faculty team is the arrangement usually most conducive to these kinds of outcomes. The case for smallness has been made well by a number of writers on schooling (Meier, 1995; Wasley, 1994; Wood, 1992, 1998), and the same basic arguments can be applied to preservice education. Such conditions facilitate the kind of program integration, close teacher–student relationship, and community experience needed to achieve social constructivist goals. Most of the programs discussed in this book have a small cohort and their own faculty team. Part of the basis for this book is our own experience in the “Mid...