teaching profession then and now essay

Educ 300: Education Reform, Past and Present

an undergraduate course with Professor Jack Dougherty at Trinity College, Hartford CT

Teaching Then and Now: Has Teaching Changed Over the Years with the Introduction of New Technology? And Have Interactive White Boards Changed the Way Teachers Teach?

Technology is becoming more and more advanced everyday. Items that are faster and sleeker are replacing items that we once used. These are anything, from things that are in our homes to things that are in our schools. Many schools have new technology that teachers use. This might sound great, that most schools have this advanced technology, but when we look deeper do we see any change over time? More specifically, do we see any change over time in the way teachers teach? In this research paper, I will pay close attention to what author, Larry Cuban, feels about teaching and the implementation of technology over time. I will look at a couple of his books The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920 and Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom where he says that how teachers teach has pretty much stayed the same over time. I will answer this question in a different way and say that technology has changed the ways teachers teach. I will do this by r by reviewing some articles and books that look at teaching methods from about the 1970’s to the present to show that many teachers use this technology and there have been changes in how teachers teach. Finally, I will look at a pretty recent technological innovation, interactive white boards, and show that the addition of this novelty has changed how teachers teach.

In Cuban’s book, Teachers and Machines: The classroom use of technology since 1920, Cuban says that electronic technology has not changed the way high school teachers teach. Cuban says this is due to “school and classroom structures and culture of teaching” (Cuban 2 , 63). For example, there are teachers who resist using technology, which could be for a number of reasons (Cuban 2 , 80). Teachers might not be prepared, they might not have the time, they might not like change, etc. In regards to computers, Cuban feel like they are being used like how past innovations, radio, films, etc., have been used which means things have stayed the same (Cuban 2 , 81). When looking into when TVs were introduced, Cuban says that they replaced the teacher in a way because the TVs had things that were represented in better ways than the teacher could show (Cuban 2 , 38).

In Cuban’s book Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom he continues to say how technology in the classroom has no affected the way teachers teach and how some teachers don’t even use it (Cuban 1 , 71). Cuban found that in some high schools, teachers used computers to help prepare them for their classes rather than to teach their classes (Cuban 1 , 85). When teachers were asked about how they thought of the new technology in their school, they said “technology changed the way the prepared for classes, but not a lot of teaches said their daily practices changed” (Cuban 1 , 95). Furthermore, Cuban says that the classroom is still teacher centered and not student centered. Teachers might not use technological innovations, like computers, because “it takes a while to implement things in schools because they are citizen controlled and nonprofit” (Cuban 1 , 153). Even though Cuban feels that teachers’ methods have not changed with the introduction of technology, he feels things will change as we move forward and teachers get more used to seeing and using the technology (Cuban 1 , 179).

References:

Cuban, Larry 1 . Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom. Harvard

College: President and Fellows. 2001. Print.

Cuban, Larry 2 . Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920.

New York: Teachers College Press. 1986. Print.

One thought on “Teaching Then and Now: Has Teaching Changed Over the Years with the Introduction of New Technology? And Have Interactive White Boards Changed the Way Teachers Teach?”

Your topic is very interesting and I think you did a great job with your draft! Your research question is very clear and your draft is right on track with answering the question you are presenting. I know that your research question is specifically focused on teaching and not learning but maybe you can find out if teaching with new technology has affected they way in which students learn, whether or not you find that the ways of teaching have changed since the 1920s. Another idea I might suggest, although you did mention that you would be using other sources, is that you don’t only focus on Larry Cuban’s books because that might make your research too narrowly focused on his ideas. Great job!

Comments are closed.

• Instructional Videos

The Book Teacher

The evolution of the teaching profession.

Dear Readers,

The Covid 19 Pandemic provided us with much time to reflect upon our lives, and even our chosen professions.  I always  assumed that our profession has evolved over the decades to “state of the art” teaching and instruction, grounded in sound reasoning and research.  Yet, veteran teachers continue to talk about a “pendulum” that swings back and forth between direct instruction and more progressive methods.

So, I decided to do some research, and even include some family archival records to determine how we have changed over the past 100 years.  The result is a piece I’ve entitled: “Then and Now: How Different is Reading and Writing Instruction Today?  I hope you enjoy it!

 Then and Now: How Different is Reading and Writing                  Instruction Today?

(Willard School, Perry, Iowa, 1914.  John M. Robertson, my father, is fifth from the left in the top row.)

                                 Introduction

Historical narratives allow us to appreciate the rich legacy of our profession, and to imagine possibilities for teaching in the 21 st century.  In this piece, I focus upon the preparation and supervision of teachers, and the instructional materials for teaching reading and writing in the 1920s.  Family photos, primary source documents, archival photographs, and Ancestry records were part of the inspiration for this piece.  Vintage textbooks helped to frame an analysis of differentiated language arts instruction one hundred years ago.  Issues of constancy, change, and teacher resiliency are examined, with implications for contemporary teaching and learning.

The 1920s was a time of optimism and progressive thinking in education.  However, it was also a time when Americans strove to reclaim a sense of normalcy in their lives.  The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, which lasted until December of 1920, claimed approximately 650,000 lives in the United States. Urban and rural families lost parents, children, friends, and relatives.  Emotions were raw, and further compounded by World War I fatigue. Consequently, issues related to home and family took precedence in most people’s thinking.

Waves of newly arrived immigrants made people anxious about their own job security.  In general, the populace was totally unprepared for the stock market crash of 1929, and the “Decade of Depression” that would follow.  The 1920s was literally the calm before that economic storm.

                                   My Father’s Story

My father, John M. Robertson, grew up in the mid-western town of Perry, Iowa. 1920 census records report that nearly all residents spoke, read, and wrote in English.  Everyone on the census claim the United States as their country of birth.   Many “heads of the household” were listed as farmers, but others are recorded as linemen, brakemen, engineers, conductors, or laborers for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad.   My grandfather, Charles, was a lineman/maintainer.

In 1920, my father would have been ten-years-old.  He would have known all about trains, riverboats, and the “Wild West.”  He could have told you how to set up a camp site, that the Mississippi river ran all the way from Perry to New Orleans, how to swim against a river’s current, and even how to “break a bronco.”  He would have been familiar with the Jesse James and James Younger gangs, as his grandmother lived in the vicinity of the gangs’ first, successful train robbery.  His report cards show he was an average to above average student.  Of particular note is that fact that only 78% of children between the age of five and seventeen were enrolled in school at this time.  Many students left school after eighth grade to help support their families, as  Child-Labor Laws were not enacted until 1938.

There were no integrated schools in the 1920s, and schools were classified as either “white” or “colored.”  Moreover, only Black teachers were permitted to teach in the “colored” schools.  Over this decade, an 5000 additional schools would be built for Black children in the South.

Teaching Philosophies of the 1920s

The progressive movement, spearheaded by John Dewey (1916), paved the way for experiential and individualistic approaches to the teaching of readers and writers in the 1920s.  Dewey highlighted the role of the learner in the process, and further acknowledged that students learn differently.  Thus, he proposed they be taught with materials suitable for their strengths and needs.  As a result, educators began to reconsider the value of basic reading and writing instruction to individualize instruction and create future productive citizens.  Educators began to re-conceptualize teacher preparation, instructional materials, and the modernization of their classrooms.  In doing so, they strove to apply a vast body of educational research to classroom practice. The major research topics of this time were: reading interests; reading disability; and readiness for beginning reading (Banton Smith, 1985, p. 256).

The gradual transition in thinking is evident in educational textbooks from the 1920s through 1930s, which were a mix of traditional and progressive ideas about teaching children to read and write. In the literature between 1918 to 1924 two topics were frequently discussed.  They were: the preparation and supervision of teachers; and remedial reading (Banton-Smith, 1965, p. 195).

Preparation and Supervision of Teachers

Teacher Manuals

Teacher manuals or professional books of this decade, started to have more form and substance. Paper covered pamphlets and teacher editions were replaced with cloth bound books differentiated for each grade level.  Essential elements of these manuals included scientific investigation and learning theories; reading objectives; pre primer methods; procedure by lessons or stages of development; word recognition and phonetics; tests; individual needs; and remedial work.  Instructions were less dogmatic in these manuals, and teachers had flexibility in planning instruction and integrating enrichment activities.  The first-grade grade teacher manual contained instructions for the primer and first reader.  Instructions for second and third graders were combined in a single book, as were those for fourth, fifth, and sixth graders (Banton-Smith, 1965, p. 208).

Student Basal Readers

According to Banton-Smith (1965), “supplemental books never before had been so abundant, so beautiful, or so varied in content” (p. 209).  The pre-primer was an innovation of this time period, and considered a foundational preparation for the series of readers that would follow in the subsequent grades.  The authors took into account the limited word recognition of young children who were just learning to read, therefore, there were fewer words in each sentence. Pre-primer and primary texts were highly repetitive to promote word recognition.  Standard word lists were the basis for the selection of vocabulary for each story (p. 217).

Reading Instruction

Methods for teaching beginning reading were varied, and included: reading stories composed by the children; reading and carrying out direction sentences; dramatizing stories; learning and reading rhymes, and reading from prepared charts containing the primer vocabulary (Smith, 1965, p. 232).   Sets of small books (pre-primer to grade six), included realistic narratives, old tales, modern fanciful tales, informational selections, poetry, fables, and silent reading exercises.  As an example, first graders read texts such as The Just So Stories, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and Alice in Wonderland. There were also workbooks for “silent reading and directed study” seat work (Wheat, 1923, p. 223).

A major shift in pedagogical thinking was a move away from expressive oral reading to silent reading for “thought-getting.”   In The Teaching of Reading (1923), Wheat describes the various phases of reading instruction, with an emphasis upon silent reading for idea generation. Reading for meaning was the prevalent ideology of the 20s, and phonics was characterized as an instructional strategy of “no value” (Banton- Smith, 1965, p. 233).

Yet, a review of the scope and sequence of teacher manuals reveals that fluency, letter, and word identification activities were still integrated.  In general, however, phonics was taught more moderately, and subordinated to other “general reading skills” (p. 235).  These skills were: comprehension, retention, interpretation and appreciation, organization, and research.  In addition, “specialized skills” were developed that included: understanding the meaning and use of technical vocabulary; reading word problems; and knowing how to record and report observations and experiments (p. 237).

Writing Instruction

            It is apparent from archival records that writing instruction was traditional, with a continued emphasis upon composition, grammar, spelling, and penmanship (Wheat, 1923, p. 166).  The Palmer Method was the most popular approach for teaching cursive writing.  Children learned to print before learning cursive writing, and the latter was usually taught in a separate class.  However, the use of students’ own dictated stories based upon their personal experiences was an innovative approach to reading/writing instruction introduced in the 1920s.  It would later be known as the “language-experience” approach.

Remedial Reading                            

The Characterization of “Backward Pupils”

The shift in the concept of individualized instruction, generated by progressives, though ostensibly noble, resulted in the division of students within classes.  Individualization, combined with the increased advocacy for mental intelligence tests with Binet equivalents in public schools, led to the specific categorization of students.  Students were generally grouped as “poor, average, and superior” (Wheat, 1923, p. 243) in ability.  Dewey asserted that grouping based upon test scores was a threat to democracy

Wheat (1923) proposes “special help for backward pupils” or those with “degrees of backwardness.”  He characterizes one second grader as “backward” because of his “lack of familiarity with printed words and an utter lack of phonetic power.” Similarly, the degree of a fourth grader’s backwardness was related to the number of repetitions he makes while reading out loud.  He writes, “Getting no meaning from the sentence as he phrased it, he repeated in an attempt to get something from the sentence by the second reading (p. 315).”

Word study for recognition, pronunciation, and comprehension of difficult words was the recommended intervention for students with “various kinds of backwardness.”  Remedial work included “eye training and focus,” including “flash cards” and “flashing phrases,” “lessons in focus and accuracy,” reading “perfectly” until no errors are made; “breathing exercises,” since “practice in breath control is related to the problem of meaning and interpretation;” and “articulation exercises for “mumblers” or those with other bad speech habits” (Wheat, p. 316).  In the early 1920s terms such as “handicapped foreign” enter the discourse. Immigrant children were also characterized as “backward” because of their “meager vocabularies.”

Concluding Thoughts About the 1920s

Teachers in the 1920s did their best with what they had, and enriched language arts instruction through multiple approaches and varied materials.  It should be noted that they were given professional leeway to make these decisions.  Concurrently, the field of special education was emerging in response to calls for the differentiation of instruction for diverse populations of students.  Teachers began to consider new child descriptors, such as “backward” and “word blind,” (the first descriptor for dyslexia) and what it meant for the students in the classrooms.

In addition, these resilient teachers applied “modern classroom” research about silent reading for literacy instruction. Simultaneously, integrating traditional phonics approaches and word study when they felt they were necessary.  Not much was known about second language acquisition in the 1920s.  There were few research studies about the teaching of “handicapped foreign” students. The selection of the term “handicapped,” demonstrates a deficit perspective about immigrant children.  I tend to believe that if the classroom teacher was a child of immigrants herself, this classification would have been abhorrent.  Considering the number of students in teachers’ classes, it is incredible that they were able to nurture the literacy development of the readers and writers in their charge at all.

Not every student continued their education after eighth grade or high school, choosing to pursue apprenticeship pathways in varied fields. Social, economic, and political factors played a significant role in their decisions. However, students from the 1920s, would come to be described as “the greatest generation.”  The influence of their teachers can never be underestimated.

  Teaching Today

A vast and expanding number of landmark studies have greatly influenced language arts instruction since the 1920s.  Echoes of Dewey’s sentiments reverberate in today’s calls for student discovery, self-directed learning, and personalized approaches that address the whole child.  Personalized learning in the 21 st century has become highly computerized, and the teacher’s role is changing.  Chalk boards, overhead projectors, TV carts, and cursive writing worksheets have been discarded and replaced with instructional technology, such as Smart Boards, iPads, and eResources.

                       Preparation and Supervision of 21 st Century Teachers

Teacher preparation and supervision continues to receive scrutiny at the state and national level.  There is an increased focus upon “evidence-based” teacher educator programs.  The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), determines if teachers are “classroom ready” to meet the instructional needs of diverse student populations.  Issues related to equity, justice, educational technology, and culturally responsive teaching are scrutinized in their accreditation reviews.  These concepts are congruent with contemporary research in the field of literacy studies.

Today’s teachers are knowledgeable about content and pedagogy.  The ways they organize their classrooms display their beliefs about the role of conversation and collaboration in student learning. They have adopted a process approach to the teaching of reading and writing that involves teacher modeling, mentor texts, and student’s active involvement in lessons.  As in the 1920s, more traditional approaches sometimes supplement instruction.  Teachers remain resilient and creative in the ways they implement “evidenced based” and strategies instruction in their own literacy classes, and the ways in which they use standardized materials to promote learning for their students.

Teacher Manuals and Student Readers

Teachers from the 1920s might recognize the formatting, scope and sequence of today’s standardized literacy programs.  These mass-produced teacher manuals are pleasingly designed and integrate the latest “evidence” to support instructional approaches.  Educators from one hundred years ago would marvel at the comprehensive resources that integrate technology with literacy instruction.  The digital learning curve would be steep for them, but the teaching approaches would seem familiar.

Twenty-first century readers are appealing in appearance and abundant in supplementary materials. I’m not sure if teachers from the 1920s would think these readers are of quality, as they focused upon the classics.  After reviewing them, however, they could easily perceive how the readers increase in complexity for each grade level.  The practice of leveling books for guided reading would be a new concept for them.  Today’s teachers understand the progression and characteristics of each text level, and use them appropriately to promote students’ reading competencies.  Contemporary classroom libraries provide students with access to all levels of books throughout the school day.

In many urban and suburban school districts, computerized literacy programs (Raz Kids, Reading A-Z, Epic, or MyOn), have been adopted.  These digital reading programs permit teachers to assign the same passage, but at varied levels of difficulty, to their guided reading groups.  It should be noted that the depth, breadth, and quality of the writing at the lower levels passages is significantly inferior, which makes comprehension more difficult.  Meager texts do not allow students to use multiple strategies to understand what they are read.

Read alouds are still popular with teachers as an instructional strategy, as they promote student engagement, interest, and model fluent reading.  However, these shared readings now focus upon critical comprehension skills through open-ended student discussions.  Students are encouraged to share what they notice or wonder about a text, and to make connections to their own lives.  These classroom conversations create a necessary space for students to express their thinking and questions about literature, and give teachers the opportunity to “unpack” the layers of meaning students might not notice (2019).  Through think alouds, teachers model the multiple strategies proficient readers utilize, and ways to pay attention to an author’s cues,  These cues assist them summarize and determine a story’s theme.   Teachers utilize a the “gradual release of responsibility” (2009) model of instruction to support apprentice literacy learners.

Comprehension instruction has evolved.  Independent reading is now considered a meaning making process, in which the reader is actively involved in using graphophonic cues, predicting, inferring, connecting, summarizing, visualizing, self-monitoring, and questioning the text for understanding.  Each reader “transacts” (Rosenblatt, 1978), or responds to a text in unique ways. Student schema is as individual as a thumbprint.

The cognitive nature of the reading process is affirmed when tracking students’ miscues, or unexpected responses to a text, when reading aloud.  Students invariably substitute a noun for a noun, a verb for a verb, and an adjective for an adjective when they miscue.  Readers do not utter random responses, rather, they reread for confirmation, and self-correct miscues that don’t make sense (Goodman, 1996).  Therefore, the “backward readers” of the 1920s would not be characterized as such today.

Much of today’s writing instruction is geared to the genre that students will face on state standardized texts, so they are taught to write opinion or argument pieces that cite evidence from textual sources.  Teachers from one-hundred years ago would be surprised to see the role that standardized tests have played in classroom instruction, as assessments were just being introduced in their schools.

To teachers’ credit and resilience, they have also integrated a process or descriptive approach to teaching writers, and integrated personal narratives to provide students with a writing voice.  In similar fashion, students are encouraged to learn the “habits and processes” of a writer, how to analyze an author’s craft, or descriptive language and structural formats.  Teachers use think alouds with mentor texts, to model and highlight an author’s techniques, and to co-write with their students.  This is reminiscent of the “dictated stories” of the 1920s.

        Reading Intervention

The Characterization of “Struggling Readers”

Labels for students have not gone away.  Instead, they have changed from “backward” to “struggling” or “at risk.”.  Despite the fact that we know so much more about the ways the brain processes information, the nature of the reading and writing processes, and the social and emotional factors that impact upon achievement, the onus for failure continues to be placed upon the student who is performing below grade level expectations.  Educators need to examine the types of texts students are asked to read, the literacy tasks they are required to complete, and the presence or absence of teachers’ motivational mindsets when assessing and evaluating student achievement and progress.

English Language Learners (ELLs), English as a New Language (ENL) Learners, Bilingual and Multilingual Learners

Similar deficit perspectives about the limited vocabulary of bilingual, multilingual, and English Language Learners, and its correlation to reading and writing struggles are present in today’s research.  Over emphasis upon assessment through standardized tests, rather than classroom teachers’ assessments, have exacerbated the situation.  Consequently, ELL, ENL,  Bilingual or multilingual students are often referred to special education.  A teacher shared her frustrations with me, and the fact that her district has been “red-flagged” for this placement practice.  We are still striving to develop culturally and linguistically appropriate strategy instruction in reading and writing for children whose first language is not English (Hoover, J.; et al., 2019).  Additional historical overviews might focus upon special education “red flags,” and the populations of students who have been traditionally misplaced and disadvantaged through this classification system..

When the Unexpected Happens

The most striking similarity between the 20s and now, is the devastating impact of a pandemic upon families,’ students,’ and teachers’ lives.  Life could not continue “as usual.” During the Spanish Flu quarantine schools were briefly closed, and teachers sent home work packets to families.  Twentieth-century educators attempted to continue instruction and provide reinforcement activities electronically.  However, just as the people living in 1920 were totally unprepared for the Great Depression, teachers and administrators were totally untrained for virtual learning.  From March to June of 2020, students joined their classmates and teachers through Google, ZOOM, app-based learning, and other learning platforms.  This historic closing of schools, affected 50.8 million public school students. Teachers simultaneously designed digital units of study, while learning how to manipulate the “bells and whistles” of virtual platforms. They were often asked to use multiple platforms, as school systems realized some were better than others.

Children without access to Wi Fi or a computer were shortchanged in this process.  Districts reported a lack of Chrome books or iPads for all.  Students who were fortunate enough to get a device, might have had to share it with four other siblings.  Children who were transitory residents in a school district, or living in shelters had no chance.  One teacher shared her concerns that some of the children had just “disappeared,” and could not be contacted by phone or email.

Teaching has always been a vocation, and teachers have always been resilient.  We are compassionate and knowledgeable.  We understand the importance of creating safe and supportive learning environments for our students.  We do what needs to be done, with minimal resources.  So much of a teacher’s salary is directed towards purchases for the classroom.

In the summer of 2020, I spoke with an educator who was asked to begin a summer program aimed at helping her special education students “catch up.”  She stated, “Their desks will be six feet apart, and they asked me to wear a mask.  The students don’t have to wear them, just me!  I want to wear a transparent face shield so the kids can see my mouth when I talk.  The other masks will frighten them.” We talked for quite a while and agreed that is the most sensible option.  Her students, like all students, need that personal connection/relationship with the teacher.  So, teachers will make it happen like we’ve always done!

Bibliography

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Free.

Rosenblatt, L.M. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.

Smith, N. B. (1965). American reading instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Wheat H. G. (1923) The teaching of reading: A textbook of principles and methods. New York: Ginn and Company.

The Coronavirus Spring: The Historic Closing of U.S. Schools (2020). Retrieved from

https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/the-coronavirus-spring-the-historic-closing-of.html?cmp=eml-enl-eunews1&M=59608873&U=1802968&UUID=1430735b73863a2cdac4c0c2037ae6c0

Joanne Robertson-Eletto

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How the pandemic has changed teachers’ commitment to remaining in the classroom

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, gema zamarro , gema zamarro professor, department of education reform - university of arkansas @gema_zamarro andrew camp , andrew camp distinguished doctoral fellow and graduate assistant, department of education reform. - university of arkansas @andrewcamp_ dillon fuchsman , and dillon fuchsman postdoctoral fellow, sinquefield center for applied economic research - saint louis university @dillonfuchsman josh b. mcgee josh b. mcgee associate director, office for education policy - university of arkansas, chief data officer - the state of arkansas @jbmcgee.

September 8, 2021

The 2020-2021 academic year was unlike any other. After nationwide school closures during the spring of 2020, schools reopened in the fall using combinations of in-person, hybrid, and remote learning models. Teachers had to adapt to unexpected conditions, teaching in unprecedented ways, using synchronous and asynchronous instruction, while also being challenged to establish connections with students, families, and colleagues. Health concerns added to the mix as some teachers went back to in-person education during the height of the pandemic. As a result, teachers’ levels of stress and burnout have been high throughout these unusual pandemic times , raising concerns about a potential increase in teacher turnover and future teacher shortages.

A RAND survey, fielded in early January 2021, found that nearly one-quarter of teachers indicated a desire to leave their jobs at the end of the school year , compared with an average national turnover rate of 16% pre-pandemic according to NCES data . In our research brief , we use new survey data from the nationally representative RAND American Teacher Panel (ATP) to provide additional insights into these issues.

We study data from 1,045 teachers from a survey administered in March 2021. About 30% of teachers in our sample reported teaching fully remote for the majority of the school year, 49% reported that they taught in a hybrid model, and 21% reported teaching fully in person. A large majority of teachers in our sample (71%) reported they had to switch instructional models at least once during the 2020-2021 school year, and the average teacher switched models twice. To see how teachers’ attitudes may have changed through the pandemic, we compare the March 2021 data to responses to a pre-pandemic survey of 5,464 teachers administered mid-February to mid-March 2020.

We find that, during the pandemic, teachers have become less certain that they would work a full career in the classroom. In March 2020, 74% of teachers reported that they expected to work as a teacher until retirement, while 9% said they did not expect to, and 16% did not know. In contrast, in March 2021, 69% of teachers reported they expected to work as a teacher until retirement, while 9% reported they did not expect to, and 22% said they did not know.

Teachers’ reported probability of leaving their current state or the profession within the next five years also increased from 24% on average in March of 2020 to 30% in March 2021. This change was due to a reduction in the percentage of teachers reporting a zero probability of leaving and a corresponding increase in the percentage reporting chances above 50%.

Furthermore, a high proportion of teachers reported having considered leaving or retiring during the 2020-2021 academic year. In March 2021, 42% of teachers declared they have considered leaving or retiring from their current position during the last year. Of these, slightly more than half say it was because of COVID-19.

Although the proportion of teachers that considered leaving or retiring was similar across different experience levels, those approaching retirement (55 or older) considered leaving at higher rates. Among teachers 55 and older, 34% said they considered leaving or retiring because of COVID-19, compared to 23% for all respondents. Compared to teachers younger than 35, teachers approaching retirement were 11 percentage points more likely to say they have considered leaving or retiring because of COVID-19. Importantly, teachers nearing the retirement age were as likely as younger teachers to report having considered leaving or retiring for reasons other than COVID-19.

In addition to approaching retirement age (being 55 or older), having to change instruction modes and health concerns were also significant predictors of the probability of considering leaving or retiring. Having to change instruction mode at least once during the year is associated with a 13-percentage-point higher probability of having considered leaving or retiring. Finally, compared to teachers who report a 0% chance of getting COVID-19, those who think they have a 50% chance are 10 percentage points more likely to have considered leaving or retiring.

In contrast, the mode of instruction did not appear to relate to teachers’ considerations of leaving or retiring. While in-person teachers (15%) were less likely than those teaching fully remote (23%) or hybrid (26%) to report that they considered leaving or retiring because of COVID-19, a higher proportion of in-person teachers (27%) reported having considered leaving or retiring for other reasons than fully remote or hybrid teachers (14% and 18%, respectively).

Despite high considerations of leaving or retiring during the pandemic, teachers report that more of their colleagues have considered leaving than have left their teaching jobs. We asked teachers to report the number of their colleagues that have considered leaving or retiring because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then we asked how many of those colleagues left or retired. On average, teachers reported that around 40% of their colleagues that considered leaving because of COVID-19 ended up leaving.

The 2020-2021 academic year was a trying year for teachers and, as a result, teachers reported a higher probability that they will leave the profession than they did before the pandemic. However, so far, teachers’ considerations of leaving were more common than actually doing so, and teacher attrition rates have not increased . It remains to be seen whether this will persist as the pandemic continues and the Delta variant presents new challenges for the 2021-2022 academic year

Our results highlight three potential problem areas. First, a larger proportion of those approaching retirement age reported having considered leaving or retiring because of COVID-19, which could be problematic if schools begin to lose their more-experienced teachers. Second, most teachers had to change instructional mode at least once during the year (and many experienced multiple disruptions), and having to change instructional modes was associated with an increased probability of considering leaving or retiring. Finally, COVID-19 health concerns were also associated with an increased probability of considering leaving.

Teacher turnover is often bad for students , and a teacher shortage might be particularly disruptive in certain subjects or jurisdictions that are already strained. Even if teachers do not leave, higher levels of job dissatisfaction and intentions to leave could affect teacher effectiveness and could harm students’ academic progress . It is, therefore, important to get a better understanding of the factors that explain the increase in teachers’ considerations to leave so that we might find ways to better support teachers during these challenging times.

Addressing health concerns while trying to minimize school disruptions and changes in teaching mode could help increase satisfaction and retain teachers. Increasing school vaccination rates would certainly make a difference. In this respect, the recent FDA approval of a COVID-19 vaccine could open the door for vaccine mandates, and approval of a COVID-19 vaccine for children under 12 would allow a much larger share of the school-age population to get vaccinated. In the meantime, we should work together to control community spread, adopt school mitigation methods, and facilitate a supportive work environment to help teachers navigate the uncertainty of yet another school year in the pandemic.

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Brown Center on Education Policy

Vanessa Williamson

April 29, 2024

Sopiko Beriashvili, Michael Trucano

April 26, 2024

Richard V. Reeves, Ember Smith

Chapter 1: The Changing Teaching Profession and You

Teaching is different from in the past.

In the past decade or two teaching has changed significantly, so much in fact that schools may not be what some of us remember from our own childhood. Changes have affected both the opportunities and the challenges of teaching, as well as the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed to prepare for a teaching career. The changes have influenced much of the content of this book.

To see what we mean, look briefly at four new trends in education, at how they have changed what teachers do, and at how you will therefore need to prepare to teach:

• increased diversity: there are more differences among students than there used to be. Diversity has made teaching more fulfilling as a career, but also made more challenging in certain respects.
• increased instructional technology: classrooms, schools, and students use computers more often today than in the past for research, writing, communicating, and keeping records. Technology has created new ways for students to learn (for example, this textbook would not be possible without Internet technology!). It has also altered how teachers can teach most effectively, and even raised issues about what constitutes “true” teaching and learning.
• greater accountability in education: both the public and educators themselves pay more attention than in the past to how to assess (or provide evidence for) learning and good quality teaching. The attention has increased the importance of education to the public (a good thing) and improved education for some students. But it has also created new constraints on what teachers teach and what students learn.
• increased professionalism of teachers: Now more than ever, teachers are able to assess the quality of their own work as well as that of colleagues, and to take steps to improve it when necessary. Professionalism improves teaching, but by creating higher standards of practice it also creates greater worries about whether particular teachers and schools are “good enough.”

How do these changes show up in the daily life of classrooms? The answer depends partly on where you teach; circumstances differ among schools, cities, and even whole societies. Some clues about the effects of the trends on classroom life can be found, however, by considering one particular case—the changes happening in North America.

New trend #1: diversity in students

Students have, of course, always been diverse. Whether in the past or in the present day, students learn at unique paces, show unique personalities, and learn in their own ways. In recent decades, though, the forms and extent of diversity have increased. Now more than ever, teachers are likely to serve students from diverse language backgrounds, to serve more individuals with special educational needs, and to teach students either younger and older than in the past.

Language diversity

Take the case of language diversity. In the United States, about 40 million people, or 14 per cent of the population are Hispanic. About 20 per cent of these speak primarily Spanish, and approximately another 50 per cent speak only limited English (United States Census Bureau, 2005). The educators responsible for the children in this group need to accommodate instruction to these students somehow. Part of the solution, of course, is to arrange specialized second-language teachers and classes. But adjustment must also happen in “regular” classrooms of various grade levels and subjects. Classroom teachers must learn to communicate with students whose English language background is limited, at the same time that the students themselves are learning to use English more fluently (Pitt, 2005). Since relatively few teachers are Hispanic or speak fluent Spanish, the adjustments can sometimes be a challenge. Teachers must plan lessons and tasks that students actually understand. At the same time teachers must also keep track of the major learning goals of the curriculum. As you gain experience teaching, you will no doubt find additional strategies and resources (Gebhard, 2006), especially if second-language learners become an important part of your classes.

Diversity of special educational needs

Another factor making classroom increasingly diverse has been the inclusion of students with disabilities into classrooms with non-disabled peers. In the United States the trend began in the 1970s, but accelerated with the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, and again when the Act was amended in 2004 (United States Government Printing Office, 2005). In Canada similar legislation was passed in individual provinces during the same general time period. The laws guarantee free, appropriate education for children with disabilities of any kind—whether the impairment is physical, cognitive, emotional, or behavioral. The laws also recognize that such students need special supports in order to learn or function effectively in a classroom with non-disabled peers, so they provide for special services (for example, teaching assistants) and procedures for making individualized educational plans for students with disabilities.

As a result of these changes, most American and Canadian teachers are likely to have at least a few students with special educational needs, even if they are not trained as special education teachers or have had no prior personal experience with people with disabilities. Classroom teachers are also likely to work as part of a professional team focused on helping these students to learn as well as possible and to participate in the life of the school. The trend toward inclusion is definitely new compared to circumstances just a generation or two ago. It raises new challenges about planning instruction (such as how is a teacher to find time to plan for individuals?), and philosophical questions about the very nature of education (such as what in the curriculum is truly important to learn?).

Lifelong learning

The diversity of modern classrooms is not limited to language or disabilities. Another recent change has been the broadening simply of the age range of individuals who count as “students.” In many nations of the world, half or most of all three- and four-year-olds attend some form of educational program, either part-time preschool or full-time child care (National Institute for Early Education Research, 2006). In North America some public school divisions have moved toward including nursery or preschool programs as a newer “grade level” preceding kindergarten. Others have expanded the hours of kindergarten (itself considered a “new” program early in the 20th century) to span a full-day program.

The obvious differences in maturity between preschoolers and older children lead most teachers of the very young to use flexible, open-ended plans and teaching strategies, and to develop more personal or family-like relationships with their young “students” than typical with older students (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997). Just as important, though, are the educational and philosophical issues that early childhood education has brought to public attention. Some educational critics ask whether preschool and day care programs risk becoming in appropriate substitutes for families. Other educators suggest, in contrast, that teachers of older students can learn from the flexibility and open-ended approach common in early childhood education. For teachers of any grade level, it is a debate that cannot be avoided completely or permanently. In this book, it reappears in Chapter 3, where I discuss students’ development—their major long-term, changes in skills, knowledge, and attitudes.

The other end of the age spectrum has also expanded. Many individuals take courses well into adulthood even if they do not attend formal university or college. Adult education , as it is sometimes called, often takes place in workplaces, but it often also happens in public high schools or at local community colleges or universities. Some adult students may be completing high school credentials that they missed earlier in their lives, but often the students have other purposes that are even more focused, such as learning a trade-related skill. The teachers of adult students have to adjust their instructional strategies and relationships with students so as to challenge and respect their special strengths and constraints as adults (Bash, 2005). The students’ maturity often means that they have had life experiences that enhance and motivate their learning. But it may also mean that they have significant personal responsibilities—such as parenting or a full-time job—which compete for study time, and that make them impatient with teaching that is irrelevant to their personal goals or needs. These advantages and constraints also occur to a lesser extent among “regular” high school students. Even secondary school teachers must ask, how they can make sure that instruction does not waste students’ time, and how they can make it truly efficient, effective, and valuable.

New trend #2: using technology to support learning

For most teachers, “technology” means using computers and the Internet as resources for teaching and learning. These tools have greatly increased the amount and range of information available to students, even if their benefits have sometimes been exaggerated in media reports (Cuban, 2001). With the Internet, it is now relatively easy to access up-to-date information on practically any subject imaginable, often with pictures, video clips, and audio to accompany them. It would seem not only that the Internet and its associated technologies have the potential to transform traditional school-based learning, but also that they have in fact begun to do so.

For a variety of reasons, however, technology has not always been integrated into teachers’ practices very thoroughly (Haertel & Means, 2003). One reason is practical: in many societies and regions, classrooms contain only one or two computers at most, and many schools have at best only limited access to the Internet. Waiting for a turn on the computer or arranging to visit a computer lab or school library limits how much students use the Internet, no matter how valuable the Internet may be. In such cases, furthermore, computers tend to function in relatively traditional ways that do not take full advantage of the Internet: as a word processor (a “fancy typewriter”), for example, or as a reference book similar to an encyclopedia.

Even so, single-computer classrooms create new possibilities and challenges for teachers. A single computer can be used, for example, to present upcoming assignments or supplementary material to students, either one at a time or small groups. In functioning in this way, the computer gives students more flexibility about when to finish old tasks or to begin new ones. A single computer can also enrich the learning of individual students with special interests or motivation and it can provide additional review to students who need extra help. These changes are not dramatic, but they lead to important revisions in teachers’ roles: they move teachers away from simply delivering information to students, and toward facilitating students’ own constructions of knowledge.

A shift from “full-frontal teaching” to “guide on the side” becomes easier as the amount and use of computer and Internet technologies increases. If a school (or better yet, a classroom) has numerous computers with full Internet access, then students’ can in principle direct their own learning more independently than if computers are scarce commodities. With ample technology available, teachers can focus much more on helping individuals in developing and carrying out learning plans, as well as on assisting individuals with special learning problems. In these ways a strong shift to computers and the Internet can change a teacher’s role significantly, and make the teacher more effective.

But technology also brings some challenges, or even creates problems. It costs money to equip classrooms and schools fully: often that money is scarce, and may therefore mean depriving students of other valuable resources, like additional staff or additional books and supplies. Other challenges are less tangible. In using the Internet, for example, students need help in sorting out trustworthy information or websites from the “fluff,” websites that are unreliable or even damaging (Seiter, 2005). Providing this help can sometimes be challenging even for experienced teachers. Some educational activities simply do not lend themselves to computerized learning—sports, for example, driver education, or choral practice. As a new teacher, therefore, you will need not only to assess what technologies are possible in your particular classroom, but also what will actually be assisted by new technologies. Then be prepared for your decisions to affect how you teach—the ways you work with students.

New trend #3: accountability in education

In recent years, the public and its leaders have increasingly expected teachers and students to be accountable for their work, meaning that schools and teachers are held responsible for implementing particular curricula and goals, and that students are held responsible for learning particular knowledge. The trend toward accountability has increased the legal requirements for becoming and (sometimes) remaining certified as a teacher. In the United States in particular, preservice teachers need more subject-area and education-related courses than in the past. They must also spend more time practice teaching than in the past, and they must pass one or more examinations of knowledge of subject matter and teaching strategies. The specifics of these requirements vary among regions, but the general trend—toward more numerous and “higher” levels of requirements—has occurred broadly throughout the English-speaking world. The changes obviously affect individuals’ experiences of becoming a teacher— especially the speed and cost of doing so.

Public accountability has led to increased use of high-stakes testing , which are tests taken by all students in a district or region that have important consequences for students’ further education (Fuhrman & Elmore, 2004). High-stakes tests may influence grades that students receive in courses or determine whether students graduate or continue to the next level of schooling. The tests are often a mixture of essay and structured-response questions (such as multiple-choice items), and raise important issues about what teachers should teach, as well as how (and whether) teachers should help students to pass the examinations. It also raises issues about whether high-stakes testing is fair to all students and consistent with other ideals of public education, such as giving students the best possible start in life instead of disqualifying them from educational opportunities. Furthermore, since the results of high-stakes tests are sometimes also used to evaluate the performance of teachers, schools, or school districts, insuring students’ success on them becomes an obvious concern for teachers—one that affects instructional decisions on a daily basis.

New trend #4: increased professionalism of teachers

Whatever your reactions to the first three trends, it is important to realize that they have contributed to a fourth trend, an increase in professionalism of teachers. By most definitions, an occupation (like medicine or law—or in this case teaching) is a profession if its members take personal responsibility for the quality of their work, hold each other accountable for its quality, and recognize and require special training in order to practice it.

By this definition, teaching has definitely become more professional than in the past (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2005). Increased expectations of achievement by students mean that teachers have increased responsibility not only for their students’ academic success, but also for their own development as teachers. Becoming a new teacher now requires more specialized work than in the past, as reflected in the increased requirements for certification and licensing in many societies and regions. The increased requirements are partly a response to the complexities created by the increasing diversity of students and increasing use of technology in classrooms.

Greater professionalism has also been encouraged by initiatives from educators themselves to study and improve their own practice. One way to do so, for example, is through action research (sometimes also called teacher research ), a form of investigation carried out by teachers about their own students or their own teaching. Action research studies lead to concrete decisions that improve teaching and learning in particular educational contexts (Mertler, 2006; Stringer, 2004). The studies can take many forms, but here are a few brief examples:

• How precisely do individual children learn to read? In an action research study, the teacher might observe and track one child’s reading progress carefully for an extended time. From the observations she can get clues about how to help not only that particular child to read better, but also other children in her class or even in colleagues’ classes.
• Does it really matter if a high school social studies teacher uses more, rather than fewer, open-ended questions? As an action of research study, the teacher might videotape his own lessons, and systematically compare students’ responses to his open-ended questions compared to their responses to more closed questions (the ones with more fixed answers). The analysis might suggest when and how much it is indeed desirable to use open-ended questions.
• Can an art teacher actually entice students to take more creative risks with their drawings? As an action research study, the teacher might examine the students’ drawings carefully for signs of visual novelty and innovation, and then see if the signs increase if she encourages novelty and innovation explicitly

Two other, more complete examples of action research are summarized in Table 1. Although these examples, like many action research studies, resemble “especially good teaching practice,” they are planned more thoughtfully than usual, carried out and recorded more systematically, and shared with fellow teachers more thoroughly and openly. As such, they yield special benefits to teachers as professionals, though they also take special time and effort. For now, the important point is that use of action research simultaneously reflects the increasing professionalism of teachers, but at the same time creates higher standards for teachers when they teach.

Bash, L. (Ed.). (2005). Best practices in adult learning . Boston: Anker Publications.

Bredekamp, S. & Copple, C. (1997). Developmentally appropriate practice, Revised edition . Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Cochran-Smith, M. & Fries, K. (2005). Research teacher education in changing times: Politics and paradigms. In M. Cochran-Smith & K. Zeichner (Eds.), Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education , 69–110.

Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fuhrman, S. & Elmore, R. (2004). Redesigning accountability systems for education . New York: Teachers College Press.

Gebhard, L. (2006). Teaching English as a second or foreign language: A teacher self-development and methodology guide, 2nd edition . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Haertel, G. & Means, B. (2003). Evaluating educational technology: Effective research designs for improving learning . New York: Teachers College Press.

Mertler, C. (2006). Action research: Teachers as researchers in the classroom . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

National Institute for Early Education Research. (2006). Percent of population age 3 and 4 who are enrolled in school: Census 2000 . Retrieved on March 21, 2006 from http://www.nieer.org/resources/facts/ .

Pitt, K. (2005). Debates in ESL teaching and learning: Culture, communities, and classrooms . London, UK: Routledge.

Seiter, E. (2005). The INTERNET playground: Children’s access, entertainment, and miseducation . New York: Peter Lang.

Stringer, E. (2004). Action research in education . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

United States Census Bureau. (2005). The Hispanic population in the United States: 2004 . Retrieved on March 21, 2006 from http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hispanic/cps2004.html .

• Educational Psychology. Authored by : Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton. Located at : https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=153 . License : CC BY: Attribution

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Chapter 1: The Teaching Profession

Unlearning Box

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

“It’s easy to become a teacher.”

“Teaching is an 8:30-3:00 job. You have it so easy!”

You may have heard people in your own life share quotes and comments such as these. These quotes are hurtful and untrue. Teaching is a profession. Teachers are capable, intelligent, and held to extremely high professional standards. Quotes and comments like these demonstrate gross misunderstandings of what it means to be a teacher in the United States.

In this chapter, we will begin to peer behind the scenes of what it means to be a teacher in the United States. We’ll walk through a day in the life of a teacher, break down what is involved to become a teacher, and close with characteristics of effective teachers.

Chapter Outline

Elementary perspective, secondary perspective, special education perspective, profile of teachers today, undergraduate degree program, graduate degree program, accreditation of epps, provisional certification, residency programs.

• Maintaining a Teaching License

InTASC Standards

Professionalism & dispositions, teacher beliefs, a day in the life.

To get started, let’s drop into three different classrooms to get a feel for a day in the life of an elementary teacher, a secondary (high school) teacher, and a special education teacher.

The school doors open at 7 AM, and you greet children as they enter the cafeteria for breakfast. Once morning duty is over, you hurry to your classroom to await the 25 students that will come filing in momentarily. You make sure materials and directions for tasks are ready and calming music is playing. As students enter, you gather signed forms and respond to notes from families, help students with their morning activities, take attendance, and hold a morning meeting. The rest of the day, you are simultaneously teaching the content areas–English, math, science and social studies–and social skills as students navigate groupwork and friendships. Various other educators drop in throughout the day: the reading specialist to work with a group of readers who need extra support, the occupational therapist to help a student with some motor skills still developing, the speech pathologist to help students with articulation and language development, the instructional coach and sometimes the principal to give you feedback on your instruction.

Pauses throughout the day from the busy pace of classroom life include related arts, where students go to learn about music, visual art, library, P.E., and more while you meet with your grade level for team planning; and lunch and recess, which involve scarfing down your lunch while getting your students through the lunch line, figuring out who changed their lunch choice or left their lunch at home, opening mustard packets, reminding students to eat while they talk with friends, and hopefully scuttling off to check your school mailbox and take a bathroom break. After a post-recess water break, you return to classroom instruction, with a few interruptions for students leaving early for doctor’s appointments, a student needing to go to the nurse’s office, another teacher popping in to borrow a book, or sometimes even a whole-school assembly for a class play or anti-bullying program.

When it is time to pack up for the day at 2:30, you make sure all students know how they are getting home that day, have their materials packed and ready to go, and then you bid them farewell at the door with a hug, high-five, or handshake as they head to their dismissal area. Once your room is empty, you go to monitor a dismissal area to make sure everyone is safe. After school, you might have a faculty meeting, a debrief with an instructional coach based on today’s observation, or time to prepare tomorrow’s instructional materials. You marvel at how quickly yet another day has passed in the life of an elementary school teacher.

The bell rings at 8:15 AM, but you’ve already been at school for more than an hour–making copies, checking emails, and writing the plans and goals for the day on the board. As an English teacher, you’ve decided to work on writing fluency during this year, so as the students enter the classroom, they take out their journals and begin responding to the prompt on the board. Every day the class meets, the students will write for five minutes and then briefly discuss their responses with each other and as a whole group. You write alongside them to model what it looks like, and often share your own writing–at the beginning of the year, most of the students struggled to write for five straight minutes, but now nearly all of them have gotten the hang of it. The rest of the lesson involves a minilesson on figurative language, small group discussions about students’ literature circle books, and a whole group review game to prepare for the unit test on Wednesday.

The school adopted a block schedule last year, so your classes are 75 minutes long. You teach three of four blocks each day; today is an A day, so first block is 9th grade honors and the other two are 10th grade general English. Tomorrow, you will teach two blocks of 9th grade general and one block of 10th grade College Preparatory English. You hate these labels and what they do to the students in the room, and, as department chair, you have been working with your principal to remove such rigid tracking.

“Bear Block” falls between 1st and 2nd block, and ten students stream into the room to retake tests, make up missed homework, or just hang out and read. You glance at the learning management system and see that there are 45 essays waiting for you, but there won’t be time to look more closely at them until later tonight. During lunch, some of your journalism club students are in the room, partially working on stories and layouts, but mostly sharing the latest news about their friends and acquaintances.

For the Professional Learning Community (PLC) meeting during fourth block, you will meet with the other 10th grade English teachers to look at the results of a common assessment. At some schools in the district, the grade-level teachers all teach the same lessons, but luckily at this school you have more freedom in how you teach the material. There is a new teacher on the team who is struggling with classroom management, so the first 15 minutes of the meeting is spent discussing some strategies that have worked in other teachers’ rooms.

The end of the day comes at 3:15 PM, but it will be another hour or two before you head home–there are sub plans to finish for Thursday because you will be attending a district-wide training for working with English Language Learners, and you are hoping to send at least ten texts and emails to parents. The initial fear of parent contact faded quickly, and now it’s one of your strengths–you reach out early and often, connecting with families around student successes first. Later, if students begin struggling, contact is much more seamless. It’s been a long, exhausting day, but interacting with the students has made it all worth it.

You arrive early in the morning, an hour or so before teachers officially start the school day. You greet the office manager, principal, and custodian on the way to your classroom. Aside from these three, the building will be mostly empty for another half hour. You’ve found that this quiet morning time provides the best opportunity to catch up on Individualized Education Plan (IEP) paperwork, reflect on student data from the prior day, and make adjustments to instruction for the coming day. As the official start time for the school day draws close, you make a quick dash to the copy machine, fingers crossed that it isn’t broken and that there isn’t a line of teachers anxiously waiting their turn. It’s your lucky day. Your last photocopies shoot out of the machine just as the overhead announcement calls teachers to report to their morning duty stations. You quickly drop the copies off in your classroom, pick up your data binder, and dash out the door to the bus loop.

The bus loop is a flurry of activity. You greet students with high-fives, occasional hugs, and countless reminders to “use walking feet.” Amid all of these informal greetings, you are slipping in some IEP services by completing morning check-ins with several students who have behavioral or social-emotional goals on their IEPs. From an outsider’s view, these check-ins don’t look that different from your interactions with any other student. However, intermixed with those high-fives and hugs you quietly assess needs, remind students of the goals they are working on, offer supports where needed, and quickly make notes in your data binder. On this particular day, a third grader with autism reports that he is feeling like “a category 3 hurricane.” You know he needs some quiet time before joining his homeroom class, so you walk him to the computer lab where he has an open invitation to help the instructional technology specialist get the computer lab set up for the day.

The halls begin to clear as the instructional day begins. You spend the next six hours in constant motion, serving 18 students across four grade levels. You transition between co-teaching in general education classes and pulling small groups of students to your own classroom for intensive intervention in literacy, math, or social skills. When co-teaching, your job is to supplement the general education teacher’s deep knowledge of grade-level content with specialized instructional strategies that make content meaningful and accessible for students with disabilities and other learning differences. When providing intensive intervention, you implement research-based programs that target specific skills identified in your students’ IEPs. Data collection is on-going and individualized for each student, so your trusty data binder is by your side in all settings.

Normally, you would end the school day completing check-outs with the same students you saw in the morning. Today, you assign that responsibility to a teaching assistant so you can participate in a special education eligibility meeting. It is the initial eligibility meeting for this student and her family. A team of educators work with the parents to determine if the first grader has a disability and needs special education. Her parents feel overwhelmed by the process and fearful when the team concludes that their daughter has an intellectual disability. This is a moment when your job and your passion meet. You assure the parents that the future is bright for their daughter, that the educational label does not change who she is or who she will be, and that you will highlight her strengths and address her needs as you plan her education with them as equal partners. The decisions that you will make with this family are new to them, but for you they are a familiar and important part of your day as an elementary special education teacher.

Becoming a Teacher

The scenarios above describe some typical teaching days, but not all days are the same in teaching. In fact, each one will be different in some way. Deciding to become a teacher is an exciting commitment to shaping the future, and it is both demanding and rewarding. We’ll take a look at the profile of teachers today in the United States, and then discuss various routes toward earning the credentials necessary to become a classroom teacher.

The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) collects data on various aspects of education, one of which is the demographics of teachers and students. In the 2017-2018 school year, there were 3.5 million full- or part-time public school K-12 teachers ( NCES, 2020a ). (K-12 means the range of grades public schools serve, starting with kindergarten in elementary school and culminating with 12th grade in high school.) Of those teachers, 76% were female [1] , 79% were White, 90% held a standard teaching license (more on that below), and 58% had earned a graduate degree (at the master’s level or beyond). A majority of teachers were in the middle of their careers, with 40% having ten to twenty years of experience in the classroom. The average salary of a full-time public school teacher was $57,900, with the average first-year teacher earning $44,200. (Note that salaries vary based on years of experience, highest degree earned, and location.)

Stop & Investigate

Check out the demographics of teachers in your state or school district. How do they compare? Find the salary scale for teachers in your local school district. How does it compare?

Let’s revisit some of those demographics on racial diversity. Figure 1.1 depicts specific racial categories of public school teachers in the 2017-2018 school year, compared with the 1999-2000 school year.

Figure 1.1: Racial Demographics of U.S. Public School Teachers, 1999-2000 and 2017-2018

Note: Data for teachers who identified as Asian, Pacific Islander, and two or more races in 1999-2000 was unavailable. The 2017-2018 data for teachers who identified as Pacific Islander rounded down to 0.

The trends are clear: in the United States, we lack a racially diverse teaching force, and that trend has not changed much in the past 20 years. While the 2017-2018 school year included more Hispanic, Asian, and multi-racial teachers, teachers are still overwhelmingly White. In the same school year, however, students who attended public schools were only 44% White ( NCES, 2020b ). That means that generally, there are more White teachers and more students of color ( Geiger, 2018 ). This trend is concerning, given that research shows that having teachers of color benefits all students, not just students of color ( Wells, Fox, & Cordova-Cobo, 2016 ).

There are many reasons why teachers in the United States are not racially diverse. While the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education (further explained in Chapters 3 and 5 ) demanded all schools integrate to address some of the inequalities between separate schools for White and Black students, it did have other consequences that directly impacted the diversity of teachers in the United States. This case caused 38,000 Black teachers (about one-third of the Black teachers in the country) to lose their jobs in the years following the case (Milner & Howard, 2004; Thompson, 2019 ). Even though this historical antecedent did limit access to teaching jobs for Black people, racial discrimination in the hiring process continues to compound this issue. D’Amico et al. (2017) found that despite equally-qualified candidates applying for jobs in one large school district, White teacher candidates still received a disproportionate number of job offers: of the 70% White applicants, 77% received job offers, while of the 13% Black candidates, 6% received job offers (D’Amico, Pawlewicz, Earley, & McGeehan, 2017; Klein, 2017 ). Beyond the hiring process, retention of hired teachers is lower for teachers of color than for White teachers. For example, between the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 school years, only 15% of White teachers left their jobs, compared to 22% of Black teachers and 21% of Hispanic teachers ( U.S. Department of Education, 2016 ).

Critical Lens: Naming Races

You may have noticed in this section that races are capitalized (like White and Black). Capitalizing these names recognizes the people more than the color. In fact, the Associated Press recently changed its writing style guide [2]  to capitalize Black and Indigenous when referring to racial categories.

Pathways Toward Teacher Certification

High-quality, well-prepared educators are the foundation of our educational system. Well-prepared teachers are more effective in the classroom and also tend to have higher rates of retention, meaning they choose to stay in the teaching profession (Darling-Hammond, 2010). There are several different ways that you can become a teacher, depending on where you are in your life and career. These pathways toward teacher certification fall into two general categories: traditional or alternative preparation. Traditional preparation involves an undergraduate or graduate degree program affiliated with an Educator Preparation Program (EPP) , while alternative preparation can take many forms, including provisional certification or residency programs like Teach for America. No matter how you obtain your teaching license , you will have to renew the license periodically.

Traditional Preparation: Educator Preparation Program (EPP)

The most traditional way to earn your teaching certificate is through an Educator Preparation Program (EPP). An EPP could offer a few different programs that would culminate in your teaching certificate. Two popular options are an undergraduate degree program or a graduate degree program.

In this pathway toward teacher certification, participants enter a 4-year degree program knowing that they want to become a teacher upon graduation. Exact majors vary: sometimes you might major in education, or in a specific form of education (like elementary education). If you want to teach elementary school, you are expected to be more of a generalist: you will likely teach all content areas to your students. Therefore, you will take education classes in all of these areas. If you want to teach middle or high school or become a related arts teacher (arts, language, etc.), you will major in your future area of specialization, such as history if you want to teach social studies, or music if you want to be a music teacher. Regardless of the exact structure of the specific program, participants take classes that help them learn about pedagogy (the art and science of teaching), along with specific methods of instruction (such as how to teach the structures of different disciplines like literacy, math, science, or social studies).

Completing coursework is just one part of becoming a teacher in a traditional undergraduate degree program. There are also tests that future teachers must pass to prove they are prepared to teach. Some of these tests occur early in the degree as entrance requirements to an education program to assess basic literacy and math skills; some of these tests occur at the end of the degree as a culmination of all courses. These tests, run by ETS, are called Praxis tests. Their website [3] has information about testing requirements in different states.

Critical Lens: Bias in Standardized Assessments

While standardized assessments have been associated with measuring intelligence and learning for many years, some schools are moving away from relying solely on standardized tests as a measure of aptitude. You or someone you know might not be a great test taker, and you may have experienced first-hand (or second-hand through an acquaintance) how standardized tests aren’t always a reliable measure of what you know. Beyond test anxiety, standardized tests also tend to be culturally biased. That means that some cultural norms are assumed to be shared by all test takers, but this isn’t necessarily the case. A passage in a reading assessment, for example, might assume that a test-taker can build on background knowledge of certain experiences, like going camping, that they haven’t had, or use vocabulary words that are more common in middle-class White households. Another standardized test of intelligence, the IQ test [4] , was used early on by eugenicists to argue that White test-takers scored higher because they were the smarter race, using questionable statistical analyses and overlooking that the tests were written to benefit White test-takers. However, these standardized tests were often used to choose “highly qualified” candidates for jobs such as military leaders, therefore limiting access to certain professions based on race and socioeconomic status.

One of the most important parts of preparing to become a teacher is getting practice working in actual classrooms with actual students. In a traditional undergraduate degree program, you will engage in two different types of field placements. The first types of field placements are sometimes called practicum , which are part-time placements that are often tied to specific courses (like methods classes, where you learn about how to teach specific content areas like language arts, math, science, or social studies). You attend practicum a few hours a week in between your other coursework. In these practicum placements, you get to try out what you are learning in class with actual classrooms, teachers, and students. Sometimes you are observing to learn more; other times you are actively leading instruction in one-on-one, small group, or whole group settings. Your various practicum placements typically will be in different schools and different grade levels to give you experience working with many different types of students and teachers. The second type of field placement is called student teaching or an internship . This full-time placement occurs at the very end of your degree program. You spend all day, every day at your placement, just like the classroom teacher does. As the semester progresses, you will take on more and more responsibility for planning and teaching. By the middle of the semester, you will usually be responsible for all of the planning and teaching for all content areas for several weeks. After those few weeks, you begin passing the instructional responsibilities back to the classroom teacher. Both practicum and student teaching will require you to work closely with the classroom teacher, who may be called your mentor teacher . Neither type of field placement is an official job, so you should not expect to be paid for these experiences.

After you have completed all of your undergraduate coursework, your field placement hours, and your state’s required testing, you will earn your teaching certificate and be ready to apply for your first teaching job.

The first graduate, or post-baccalaureate, degree programs were developed in the 1970s as Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) programs (Darling-Hammond, 2010). A post-baccalaureate degree program is designed for people who want to become teachers, but who have already completed their undergraduate coursework in a field other than education. Therefore, a post-baccalaureate degree program allows people to learn how to become teachers while earning a master’s degree. In a post-baccalaureate degree program, courses are often offered in the evenings to cater to the needs of adult students who may be working or have family commitments during the day. Even though its structure is a little different, a post-baccalaureate degree program also has the field experiences explained above (practicum and internship).

After you have completed all of your post-baccalaureate coursework, your field placement hours, and your state’s required testing, you will earn your teaching certificate and be ready to apply for your first teaching job. The master’s degree you will earn in a post-baccalaureate program can result in higher pay for teachers in some states.  (Even if you earn your teaching credential in an undergraduate program, you can still earn a master’s degree in education and get a pay increase in many states.)

Research has shown that teachers who earn their teaching certificate through an educator preparation program (EPP) feel significantly more prepared to meet their students’ needs than those that pursue other routes toward licensure (i.e., Darling-Hammond, Chung, & Frelow, 2002). One reason for this finding lies in the high standards that EPPs must meet. EPPs must be accredited by either state or national agencies. Accreditation means that the programs have met specific standards of high-quality teacher preparation programs.

The first national credentialing agency was the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), which was founded in 1954. By 2016, NCATE was replaced by CAEP (pronounced “cape”), which stands for the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation. In their mission, they state: “CAEP advances equity and excellence in educator preparation through evidence-based accreditation that assures quality and supports continuous improvement to strengthen P-12 student learning” ( CAEP, 2020b , “Mission”). To receive CAEP accreditation, EPPs have to demonstrate evidence of their success in five areas, or standards [5] : (1) content and pedagogical knowledge; (2) clinical partnerships and practice; (3) candidate quality, recruitment, and selectivity; (4) program impact; and (5) provider quality, continuous improvement, and capacity. When you enroll in an EPP with CAEP or state-level accreditation, you know you are in a high-quality program that has provided evidence of meeting rigorous standards to prepare teachers.

Alternative Preparation

Sometimes, you decide to become a teacher after you have already earned an undergraduate degree in another field. Perhaps you’ve even worked in another field for several years, and you realize that you would like to become a teacher instead. While each state has different policies and programs for preparing teachers beyond undergraduate coursework, a few common approaches include provisional certification and residency programs like Teach for America.

Some schools face shortages of teachers in certain content areas or in more urban settings, which mean they need teachers as soon as possible–even if those teachers aren’t officially certified just yet. A provisional teaching license allows an individual to become a teacher temporarily, while they work with their employer to arrange to meet the requirements of earning a teaching license (such as taking the required Praxis tests). These licenses might be valid for a period of time ranging from one to three years and typically are not renewable, meaning that if you do not meet the licensure requirements before your certificate expires, you will not be able to continue teaching. Sometimes provisional certification is also called emergency certification, since it is designed to meet an immediate need.

Residency programs are another alternative pathway to receive a teaching credential. Typical participants in a residency model already have a bachelor’s degree prior to beginning a residency program. During the residency program, future teachers work simultaneously on a master’s degree in education while being placed in a school full-time. Typically residents do not serve as the teacher of record in the classroom, meaning they are not solely responsible for all instruction. Residency programs are particularly popular in high-needs areas where there is high teacher turnover and recruitment and retainment of teachers is challenging, such as urban centers. Some critiques of residency programs center on the short-term, intense nature of the experience: while a traditional undergraduate pathway toward a teaching credential takes around four years, a residency may last only one year, with the field experience occurring concurrently with coursework ( NYU Steinhardt, 2018 ).

Teach for America (TFA) is one well-known residency program. TFA recruits from undergraduate completers, mostly from programs other than education, to complete intensive training in the summer immediately following their graduation and prior to assuming their teaching position. Teach for America places candidates in higher-needs areas, while incentivizing the program by offering candidates a free master’s degree in education while they complete two years of teaching in the program. However, fast-tracked, alternative certification programs like Teach for America do tend to have lower rates of retention ( Hegarty, 2001 ). Retention refers to how long teachers stay in the field of education. Higher retention rates lead to higher-quality teachers, since you will keep growing in your competency as a teacher the longer you stay in the profession. Therefore, some alternative certification programs like Teach for America receive critiques for their short-term placement of teachers in schools for a couple of years instead of long-term teaching careers.

Maintaining A Teaching License

Once you have earned an initial teaching license, you will be able to teach for a period of time before you have to renew it. Usually, you will have to renew your license every three or five years; each state sets their own regulations, and different licenses sometimes have different timespans. Renewing your teaching license is important because teaching and learning are constantly changing and evolving, and you will best serve your students by being up-to-date on the latest information. You can earn renewal credits in a variety of ways, including taking graduate courses, attending conferences, attending professional development opportunities offered in your district and beyond, and more. The year your license will expire, you will have to submit a request to renew your license to your state Department of Education, including evidence of how you met your continuing education requirements. You cannot be a teacher with an expired license, so it is important that you remember to keep your teaching license current.

Each state has their own policies for becoming a teacher, so what happens if you earn a teaching license in one state and then have to move to another state? Many state Departments of Education have reciprocity with other states, meaning that your license could be transferred to a new state without having to start over completely. You might have to meet a few additional requirements unique to your new state, such as Praxis tests, but you don’t have to go back to school to get another degree in education. Learn more about reciprocity from the Education Commission of the States [6] , including a state-by-state comparison of reciprocity conditions [7] .

Look up the licensure and reciprocity policies for your state. Here is Virginia’s licensure website [8] . What do you notice about your state’s policies?

Characteristics of Effective Teachers

First of all, what does it mean to be an effective teacher? Effectiveness can be hard to define. Some ways to measure effectiveness include student achievement, such as test scores; performance ratings from supervisors, like administration members observing a lesson; or informal feedback in the form of comments from students or other stakeholders. Defining effectiveness is further complicated by the reality that there are many variables that a teacher cannot control that still impact these various measures ( Stronge, 2018 ).

Pause & Ponder

Who was a teacher who positively influenced your life? What did they do that left this impact? Was it how they approached instruction, interacted with you as a person inside or outside of school, or facilitated an extracurricular club? Now, think about a teacher who negatively affected you. What did they do that caused you to have a less than desirable experience?

As you yourself have experienced as a learner, there are certain characteristics that effective teachers share. Even though all teachers have distinct personalities and instructional approaches that they bring to the classroom–since teachers, like students, are still individual people–here are some practices that effective teachers have in common.

Over the span of 15 years, Walker ( 2008 ) asked college students what made effective teachers in their own experiences and found twelve recurring characteristics.

• Prepared. Effective teachers were ready to teach every day and used time efficiently.
• Positive. Effective teachers were optimistic about their jobs and their students.
• Hold high expectations. Effective teachers believe everyone can succeed and challenge students to do their best.
• Creative. Effective teachers come up with new, innovative ideas to teach content.
• Fair. Effective teachers establish clear requirements for assignments, give everyone what they need to succeed, and recognize that learners are unique.
• Display a personal touch. Effective teachers connect with students by sharing stories about themselves and participating in their students’ worlds, like going to a performance or sporting event.
• Cultivate a sense of belonging. Effective teachers make students feel welcomed and safe in the classroom.
• Compassionate. Effective teachers are sensitive and empathetic to students’ situations.
• Have a sense of humor. Effective teachers bring humor into the classroom, but never at a student’s expense (i.e., laugh with, not at, students).
• Respect students. Effective teachers maintain privacy and don’t embarrass students in front of the class.
• Forgiving. Effective teachers don’t give up on students and start each day without holding grudges about how previous days have gone.
• Admit mistakes. Effective teachers apologize when they make mistakes and make adjustments accordingly.

In addition to these personal qualities, there are specific ways to structure learning that are more effective than others. Creemers and Kryiakides (2006) called this the “dynamic model of educational effectiveness.” The dynamic model focuses more on teaching and learning than other factors that are beyond the teacher’s control in the classroom. Eight factors that tend to have an impact on student learning are explained in Table 1.1 (adapted from Muijs et al., 2014 ).

Table 1.1: Eight Factors that Impact Student Learning (Muijs et al., 2014)

As you can see, while we all bring our own personalities to our own classrooms and instruction, there are some practices that have consistently impacted student learning. We will continue discussing those specific practices throughout the rest of this book, and you will continue honing those skills as you continue on your pathway toward becoming a teacher.

Common characteristics of effective teachers can be found in ten InTASC standards . A nonpartisan, nationwide group of public officials with leadership positions in U.S. K-12 education called the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) created a subgroup called the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC). InTASC created a list of ten standards that cover model core teaching practices that high-quality K-12 teachers should be able to demonstrate as effective teachers. These standards were originally released in 1992 to guide early-career teachers, but the group realized that these characteristics were actually applicable to all teachers. Therefore, in 2011, InTASC revised the standards and expanded them to all teachers. Table 1.2 breaks down the 10 standards into the four overarching categories.

Table 1.2: InTASC Standards by Categories

The last category of InTASC standards focuses on professionalism. Teachers are held to very high standards as professionals because of their influence on shaping students’ learning, outlook, and futures. Teachers are expected to be role models, both within and beyond the classroom. Therefore, there are certain interpersonal skills–sometimes called dispositions –that teachers are expected to demonstrate as professionals.

In your own experience as a student, what are some behaviors or actions you have observed from teachers that made you respect them or lose respect for them? How will this impact how you practice professionalism in your future classroom?

A challenge related to dispositions is that research has not yet established an exact set of non-academic qualities that teachers need to demonstrate in order to be successful ( CAEP, 2020a ). Therefore, expectations of which dispositions should be observed will vary. Overall, here are a few examples of dispositions that you should possess as a future teacher.

• Communication. You will be expected to demonstrate mastery of oral and written communication with a variety of stakeholders, including students, co-workers, administration, and families. Communication should be respectful and positive, and teachers are often expected to demonstrate mastery of conventions of standardized English.
• Professional image. Related to communication, you are expected to portray a professional image in words and actions. You will be expected to dress professionally. You will be expected to avoid documentation of overly reckless behavior, such as photos on social media of drinking to excess at a party. As a teacher, you are a representative of your school district, and you are expected to maintain that professionalism within and beyond the classroom.
• Organization. While there is no one “correct” way to be organized, you will be expected to manage your time, complete tasks by deadlines, and show up to work on time. You will also need to be able to organize student records (including assessments) and return assignments to students in a timely manner.
• Collaboration. You will be expected to collaborate with a variety of stakeholders, including students, co-workers, administration, and families. Many times, you will be interacting with people whose backgrounds differ from your own, and it is very important that you respect the contributions of others, even if you would not approach a situation in exactly the same way.
• Reflection. You will be expected to reflect on your instructional practice and adjust your next steps accordingly. Rarely does an instructional activity go perfectly, and that’s OK! Teachers must be able to reflect on what went well and what to change going forward.

Critical Lens: Linguicism

You’re heard of lots of -isms: racism, sexism, classism. What about linguicism? Fain (2008) cites Skutnabb-Kangas (1988) to define linguicism as “unequal treatment of languages based upon power structures that privilege certain languages as having legitimacy” (p. 205). People often assume that “Standard English” is right and everything else is not (Wheeler & Swords, 2006). Standardized English received this position as a “prestige dialect” (Wheeler & Swords, 2006) about 500 years ago, when the self-declared “superior” Europeans came to the Americas and began interacting with the so-called “inferior” native people. Linguistic discrimination, therefore, is a result of the “racist project of colonialism” (Otto, 2004, p. 3). Linguicism can be applied to languages, such as Spanish, or dialects, such as African American Language or Southern English. As Wheeler and Swords (2006) remind us, “while language varieties clearly differ, difference does not signal deficit” (p. 14). (Note: We use the term “Standarized English” instead of “Standard English” to highlight the artificial construction of one language as the “standard” and all others as “substandard” [Wheeler & Swords, 2006].)

Many of these dispositions and expressions of professionalism are culturally bound. For example, tattoos may need to be covered in some school districts, while others do not mind if age-appropriate tattoos are visible. It is important to know the expectations within your local context so that you can act accordingly. In Chapter 5 , we will discuss more about your legal and ethical protections and expectations as a teacher.

Explore the purple “Critical Disposition” boxes in the InTASC standards document [9] (starting on p. 12). What trends do you see? What will this mean for your future classroom?

In the teaching profession, it is also important to be aware of our beliefs. Awareness of our own beliefs can be particularly challenging because sometimes we are socialized into certain beliefs and do not even realize we hold them until we meet someone who holds different beliefs. Furthermore, in education, “Whiteness is the invisible norm” (Derman-Sparks & Ramsey, 2006, p. 35). As we established earlier in this chapter, most teachers in the United States identify as White. That means that the majority of teachers share certain aspects of mainstream cultural backgrounds and bring them into their schools and classrooms, often teaching next door to other teachers who share those same mainstream cultural backgrounds. That is how one cultural background can become the invisible norm.

We teach who we are. We bring our identities into our classrooms on a daily basis, just like our students do. Who we are involves many different facets of our identity, called intersectionality . Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw ( 1989 ) invented the term “intersectionality,” and it has since been applied in varied contexts, including education. The idea behind intersectionality is that many different aspects of our identity–including characteristics such as race, economic class, gender, and more–overlap and “intersect” with one another. Our identities–and our students’ identities–are greater than any one isolated characteristic. In this short video, Kimberlé Crenshaw explains intersectionality and its impact in educational settings.

Where do some of your identities lie in this diagram of intersectionality? Which groups within each characteristic tend to have the most power? (For example, which racial groups tend to be the most empowered or disempowered?) What other characteristics would you add to this diagram?

As human beings, we have a natural desire to belong in order to survive. This drive to survive results in our grouping people–both consciously and unconsciously–based on their similarities or differences to us. Unfortunately, those same survival skills mean that we may think less of people who are different from us. We may think they aren’t as smart, or aren’t as good at what they do, or don’t do things the “right” way (the way we do them). Judging or evaluating another culture based on your own culture is called ethnocentrism . If we aren’t careful, we can let ethnocentrism interfere with our professionalism as teachers. We might think a student is less capable of success in our classrooms or beyond based on our own cultural beliefs about certain characteristics. Sometimes we assume people from certain racial, socioeconomic, ability, and other demographic groups are less capable, simply because of our own expectations or cultures. We might consciously or unconsciously believe certain stereotypes –sweeping, oversimplified generalizations about a group–and those stereotypes will filter into our interactions with our students, our expectations of our students, and our teaching in general. As Gorski (2013) reminds us, “no amount of resources or pedagogical strategies will help us to provide the best opportunity for low-income students to reach their full potential as learners if we do not attend first to the stereotypes, biases, and assumptions we have about them and their families” (p. 69).

Therefore, an important aspect of being an effective teacher is knowing yourself. Freire (1973) discussed the importance of critical consciousness, the ability to see beyond one’s own limited realm of experiences. Members of mainstream groups must be especially aware of their identities and how these identities impact their teaching (Gay, 2010; Harro, 2000).

In this chapter, we surveyed the teaching profession in the context of the United States. You learned that teachers today are mostly White females with 10-20 years of experience in the classroom. Pathways toward preparing high-quality teachers can be traditional, such as earning an undergraduate or graduate degree in education, or alternative, such as provisional certification or residency programs like Teach for America. No matter how you earn your initial teaching license, you will need to renew it periodically. Finally, the teaching profession depends on characteristics of effective teachers. InTASC standards remind us of ten common characteristics of effective teachers across four domains, and dispositions relate to our general professional demeanor as teachers. Additionally, we must be aware of our beliefs and how they consciously and unconsciously contribute to our instruction. In the rest of this book, we will continue to explore the complexities of the teaching profession.

• The demographics from NCES are only broken down by male/female. ↵
• https://apnews.com/71386b46dbff8190e71493a763e8f45a?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP ↵
• https://www.ets.org/praxis ↵
• https://www.businessinsider.com/iq-tests-dark-history-finally-being-used-for-good-2017-10#:~:text=The%20first%20of%20these%20tests,basis%20for%20modern%20IQ%20testing. ↵
• http://caepnet.org/standards/introduction ↵
• https://www.ecs.org/50-state-comparison-teacher-license-reciprocity/ ↵
• https://c0arw235.caspio.com/dp/b7f93000c5143bf0c78540a0bfa4 ↵
• https://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching/licensure/index.shtml ↵
• https://ccsso.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/InTASC_Model_Core_Teaching_Standards_2011.pdf ↵

Abbreviation for kindergarten through 12th grade, the traditional span of public schools in the United States.

Landmark Supreme Court case in 1954 that declared separate educational facilities were not equal, ending segregation in schools.

One way to earn a teaching license through completing coursework at an Educator Preparation Program (EPP).

Programs offered through colleges or universities to earn teaching credentials.

Pathway toward earning teaching certification that does not involve undergraduate coursework and might involve residency programs or provisional certification.

Earned after meeting state-established requirements (such as courses and testing) in order to become a teacher. Requires periodic renewal.

Term referring to teachers in areas like music, visual arts, drama, etc.

The art and science of teaching.

How to teach the structures of different disciplines like literacy, math, science, or social studies.

Series of teacher certification tests offered by ETS.

Part-time field placements that are often tied to specific courses to give preservice teachers experience in classrooms.

Full-time practicum experience, usually situated at the end of an educator preparation program. May also be called internship.

Full-time practicum experience, usually situated at the end of an educator preparation program. May also be called student teaching.

Teacher of record in a practicum placement. Mentors preservice teachers by modeling effective instruction and sharing classroom responsibilities.

Process of formal review of an Educator Preparation Program by an outside agency, such as CAEP.

Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation.

Teaching license that is temporary, usually with certain stipulations or provisions attached. Sometimes called an emergency teaching license.

Alternative pathway toward teacher certification in which future teachers work simultaneously on a master’s degree in education while being placed in a school full-time.

Agreements among different states to honor teaching licenses earned in other states, sometimes with additional requirements added (like testing).

Framework designed by Benjamin Bloom and colleagues in 1956, and later revised in 2001. Divides educational goals/cognitive processes into six categories of increasing complexity: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create.

10 standards from the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium that cover model core teaching practices for K-12 educators.

Interpersonal skills expected of teachers as professionals.

Unequal treatment of languages based upon power structures that privilege certain languages as having legitimacy.

Term coined by Crenshaw (1989) meaning many different aspects of identity--including race, economic class, gender, and more--overlap and intersect with one another.

Judging or evaluating another culture based on your own culture.

Sweeping, oversimplified generalizations about a group.

Foundations of American Education: A Critical Lens Copyright © by Melissa Wells and Courtney Clayton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Teaching — Teaching as a Profession: The Strategies To Improve Efficiency

Teaching as a Profession: The Strategies to Improve Efficiency

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• Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2005). The systematic design of instruction. Allyn & Bacon.
• Gagne, R. M. (2013). Instructional technology: Foundations. Routledge.
• Pollard, A., & Collins, J. (2005). Reflective teaching. A&C Black.
• Reflective practice. (2005, August 29). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 4, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_practice#cite_ref-Shapiro_18-0
• https://www.mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf
• https://ncert.nic.in/pdf/nc-framework/nf2005-english.pdf
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_practice#cite_ref-Shapiro_18-0

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Teaching as a Profession, Essay Example

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A teacher is an influential person in the society because he or she contributes to imparting of knowledge to all members of the society who go to school. Therefore, teaching is a professional career that needs many skills and expertise for the process to be effective. Various factors define teaching as a professional career.

Teachings as a profession need adaptability. This is because teachers deal with a variety of abilities that students have. Teachers are required to have innovative lessons in order for their students to master their standards (McKenzie & Santiago, 2005). For example, teachers use various innovative techniques to make their lessons to be understood well by students. They employ the use of technology, music, art, physical activities and hands on activities to help students to have more understanding according to their unique learning styles. Teachers also modify their discipline plans because there are students who require extra behaviors support. Teachers also adapt to changes in teaching programs because the curriculum switches in different years. Therefore, teachers are always required to understand how to do things in new ways.

Teachers need to be motivated in order for them to be able to encounter negativity, not from students alone but, also from parents, frustrated colleagues or administration that is not supportive (Lunenburg & Ornstein, 2007). Teachers demonstrate motivation by giving encouragement to students, giving students meaningful feedback, personalized attention to help them succeed. Teachers renew their commitments daily in order to act as positive role model to the students and the larger school community.

Teachers need to be good monitors and evaluators. Teachers need to be able to make an assessment on the progress of the students (McKenzie & Santiago, 2005)Teachers in their day to day duty assess their students in order to find out if they understand the concepts taught. If the students show misunderstanding of the concepts, then teachers employs alternative teaching strategy that makes students understand the concepts taught.

Lunenburg, F. & Ornstein, A. (2007). Educational administration: concepts and practices, 2 nd edition. Belmont: Cengage Learning.

McKenzie, P. & Santiago, P. (2005). Teachers matter: attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers, 1 st edition. Paris: OECD Publishing.

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Teaching as a Profession Essay

Teaching is a respected profession which demands consistency and patience. Educators are not only seen as knowledge distributors but also mentors and role models. This article “ Teaching as a Profession Essay” sheds light on the value of such teachers and what the world would be without them. Let’s get started with the importance of teaching profession.

Many teachers dedicate all their lives to empowering students and making them better and more successful human beings in their lives. Furthermore, they even help them financially so that they’re not left behind in life. These are those children who can never afford to be admitted to coaching classes for competitive exams. Anand Kumar teaches, guides, and motivates students to dream big and fulfil those dreams.

Table of Contents

Some Respected Teachers in History

The first Anand Kumar from Super 30 (played by Hrithik Roshan) made a record of selecting 18 students for IIT out of 30 students.

The next example in front of us is Siva Subramania Iyer. He was the teacher of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and he was responsible for giving India its Missile Man. He taught him to fly high and inspired him to make it big.

Thus, not only teaching a profession a thing to pursue but also a passion that can take you to heights.

What is a Teaching Profession?

We all know what it is teaching profession. But still, we need to be aware of the importance of teaching profession. They mentor and motivate students to perform well in their studies and be passionate about their careers.

Let’s explain teaching as a profession. Teaching is a job made to make students more capable and teach important academic and life lessons even about values like respect, sharing, ethical values, and cultures.

Teachers are the ones who teach students to live life with discipline and high value and also play a crucial role in shaping the minds and lives of students, allowing them to attain knowledge, skills, and values crucial for personal and intellectual growth.

Importance of Teaching Profession

Teaching is the most desirable Profession nowadays. The importance of the Teaching Profession incorporates tomfoolery and learning together. Being in the teaching profession doesn’t mean you have to share your knowledge.

Teachers play a vital role in student’s life by assisting them with achieving their goals. Therefore, choosing the Teaching Profession offers perpetual career opportunities. However, Teaching isn’t the only Profession; in fact, it is the activity to serve education. Let’s check out the reasons explaining the importance of teaching profession in this “Teaching as a Profession Essay”.

Improves Communication Abilities

Teaching is a systematic strategy to communicate with more and more people. In this manner, being in the teaching profession will improve communication abilities. Therefore, one can interact more confidently with others.

Fun and learning together

Among all careers and professions, we found teaching much better. The Importance of the Teaching Profession is that one can have fun and learn together. Other than training students, teachers can be involved in other educational program activities.

Experience To Handle Various Youngsters

School or college is a place where various students with various mentalities reach. The teacher should have the ability to handle all youngsters normal, savvy, or physically disabled.

Brilliant Organization Abilities

The teaching profession makes one multi-tasker; notwithstanding teaching academics to students, teachers, and Organizational abilities. Being organized means one can manage time and resources proficiently and really for improved productivity.

Ethical And Restrained

One characteristic of the teaching profession involves morals and discipline. Teachers teach ethical values which make students more focused. 

Setting up Role Models for Others

Being a teacher isn’t a lot of complex however being a favorite of all is what matters. Teachers should inspire students to find their secret talents and achieve their aims. An inspired teacher can make students motivated by setting up Role models.

Assemble Future Leaders

Teachers are the source of affecting tomorrow’s leaders. 

Inspire and Influence

Teachers have the added responsibility of shaping the future generation and also have an opportunity to make a distinction. They will have the exceptional opportunity to guide a mass in the correct direction.

Improvement and Learning

It will associate with young, curious, personalities all day, you would actually want to propel yourself and get better consistently. At the point when you are in an environment that asks a lot of questions and is curious, you grow and develop consistently.

Work Satisfaction

Teaching provides job satisfaction that resembles no other and the joy of making a distinction and making a change in the correct direction is like no other.

Teaching is a deferential job and look up to teachers for work. They guide and direct students and also they inspire and shape future generations.

Potential for Growth

It is a clear career path with a lot of opportunities and with online teaching apps and virtual classrooms on the rise you can teach from the comfort of your home and without any geographical restrictions.

Role of a teacher

While writing an essay on teaching as a profession, the role of a teacher must be included. Teachers should find different ways to teach students and apply them in teaching so that the maximum information and knowledge reach the students.

They are responsible not just for teaching the syllabus but also for inspiring students by exchanging thoughts, sharing a bond, and being with them in every up and down.

Teaching skills, knowledge, personality, and ways of imparting pieces of information are some factors that affect the learning patterns of students. It helps teachers to become successful teachers and mentors for their students.

Academic Path For A Teacher

To pursue teaching as a profession, you can follow some of the below-mentioned ways:

Nursery Teacher

To become a teacher of pre-primary, you should complete your 12th and pursue a Nursery Teacher Training (NTT) course of 1-year duration. You can also go for a Kindergarten Training Program or a Montessori Teacher Training program for about 9 months to 1 year. Even after completing graduation, you can opt for these courses. With the right qualifications and skills, you can try your career in teaching.

Also, by pursuing the child development program of Anganwadi Workers (AWW) – Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), you can begin your career as a teacher in Anganwadi.

Primary School Teacher

In the primary section of teaching, you can have the chance to teach students a variety of subjects and enhance the learning experience. If you want to make your career as a teacher for primary classes, then you have the following options:

The option of a Primary Teacher Training (PTT) program of a 2-year duration is also available for pursuing.

You can also take part in the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) to get recruited as Primary School Teachers in Government schools and Government primary schools.

Secondary and Higher Secondary School Teachers

If you want to be a teacher of higher secondary classes then you can do a Master’s degree after graduation and then pursue a B.Ed. degree.

If you want to qualify as a teacher for central government-run schools, then the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) will be the option for you. CTET is conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for applicants to be eligible to be a teacher at the secondary and higher secondary levels.

You can also opt for the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) or a State Level Eligibility Test (SLET) for recruiting secondary-level and higher-secondary-level teachers.

College and University Teacher

If you want to teach students in colleges or universities or want to be called a lecturer in government or private colleges and universities, then follow the available options:

How to Become a College or University Teacher?

If you want to choose teaching as a career in a college or university, you must get a degree in a Master’s program.

Once you complete a Master’s degree, you can apply for the National Eligibility Test (NET) conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA). NET requires a postgraduate degree and a certification of eligibility for entrance.

It is an essay on the teaching profession that can help you on your pathway to becoming a teacher.

Characteristics of Teaching

However, many teachers teach in schools/academies/Institutions or colleges, yet not all may prevail with regards to being great teachers for students. So, what are the characteristics of the Teaching Profession that make teachers more successful in the classroom?

Those who enjoy investing energy with youngsters and will make others educated with their abilities can choose Teaching as a Profession.

To become an exemplary teacher, one may possess relevant qualities like creating a dynamic environment, being adaptable, and kind, classroom management, a good comical inclination, an active personality, being Innovative, calm demeanor, experience, and so on.

Teachers’ unions and teachers’ associations

In most countries, there is one major teachers’ organization to which all or nearly all teachers belong and pay duty. Sometimes participation is obligatory, sometimes voluntary.

In the former Soviet Union, where a significant part of the political and social existence of the people had been organized around unions, there were three teachers’ unions — preschool teachers, primary and secondary school teachers, and teachers in advanced education. These unions provided pensions, vacation pay, and debilitated leave pay and in this way touched the welfare of teachers at many points.

England, for example, has two distinct associations for male and female secondary school teachers, two unique associations for male and female headmasters of secondary schools, and a separate Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions.

These associations are parallel to the National Union of Teachers, which is open to any qualified teacher from nursery school to college level. The National Union has no political affiliation except for being politically powerful by its own doing.

France, in contrast, has a wide variety of teachers’ organizations, with various political leanings, however, they do not manage everything well together and are politically less successful.

In this “Teaching as a Profession Essay”, we learn the importance of teaching profession and how to explain teaching as a profession. Teaching provides a way to give back to society and teachers have so much potential in the field, that they should be given every opportunity possible to use it.

Teaching is a profession of imparting knowledge and skills to students in a way that will help them achieve their full potential and such as teaching can be an incredibly rewarding career. Teaching is one of the few professions that allow you to work with children and then retire from the same occupation while still young.

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Professionalism in Education Essay

Introduction, professionalism in education, essentials of professionalism in education, professionalisation of education, how to professionalise education, factors influencing professionalisation, works cited.

For any field of knowledge to be functional and meaningful it has to have practitioners in that area that must follow specific ethics and values specific to their areas of specializations. It is important to note that, although different professions have commonalities among their ethics, each of the professions has a class of unique ethics and values that identifies practitioners in that specific field.

In addition, it is good to note that, practitioners in these fields not only work to gain good remuneration packages, but also they are involved in extensive researches; a practice aimed at improving and enhancing knowledge in their fields.

Generally, professionals regardless of their areas of specialization must have cognitive and academic competence and a set of principles not only defined by their areas of specialization, but also intrinsically driven (Clark and Kasar pp.5-7).

When individuals decide to be professionals in a specific field, then it means they are ready to sacrifice all that is at their disposal to make sure their professions shine, hence a factor necessitating one at all times to perform work with integrity and dedication.

In addition, to self-interest and personal achievement, professionally individuals should create lasting relationships with not only those they work with, but also those they are serving. This is because, in case conflicting issues exists among a cohort of workers, then resulting conflicts can impair the quality and quantity of work output.

Hence, if professional cannot fight to ensure they maximise their work output and competencies, then what is the essence of individuals calling themselves professionals? On the other hand, it is necessary to note that, all professional services’ main aim is to aid community development and peaceful coexistence, a factor that will improve the nature of relationships that will exist among community members.

Hence, in trying to maintain this “contract” with the community, it is important for all professionals to ensure whatever principles, moral ethics, or values they embrace fit societal wants and needs (Cunningham pp.6-9).

Educators play several roles dictated either by professional ethics or by societal needs. For example in an elementary school, although teachers’ main role is to deliver knowledge, they also have other duties that include acting as a surrogate parents, disciplinarians, motivators, and many other roles that depend on specific societies. This is because, students take more time with teachers than they do with their parents.

Therefore, this makes it important for teachers to try and formulate mechanisms of balancing students’ needs and their professionalism. It is important to note here that, as compared to other professions, this profession entails many ethical concerns because to students teachers are a representation of the society; hence, students will always follow what teachers do.

As professionalism dictates all practitioners in any fields must have the competence required for effective work performance, a factor that education embraces. Depending on one’s area of jurisdiction, requirements for one to function effectively as a teacher vary.

These requirements include postgraduate diplomas, degrees (masters or PhDs’), diplomas, certificate and other qualifications in education. Although this is the case, teaching ethics of different areas or countries do not vary very much primarily because, the profession aims to mould learners who can work in any social-economic conditions.

In addition to these varying qualifications, because of the changing nature of lifestyles and technology, it is important for teachers to have additional trainings in other fields for example, information technology. The trainings not only are they of purpose to teachers in terms of knowledge development or improvement, but also are important aids of enhancing quality content and value delivery.

On the other hand, because learning has no end, this profession involves the attending of other training sessions that ensure teachers stay up to date with current information, an important prerequisite for dealing with learners’ problems.

For example, in the field of medicine presently, due to emerging complex health complications globally, it is important for teachers in this field to update themselves with new knowledge, for them to be able to mould students who meet current health needs (Robson pp. 7-14).

In addition, it is important to note that, competency is not all being well educated and having professional certificates, but rather the whole process involves the ability to deliver whatever content the core curriculum specifies. Different professionals have the power to deliver their services according to their best means, where education is not an exception.

However, although this is the case, educators must bear in mind that, whatever they do learners will copy direct and include the same in their real professional jobs, hence the need to use their best means. This adopted strategy should ensure content delivery occurs within preferred and standard conditions, which can help learners of different capabilities to cope up; hence effective and meaningful learning experiences (Whitty p.1).

Professional behaviour is another important aspect of this field. Practically, it is a little bit hard to clearly define a set of conduct that educators must follow. In addition, before defining this set of conduct, it is important for all educators to note that, learners always copy whatever they do in any scenario.

This ranges from the mode of one’s conduct either in class or out of class, language characteristics, and general behaviour in terms of temperament, attitude, morals, and principles. Honestly speaking, following professional conduct is one of the most difficult tasks because of the differences in learners’ backgrounds; where learners have different ways of interpreting occurrences in their immediate environments.

Although this is the case, it is important for practitioners in this field to correctly depict and predict learners’ demographics; hence, formulate mechanisms of dealing with these differences among different learners.

In addition to ensuring, they maintain professional behaviours in presence of learners; educators must always ensure that whatever aspect of behaviour they adopt should fit the values of the society to which they are offering their services.

This is because, considering most societal settings, educators are always on the sport light, owing to the fact that, the society treats them as role models.

Due to multiple roles that educators must perform, there is need for them to be dedicated and responsible in their duties.

Responsibility not only entails following or performing as per set goals and standards, but rather it means that, educators must be ready to deliver or perform beyond set goals. This is only achievable if individuals handle duties managements have assigned them obeying their intrinsic motivators rather than extrinsic motivators.

In addition, dedication entails the performing of duties in a way individuals could attend to their personal issues. The greatest motivator of this profession is that, whatever the competence an educator imparts in learners not only benefits them solely, but also it contributes to the overall development of the society.

On the other hand, it is essential for practitioners in this field to note that, responsibility does not only guarantee achievement of educational goals, but also it contributes to individuals self growth and image enhancement, which translates to a good professional image.

In addition to competence, behavioural orientation, responsibility and dedication professionally, all educators must ensure their life both inside and outside the class is organized. For example, in qualifying graduates in all institutions, administrations must use all performance records.

However, in case of carelessness by some tutor and these records are not present then the teaching profession is at stake. This is because whatever happens after this like a scenario will not only taint the name of the teacher and the learning institution, but also will taint the name of the teaching profession; something that all individuals should aim to eliminate in their daily undertakings.

Although a challenging task to meet many qualities associated with the teaching profession, it is important for all individuals in this profession to delicate their efforts to the profession; hence formulate mechanisms of meeting societal needs through imparting correct skills in learners. This is because; education is the fundamental prerequisite for any societal development and success achievement.

Considering the nature of changes that have occurred in present education systems, it is important for governments to professionalize education, in the sense that, it is the primary determinant of a societies well being. In addition, considering the roles education plays in our contemporary society, it is important for it to have bodies that should manage its affairs and ensure all practitioners in the field meet specific standards.

This is important in that, not only does it ensure the law protects practitioners in this field, but also it will act as a motivator towards goal achievement; hence, the bettering of educational experiences and knowledge.

For education to be practical and utilitarian there is need to include meaningful learning experiences, a factor that will make the profession to be of good integrity and competence.

The professionalisation process primarily encompasses the setting and implementation of good standards, principles and qualifications that all teachers must meet, for them to maintain the competence that the profession dictates. In addition, the process involves the formation of both internal and external working bodies that will manage all activities of the profession.

These activities include setting of working standards and ethics, rules and procedures that practitioners in this field must follow. The professionalisation process is very crucial in that, it helps to differentiate between amateurs in the education profession and qualified individuals who are ready to work using all that is at their disposal to achieve academic competence (Siriwardena pp.235-245).

On the other hand, the professionalisation process has many associated advantages namely: increased benefits, proper management of conflicting issues, education quality improvement, and improved self-esteem of members of the professional class. This is because these bodies will protect their autonomy and protect their well-being.

One main factor that makes professionalisation a necessity is the changing trends in forms of educational orientation. In the past, the overall role of education delivery rested solely on parents and elders, a factor that has undergone transformation with globalisation.

Currently, many education developments have introduced new concepts in education; hence, making it necessary for establishment of concrete standards and bodies that take the overall responsibility of ensuring educational experiences remains meaningful.

In addition, centralisation of education management in many governments has made the process of professionalizing education a hard task because governments solely formulate policies without consulting educators.

In addition, due to the enormous contribution made by educators to the social, economic, and political conditions of societies, there is need for increased teacher preparation for them to work effectively and professionally in their distinct areas, something that is achievable via professionalizing education.

Educational professionalization should commence from the nature of trainings offered to teachers. In the present changing times, there exist great variations among different learner needs, considering that learners grow in different and unique environments.

Therefore, this makes it important for integration of professionalization in training centres, where trainers should emphasise the need of meeting all learners’ needs. This will make learning meaningful and of value not only to learners, but also the entire community. For governments to achieve this, then they must accord all scholars their rightful positions as concerns reforms.

It is important to note that, by giving educators the right to participate in reforms, likelihoods of success of formulated programs are high. This is because when educators themselves give decisions on radical changes that education policy makers must include in the curriculum, implementation such curriculum is easy.

To ensure that original skills learnt by teachers receive continuous upgrading to meet current global economic, social, and political standards, government should come up with correct strategies of formulating building capacities for example, the application of communication technologies.

This will aid the extension of teacher education, hence guaranteeing that all practitioners in the education field are qualified and meet specific standards, something that clearly defines professionalisation.

Trainings and continuous upgrading of skills cannot act on their own without extensive researches in this profession. This is because there is a clear shift from the tradition rote learning method to more advanced learning methods, which dictate constant and renewed skill development.

Therefore, this calls for need of extensive researches in this profession, something that will contribute to its upgrading and advancement; hence meet all learner needs and aspirations (Whitehead and Hartley pp. 147-157).

For example, the use of the Reggio Emilia technique of teaching is a practical example of a research got technique that not only ensures learning is meaningful, but also ensures there exist good connections between learning environments, classroom settings and surrounding communities.

To ensure that practitioners in education deliver the required standards, governments have to establish ways of creating teacher bodies and councils, which will undertake the overall role of ensuring educators perform to their uttermost potentials.

Depending on the level of learning, it is important for governments to include not only education stakeholders’ views, but also their membership in this overseeing leadership groups (Mawhinney pp. 36-47).

Although the concept of education professionalization sounds an easy task, in reality it has many associated concepts that make it a subject of debate among many scholars. For example, majority of educational concepts are theoretical, hence creating a broad difference between theory and real practise as concerns professional development.

From research findings, there exist dismal participation of professionals in this field a fact that majority of them attribute to the un-worthiness of such programmes. This makes it hard to professionalise education because for it to fit in the class of other professions, it must have certain qualities, where career development is a primary need.

Another major factor influencing teacher professionalism is the organisational cultures of majority of schools. Depending on an institutions’ culture and educational orientation, some schools may have enhancement opportunities where as some may lack completely.

This is many ways hinders the professional development of educators. For schools that offer advancements opportunities such as trainings, and career enhancement packages their performance is high in terms of educational delivery.

This is because majority of such educators acquire extensive and better competencies that are necessary for an ever-changing society. Majority of schools with such professional development opportunities have well defined leadership roles; hence, guaranteeing educators freedom to express their concerns and needs, a factor that encourages professional advancement.

Politics is another major influencing factor to professionalisation. This is because politics primarily determine the amount of resources that a country allocates educational development. In addition, politics many other influences on educational unions running, a factor that hinders teachers for expressing their ideas when it comes to policy development and implementation.

Another common factor affecting professionalisation of education is the imbalances that exist between the ratios of students to teachers. As Smith (pp.74-80) argues, in most current schools, teachers have to work extra hard to meet all learners’ needs, something that has burdened teachers.

This is because, currently there is an influx of students in many elementary and middle level schools; hence the small number of teachers cannot meet their demands effectively or as dictated by professional ethics.

In addition, the fact that majority of these classrooms have mixed learners in terms of capabilities and handicaps compounds the factor, hence making professional development a harder task for most educators. on the other hand, considering the fact that most elementary schools have many integrated subject hipped in one curriculum makes specialisation a harder task; hence, a great impediment to professionalisation.

Primarily, specialisation involves the division of work when it comes to teaching duties and attending to specific learner needs, which currently is hard to achieve in many school settings.

The problem of specialisation results due to poor administrative systems, a factor that denies educators freedoms of formulating workable plans that will suit learners’ needs as specific times and needs. This is a problem that governments can avoid by giving teachers their required autonomy and freedoms as pertains policy development and implementation.

In addition to the wide gap that exists between the number of students and teachers, the economic condition of a government or society also acts as another major influence on professionalisation of education.

Majority of nation states allocate very dismal funds to their educational programs, or in some cases, although the resource allocations are sufficient to meet educational needs, little goes to educational professional development.

Hence, because the professionalisation process requires sufficient funds; that are scarce, most of the initiatives to professionalise education fail; hence, the influence of economic viability and status of a country on professionalisation of education.

On the other hand, education is worthless if it cannot meet the society needs. Hence, due to varying societal needs (that are un-satiable), professinalising education has become a hard task due to influences societies have on the organisation of educational programmes, policy formulation and their implementation.

In conclusion, to ensure education continues meeting the ever changing societal needs, there is need to professionalise it. This is because it will give teachers the autonomy to decide on meaningful experiences that policy makers must include in the process of curriculum development and implementation.

In addition to giving teachers autonomy, it is necessary for governments to allow teachers to form independent bodies that will handle their discrepancies whenever they arise. For these bodies to function properly, they must be free from any governmental influences, something that has made education professionalisation a hard thing.

Clark, Nelson and Kasar, Jack. Developing professional behaviour . New Jersey: Slack Incorporated, 2000. Web.

Cunningham, Brian. Exploring professionalism . London: Institute of education, 2008. Print.

Mawhinney, Hanne. School wars or school transformation: professionalizing Teaching and involving communities . Peabody journal of education, 73(1) (1998). 34-55. Web.

Robson, Jocelyn. Teacher professionalism in further and higher education: challenges to Culture and practice . Oxon: Routledge Taylor and Francis group, 2006. Web.

Siriwardena, Rashid. The professionalization of education and educators in Postgraduate Medicine. Education for Primary Care, 16(3) (2005): pp.235-245.

Print Smith, Selby. Some factors affecting the education of teachers in the state of Victoria, Australia. International Review of Education, 15 (1). (2005): 74-83. Print.

Whitehead, Maurice and Hartley, David. Teacher education: professionalism and Teacher education . New York: Routledge; Taylor and Francis group,2006, Web.

Whitty, Geoff. Teacher professionalism in a new era. 2006. Web.

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Transitioning Out of Teaching Is Hard. Here’s What I’ve Learned

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Nearly a decade ago, I left what I thought would be a lifelong career as an educator after just a few years in the classroom. Although there was much I truly cherished about my career as a K-12 teacher, I didn’t find the professional respect, work-life balance, and compensation I needed to thrive both personally and professionally.

I’m hardly alone in this. Even veterans of the classroom with decades of experience are contemplating an early departure from the profession , driven not by a lack of love for teaching but by a system that fails to compensate them fairly, protect their well-being, or set reasonable expectations for employees. In recent years, stories of educators asked to clean school buildings or restrooms on their off days or being involuntarily reassigned mid-school year underline the profound disrespect many teachers face.

The lack of upward mobility or opportunities for advancement in the teaching profession can also contribute to teachers’ desire to leave the field. I pursued national-board certification and then found a ceiling—there was nowhere to go in the school system. For professionals like me who desire continual career growth, this ceiling can drive us to look outside the teaching profession.

The professional journey of a teacher often lacks the lateral mobility enjoyed in other professions. For those working in other industries, professional boredom or unhappiness may mean moving to a new company or taking on a new role altogether. They have opportunities to build new skills and populate a robust resume.

In contrast, career-advancement opportunities for K-12 teachers are limited, primarily confined to administrative roles that do not appeal to many teachers. Furthermore, these positions require a different skill set than classroom teaching.

This lack of mobility within the profession, coupled with inadequate exposure to the culture of job-getting outside the education sector, can leave teachers at a disadvantage. When teachers are unfamiliar in the art of negotiating positions or adapting to new office politics, they lose out on these fundamental elements of professional growth.

The world of teaching alone also leaves many teachers feeling pigeonholed, their years of dedication to education paradoxically becoming their biggest barrier to exploration beyond it.

Teachers are often told that leading a classroom is the world’s most challenging and complex profession, but that sentiment doesn’t help them translate their teaching experience beyond the classroom. Many find the skills that define them as educators do not neatly translate into the resume language valued in the corporate world. Their expertise in people management, data analysis, and problem-solving, honed over years of managing classrooms and nurturing young minds, seems lost in translation when it comes to the corporate job market.

Instead, a teacher’s resume often reads as a static record of their employment history, devoid of the dynamic skills and achievements that could make them attractive candidates in other sectors.

For me, transitioning out of teaching required me to learn new skills. I took on volunteer and freelance work to broaden my skill set. Those experiences working outside the education space also gave me the opportunity to interact with a broader set of professionals in new spaces and apply the skills I had cultivated in the classroom beyond teaching.

Yet, hope is not lost. The pathway out of the classroom and into new professional realms requires a paradigm shift in how teachers and employers view teachers’ skills. The journey involves reimagining the resume not as a mere record but as a strategic tool that highlights the transferability of teaching skills to a wide array of sectors.

In my work developing a platform to support teachers’ career transitions, I help them understand how to translate their teaching skills into the language of various industries. It’s about recognizing the value in the competencies developed in the classroom—competencies that are desperately needed in the broader professional world.

I myself initially assumed that the skills I honed in the classroom were irrelevant outside it. This mindset kept me confined to education-focused roles for years before I realized the transferability of my teaching expertise and learned how to talk about the value I would bring to an organization.

We must also make systemic changes beyond what is in any one teacher’s control. First, districts need to create pathways for growth as teacher-leaders or other roles within schools that help them build a diverse skill set—and resume. No worker’s trajectory should flatten once they enter their chosen profession.

Secondly, schools of education could better support the professional growth of teachers by preparing education degree-seekers for an array of roles beyond the classroom. They should make students aware of the teacher-turnover rates, provide direct instruction around how to build skills valued in the workplace more generally, and advise on how to talk about their capabilities.

By offering courses that expressly focus on building transferable skills and building awareness of the array of career options for educators, these institutions can better equip graduates for the reality of their career trajectories. Teachers who end up choosing to transition out of education need to see how to translate what they’ve learned on the job.

Teacher-preparation programs can also support students by establishing partnerships between schools, businesses, and industry associations. These efforts—such as industry-sponsored projects, mentorship programs, or even guest lectures—would provide teacher-candidates with essential networking and skill-building opportunities.

Experiential learning opportunities, too, such as job-shadowing programs and internships can expose prospective teachers to the culture of job-getting in other industries. Such collaborative initiatives can bridge the gap between teaching roles and the broader landscape of available jobs for education professionals.

Teachers aren’t stuck, but they do face a Herculean task when they want to make a career pivot. It’s time we better support those who raise their hands to do the complex work of teaching and advocate a system that values their professional growth. We must recognize their potential not only in the classroom but in the wider world.

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