Teaching as a Learning Profession

Black Issues in Higher Education, Dec 9, 1999 by Mary Hatwood Futrell

The education of teachers has emerged as a critical component in efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning. In "Teaching as the Learning Profession," 23 of the nation's leading educators and researchers provide an in-depth overview of the issues and challenges facing the profession. Edited by Linda Darling-Hammond and Gary Sykes, the series of 13 essays explore the need to rethink teacher education, teacher professional development, organizations that impact the way teacher learn, and policies that shape the fabric or teaching and learning.

The book is a wide-ranging but sharply focused chronicle of the education reform movement that gathers force and clarity as it presents a series of powerful arguments for reforming the teaching profession to ensure that every teacher who enters a classroom is qualified to teach our diverse student population. It includes case studies of specific examples of recommend reforms in teacher education, principles for better teacher professional development and proposals for more fully engaging teachers unions and other professional organizations in efforts to reform teaching and teachers professional development.

"Teaching as the Learning Profession' has been released at a very propitious time in our history. Over the next decade, the nation will need more than 2.5 million new teachers. As the Center for Policy Analysis notes, "These teachers will be responsible for teaching the very children who, before the middle of the 21st century, will be the country's movers and shakers, its workers and savers, its leaders and caretakers, its engines of social and economic well-being. In sum, they will be preparing the citizens of America in the next century."

Larger percentages of those citizens will come from racial and language minority families that reflect the dramatic demographic shifts defining the complexion and the complexity of America. The book points out that the overall problem is not shortages but an of distributional and other labor market forces. But the real issue is the supply of qualified teachers.

While evidence shows that the claim of a national teacher shortage is questionable (some geographic areas actually have a surplus of teachers while others cannot fill vacancies), the evidence also shows that the number of minorities selecting teaching as a career choice has declined appreciably over the last decade. Currently, only 13 percent of the current teaching force reflect the racial and language diversity, which defines our citizenry. The vast majority of teachers who enter the profession are White, middle-class females who are from cultural backgrounds quite from the students they will teach.

Every effort must be made to recruit, prepare, and hire more Black and Hispanic teachers. At the same time, it is highly unlikely that we will have a teaching profession which mirrors the student population -- 35 percent candidates from language or racial minority backgrounds. Therefore, it is crucial for schools, colleges, and departments of education to ensure that all prospective teachers are provided with training that will better prepare them to teach in culturally diverse school environments.

In the final chapter, the authors articulate three promising strategies for promoting teacher excellence: standards-base and curriculum-based strategies, school-reform based strategies and teacher development strategies. Investing in these strategies will enable teachers to prepare all learners for much more challenging learning.

However, it requires the unlearning of old practices as well as the learning of new, highly sophisticated strategies for enabling all students to learn at their maximum potential.

"Teaching as a Learning Profession" provides a very thoughtful and substantive guide for educators, policy makers, and other members of the community who are committed to developing a better understanding of the conceptual and practical ways to reform teaching and learning for teachers, teacher educators and their students.

-- Dr. Mary Hatwood Futrell Dean Graduate School of Education and Human Development The George Washington University