There's no hard empirical evidence that Scientology is crap, but I'm comfortable making that statement too.
Statistical studies showing little to no positive correlation between level of training (not including practicums - which the UK is obviously using extensively, good on them) and student outcomes is pretty damning though. There's some correlation between doing a masters level education course, and English teaching ability, but OLS shows this is just because students with good English ability (high writing scores in high school) are more likely to do a masters level teaching course.
> Yes, teaching and learning is not a field that depends on hard facts alone. The 'soft' factors are important as well. Student teachers need some pointers, models, methods, examples of how to deal with the soft factors.
For example, they should be learning psychology that's not so outdated that the Cosmopolitan magazine should be embarrassed to write articles on it (Myers-Briggs is totally discredited). I'm not saying I'm a hard reductionist. Education should be based on fundamental psychological foundations if possible, and while that's not always possible they should at least try to either teach stuff which is fundamentally sound, or actually works in the classroom.
"There's no hard empirical evidence that Scientology is crap, but I'm comfortable making that statement too."
I tend to agree. We both accept that there are grounds for belief that do not depend on empirical evidence or a scientifically articulated theory subject to strict Popperian falsifiability. I would extend that acceptance to include the idea that works of psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, management theory and aspects of cultural studies and history may be useful to training teachers when trying to make sense of what happens in lessons!
"For example, they should be learning psychology that's not so outdated that the Cosmopolitan magazine should be embarrassed to write articles on it (Myers-Briggs is totally discredited)."
They don't in the UK. Gardner is quite popular though as a guide to lesson planning. Totally is a strong word though. Have a look at...
It does sound like teacher training in the US requires some looking at if the courses are not based around a supervised teaching practice. In the UK, during the one year PGCE course, the training teacher must teach for 150 hours under the supervision of a placement mentor (i.e. an actual teaching member of staff in the school or College). The University tutor conducts developmental teaching observations, and the placement mentor conducts the summative assessment (i.e. is person ok to let loose in my classroom). Our dear government is going even further and cutting the University element. There are doubts as to the wisdom of that.
Myers-Briggs as a psychological test is basically useless. MBTI indicates bimodal distributions of the attributes (people are either introverts or extroverts), when they are more like a normal distribution.
Gardner also lacks any real credibility, unless you throw out everything except "different people can be good at different things". It's good to encourage students to study a range of stuff (art, music and interpersonal stuff, not just math and english), but that's not really what Gardner is about. Students who are good at music aren't likely to learn math better if you sing it (OK, maybe I'm exaggerating).
Individualization isn't a great method. It's hard to do, and has a fairly small impact on student outcomes. Most students work best if you show them a diagram, explain everything, give them a chance to try it themselves, and demonstrate things in a number of ways. It's not about "different strokes for different folks"; most students like a bit of variety.
The reason many students struggle is because they lack the right foundations. They didn't learn it last year (for whatever reason) so they struggle this year and can't catch up. This is much more common than students simply not having the right talents.
I'm not from the US, but Australia. From what I can tell, the US varies from state to state. The problems with the US aren't really related to pedagogy, but social issues (large black / hispanic communities going to black / hispanic schools, where everyone is trapped in the poverty cycle) and the way their standardized testing dominates everything. Every year the teacher is mostly concerned about the students passing the end of year test, at all costs, and the end of year tests seem to be badly designed.
"Myers-Briggs as a psychological test is basically useless."
But as a story around the camp fire their theory (along with Honey and Mumford's development of it) might be useful. Stories, ideas, ways of thinking through. Basis for action, then evaluate the action. Kekule (benzene) and his opium.
"Gardner also lacks any real credibility"
But as a way of getting training teachers to think about the sensory modes they stimulate, there might be some value.
Action based research, situated theory, stories. Not science. Definitely not Science, depending on what time of day it is (before teaching, I did research)
There's no hard empirical evidence that Scientology is crap, but I'm comfortable making that statement too.
Statistical studies showing little to no positive correlation between level of training (not including practicums - which the UK is obviously using extensively, good on them) and student outcomes is pretty damning though. There's some correlation between doing a masters level education course, and English teaching ability, but OLS shows this is just because students with good English ability (high writing scores in high school) are more likely to do a masters level teaching course.
> Yes, teaching and learning is not a field that depends on hard facts alone. The 'soft' factors are important as well. Student teachers need some pointers, models, methods, examples of how to deal with the soft factors.
For example, they should be learning psychology that's not so outdated that the Cosmopolitan magazine should be embarrassed to write articles on it (Myers-Briggs is totally discredited). I'm not saying I'm a hard reductionist. Education should be based on fundamental psychological foundations if possible, and while that's not always possible they should at least try to either teach stuff which is fundamentally sound, or actually works in the classroom.