Term Paper on "Teaching Today: An Introduction to Education"

Term Paper 15 pages (5989 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Teaching Today: An Introduction to Education

On the question of teaching there are various factors that enable the teachers to perform in a manner that will perform the best education for the children. Parts of these characteristic requirements have changed with time, but others remain constant and depend mainly on the relationship between the teachers, students and the society as a whole. All these matters have to be judged when the question of teaching has to be discussed. Here some of the important factors have been considered, but these are not necessarily all that can be said about teaching.

Are Universities not interested in producing enough teachers?

The headlines on the front page of a large circulating newspaper in North California had brought this question up regarding California and its universities. The news piece said "Debate on Growth of Research at CSU Campuses." The piece clearly mentioned that there was a growing debate over the requirement for a higher amount of research being carried out on-campus in California State University. On the other hand, this is the university that is supposed to provide the largest number of teachers to the education system in the state and has been doing so for a number of years. This is an apparent slow movement for removing the capacity of the teaching system to stop them from performing their duties. The problem has come up due to the shortage in funds for the university that has come due to the shrinking of the government budget, and the university is now trying to balance its own books by getting research grants from organizations which are interested in getting them done through the university and its facilities.

This requires a greater number of students moving towards research rather than concentrate on becoming teachers. This means that all institutions of higher education are now changing their stand and shifting to become large research universities. Obviously the movement is not only in California, but exists all over the nation. This is not in line with the existing education system in America. Here the large research universities are expected to conduct advanced research and their goal in teaching is only secondary. This is the problem that is being mentioned in the article of the newspaper as mentioned above. These are the research universities and not the comprehensive higher education institutions to which California State University belongs, like many other institutions in the country. The suggestion is that the former State Normal schools, which are now called "comprehensive universities," are shifting their focus. (There Is No Research "Mission Creep" at Comprehensive Universities, it's the Nature of Teaching and Research Today That Has changed)

When these comprehensive universities were set up, their main aim was to prepare teachers for the K-12 schools and the various organizations that required employees of that level. This specification makes these institutions give their teachers double the load of teaching when compared to the teachers in the research universities. This is reflected in the position that in comprehensive teaching institutions the teaching load is to the extent of four courses a semester. This means that the teachers have a load of eight courses a year, whereas the teachers in the research universities are not expected to be more than three courses a year or a maximum of four. This is the basis of the argument for the conventional view of teaching and research universities and is further reinforced through the Carnegie Classification System which gives the universities the labels of being teaching or research in their status. The labels have given the universities an image so powerful that it is used in their description even by Carol Lin, the chair person of the California State Assembly Committee on Higher Education. This is one of the main sources for the funding of the universities and her views have been stated to be "The principal purpose of the CSU is teaching, and that is why kids go -- because they get more attention in the classroom." (There Is No Research "Mission Creep" at Comprehensive Universities, it's the Nature of Teaching and Research Today That Has changed)

This is also reflected in the students with the best grades and standardized test scores being sent to the Research institutions or the Flagship research institutions that exist within the state. This is the University of California. This is a very prestigious organization and has many research facilities on campus and that includes the University of California facilities at Berkeley. The portion of students who can be admitted here are the top 12% of the students who pass out. The next lot of 33% is sent to the California State University. This is not a reflection on the university as it is clear that the best students will also require the best in teaching to progress further, and there is no sense in also thinking that they will not fit in an institution which has undergraduate teacher preparation as its main objective.

This should not give us a false idea that there is a difference between organizations which concentrate on research and organizations which concentrate on preparing teachers. It is always essential that an institution teaches well and the need comes from the process of changes that are taking place in the changing frontiers of knowledge with time. The objective for California State University is the same even today, and that is a purpose of teaching so that good teachers are produced. No teacher in California State University or any other organization devoted to teaching or called Comprehensive institution would like to state that the goal of the organization has changed. They all try to maintain an excellence in teaching. The question that comes up then as to whether there have been any changes in teaching today? (There Is No Research "Mission Creep" at Comprehensive Universities, it's the Nature of Teaching and Research Today That Has changed)

This is a problem that exists in not only comprehensive institutes, but in all institutions that teach. To understand this difference one has to think of the situation in 1960 or so when this policy of having Comprehensive institutes was first thought about. This was when the master plans came about. In those years a college professor required to produce one set of lecture notes, and this preparation required a lot of effort. but, the same note, without any major changes could be used for a number of years, without any major changes. Today the century has changed and so has the speed of transmission of knowledge through computers. There are now many more researchers in the world, many more scholarly journals, much more support from the government and non-government sources of funding for research as also global interchange of thoughts between the researchers due to the speed of Internet.

The effect of all this is that the speed of movement of knowledge has increased a lot, and that can make the thoughts of last year outdated even within the year, and sometimes even incorrect. This means that the teachers in all institutions including those in the comprehensive institutions like California State University must keep pace with the rapid changes that are happening. Only this can permit teaching of the highest quality and they have to be in touch with all research literature that is available. Further, there has to be research in these institutions so that they themselves can contribute to the increase of their own knowledge directly through experience. No teacher wants to pass on outdated knowledge to the students as it may have been proved to be wrong.

There is no doubt that teaching requires a teacher to know the frontiers of research and then to absorb and reflect the knowledge that this research passes on. This is not easy and it takes time. Further this is eased of one is involved in direct research as that will lead to publication of results. This in turn will lead to evaluation of the effort by others. This was not the situation in 1960 when the knowledge available in most subjects was smaller and the changes took place much slower. It is clear that there are no direct differences between research and teaching and this position has been strengthened even more with the rapid speed in change of knowledge. Indeed one may say that a requirement for excellence in teaching today is to know the changes in knowledge available in the field today. This means that a teacher of Plato's Republic should have knowledge of the feminist views of political theory. They also have to contribute to these advances directly by conducting research themselves. (There Is No Research "Mission Creep" at Comprehensive Universities, it's the Nature of Teaching and Research Today That Has changed)

Quality of teachers as they are There have been questions raised in New York Times regarding the quality of present teachers, as is believed to be by many individuals. This was in the column of 25th March, 2004 in the… READ MORE

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