Teaching and Teacher Education: What the Students Say.

Overview & Synopsis

This paper reports on a study to determine what various groups of teachers and prospective teachers consider to be the aims of the Hong Kong education system in relation to their teacher education courses. The participants were uncertified preservice teachers in their second and third years of study, certificated inservice teachers, and uncertified inservice teachers. The first section of the paper reviews background issues, including financing education, the teacher's role, and quality in education. The first part of the study was a questionnaire relating participants perception of the aims and objectives of their teacher education courses and comparing the response of certificated and uncertificated teachers to various aspects of their courses. The second part of the study focused on students' view of the curriculum, using a checklist of items considered the most and the least important in relation to Hong Kong's schools. Both preservice students and inservice certificated teachers rated practical teaching as the main purpose of teacher education courses. The inservice uncertificated teachers rated benefits to society, such as improving the education system, as the main purpose. All three groups rated practical teaching skills as the primary reason for taking a teacher education course. The study also illustrated that student teachers seemed to have no particular common focus, and appeared to find little coherence within their courses. The report suggests more effort may be needed to help students realize how their teacher education courses fit together to become the body of professional knowledge to which all educators subscribe. (ND)