The Education and Professional Development of Vocational Education Teachers.

Overview & Synopsis

Undertakings to improve teacher education in Poland have taken on these three main directions, with quality as the priority: (1) a system for accrediting higher schools (academic institution quality); (2) new regulator for standardizing the program of studies (program quality); and (3) system for teachers' progressive qualification and development (teacher quality). Under conditions of the school-dominant system for vocational education, in-enterprise practical professional development for instructors has not been developed. The education macrosystem has no subsystem for educating vocational school teachers. Teaching personnel have opportunities for further or continuing education, but their ability to take advantage of them is seriously limited by insufficient budgets of state education institutions and high fees of all market-oriented forms. Poland has no national research and development research institute for vocational education. Higher education institutions offer master's, engineer's vocational, and licentiate studies. Reform trends in directed studies are breaking down of studies' organizational curriculum rigidity and a departure from the narrowly defined and specialized directions of studies in favor of broad-profile studies. There is no tradition or practice of joint operations between educational bodies and commercial entities in vocational school teacher education. A transformation of teacher education is vitally needed; responses to the necessity of reform are merely partial. (Contains 32 footnotes.) (YLB)