Susan Engel, director of the teaching program at Williams College, suggests that education school programs train teachers the same way that medical school programs train surgeons.
A change is definitely needed. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently described most education school programs as “mediocre.” In a four-year study, Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and former president of Teachers College at Columbia University, found that education school programs “cling to an outdated vision of teacher education.”
An excerpt from Engel:
Meanwhile, students should learn their craft the way a surgeon learns to operate: by intense supervision in a real setting with expert mentors. Student-teachers are usually observed only twice during a semester and then given a written evaluation. But young teachers, like young doctors, should work side by side with skilled mentors, getting plenty of feedback, having plenty of opportunities to observe and taking on greater and greater responsibility as they improve.