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Action Inquiry Essay

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Action Inquiry Buford Manion Grand Canyon University EDA 555 Shawn Feaster Johnson, Ed. D. April 19, 2010

Learning To Teach By being Learner’s First

Introduction
Nationally, there appears to be a growing recognition that teacher education programs do not fully prepare beginning teachers for the rigors of school teaching. However, rather than attempt to defend the need for universities to be able to meet this demand, I believe that it is more important to realistically appraise what is possible in teacher preparation - and what is not. Hence, it is more than reasonable to assert that teacher preparation programs are, by nature, inadequate and incomplete.
Dissatisfaction with …show more content…

Korthagen and Kessels (1999) have certainly pushed this type of questioning about teacher preparation in the research literature for, as they note, teacher education in many countries continually struggles with issues such as whether to start with theory or practice, and that in the ‘traditional’ approaches to teacher preparation, the notion of integration of the two is largely ignored – therefore impacting on programs’ effectiveness. In comparing their Realistic Teacher Education Program with the traditional teacher education program they state that,
In Freudenthal’s terms one could say that in this traditional approach, knowledge about teaching is considered as a created subject and not as a subject to be created by the learner, that is, the student teacher. An approach more in line with
Freudenthal’s ideas about learning would take its starting point in real problems encountered by student teachers during field experiences. The student teacher would then develop his or her own knowledge in a process of reflection on the practical situations in which a personal need for learning was created…the emphasis shifts towards inquiry-oriented activities, interaction amongst learners, and the development of reflective skills….During the learning

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