A good teacher in every classroom.

A good teacher in every classroom Linda Darling-Hammond and Joan Baratz-Snowden (Eds.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005 ISBN 0 787 974 668

There has been growing realisation that the major equity issue in education is the provision of quality teaching. A vast and compelling body of educational research has demonstrated that it is the teacher who accounts for most of the variance in student achievement, the individual student's capacities aside.

The OECD report Quality in Teaching (1994) pointed to the imperative for promoting high quality teaching in every country, educational system, school and classroom. As part of this imperative, there has been a fundamental shift in school leadership from the management paradigm of the 1980s and 1990s to a new focus on leadership for teaching and learning. This shift in emphasis has coincided with the wider development and application of professional teaching standards and teacher accreditation within a context of greater accountability and reporting on student and teacher performance.

Through research we now have a much clearer idea of what quality teaching is and its representation in various models and frameworks has proven valuable, but the challenge has been to develop this capacity in many more beginning and experienced teachers. A key contextual issue is that many countries, including Australia, are about to experience a major loss of experienced teachers due to the ageing teaching population and quite possibly, teacher shortages in certain disciplines and geographic areas. The preparation and support of the next generation of teachers (and educational leaders) assumes great significance.

A good teacher in every classroom is drawn from a much longer report sponsored by the United States National Academy of Education, Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. Linda Darling-Hammond is widely known as an educational researcher and writer and is Professor of Teaching and Teacher Education at Stanford University. She has also served as co-chair of the National Academy of Education's Committee on Teacher Education. Joan Baratz-Snowden is Director of Educational Issues at the American Federation of Teachers and has served as vice president for Educational Policy and Reform and for Assessment and Research at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the United States.

The focus of this book--in effect, a user-friendly summary of the above report in fewer than 90 pages--is upon the professional preparation of beginning rather than experienced teachers. Based upon an extensive research base and wide professional input, the editors conceptualise what teachers need to know. A useful, robust rubric is provided, the editors acknowledging the interrelationships and complexities of teaching. The three broad domains of knowledge of learners and their development in social contexts, knowledge of subject matter and curriculum goals, and knowledge of teaching are placed within a context of teaching as a profession, learning in a democracy and preparing teachers for a changing world, to produce a vision of professional practice. Each is 'unpacked' with clear explanations, justification and examples.

The editors then ask how teachers can acquire the knowledge they need. This is an important question, given both the criticisms of and pressures on teacher preparation programs and the fact that increasing numbers of teachers are entering and being prepared for teaching through non-traditional methods. The editors share their concern with both the varying quality of entrants to teacher education courses in the US and the varying quality of those courses. With two million new teachers required in US schools over the next decade, there is the risk that issues of teacher quantity will outweigh those of quality. Unfortunately, this chapter is a disappointment. It considers the problems of learning to teach, including misconceptions about teaching, the problem of enactment of theory in practice, and the problem of complexity, and calls for teachers to become adaptive experts, but it is short on the 'how' aspects of teacher learning and development.

The following chapter does, however, provide some useful implications for teacher preparation, calling for a carefully sequenced, coherent curriculum, providing extended clinical practice and integrated learning in professional communities and the use of case methods including video, analyses of teaching and learning, teacher inquiry and performance assessments to relate teacher learning to classroom practice. There is nothing particularly ground-breaking or innovative here, but it is a useful frame of reference.

The editors then turn to the policy implications arising from what they have advocated. These include: accreditation of both traditional and alternative preparation progratas; the use of licensing standards; and the recruitment, induction and retention of beginning teachers. The editors offer the view that much of the above will be difficult to achieve without a 'core curriculum' for beginning teacher education across all US teacher preparation programs, an issue currently at the edge of the radar in Australian education but sure to receive increased attention in the near future. Teaching Australia, previously the new National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership, and state teacher accreditation authorities will increasingly be active in seeking to shape and control teacher pre-service education and teacher accreditation in a broader context agenda, which includes common national school curricula and testing, and increased accountability and performance reporting measures for schools and systems with compliance linked to provision of Commonwealth funding.

Much of this book resonates with recent developments and current trends and issues in Australian education and it provides a framework for reflection and action at a time when the focus is clearly on quality teaching. This is a broad brush, fairly pragmatic approach that is a little light on some matters, and those interested in greater detail will need to refer to the parent report. Nevertheless, this summary of a major project from credible editors and educators fits its purpose well.

Stephen Dinham

University of Wollongong