In terms of the teacher training, the phrase that “the quality of education can't go beyond the quality of teacher” has been repeated among educators. Although there are many factors which affect the quality of the school education, first of all, ...
In terms of the teacher training, the phrase that “the quality of education can't go beyond the quality of teacher” has been repeated among educators. Although there are many factors which affect the quality of the school education, first of all, one of the most crucial one is the quality of the teacher. However well the school may be equipped with the greatest facilities, finest texts and utmost teaching aids, the procedures and the achievements of the education depend mainly on the teachers who can make good use of them.
With the cultural openings among the nations, the advent of the world economy, and the coming of highly organized structure of industry, the diversity of thoughts is the main feature of 21st century, which is now entering into the knowledge-based society. As the result of the change of the paradigm, the education has still been recognized as one of the essential tasks for the national advancement. Many developed nations have already made every effort to achieve the educational reform successfully. From this point of view, the teacher's professionalism should clearly be mattered when discussing the school education.
To establish teacher's professionalism is a basic step to accomplish the successful educational reform. This is why many advanced nations have emphasize the improvement of the teachers' qualification as one of the current demanding tasks of the educational reform.
To prepare the knowledge-based society of 21st century, our government has put various educational reform movements in motion, with the financial and mental supports for the establishing a information-oriented society, improving facilities, and upgrading the ways of teaching. In the core of it stand the teachers themselves who can put into practice as well as coordinate them. To develope excellent teachers and provide them with relevant qualifications is, therefore, considered thoroughly in the procedure of the educational reform.
The change into the knowledge-based society as well as that of the school circumstances has enforced the rapid change of the expected role of the teachers and their professionalism. It also requires us to consider the current system of training teachers. This system needs to be amended for the improvement of the teachers' profound professionalism. It has also been indicated that the present four-year training system is insufficient to strengthen the teacher's competence to meet the various changes of the coming knowledge-based society.
In this present teacher training system, it is almost hard to accept excellent qualified students, to lay out and practice relevant curriculums including student-teacher training, and to employ excellent teachers after graduation. In order to resolve these problems, following questions should be asked first; how to improve the teachers' professionalism, how to stay the teachers' authority in the coming higher academic background society, and how to induce competent people from various fields into schools. Introducing teacher training system at a graduate school level is, therefore, necessary to meet those questions.
Nevertheless, our teacher training system has many problems in its own system as well as its own contents. So far, our policy of training and employing teachers has mainly focused on the quantity of the teachers, and the necessity of the quality of them has largely been ignored. Specifically surveyed, neither the coherent policy for training teacher nor the responsible effort to meet the change has been fully provided. Also, teacher training institutions have been blamed for the irrelevant curriculums and their inefficient managements. This current policy of training teachers has had lots of following faults; the proliferation of teacher training institutions; the lack of qualification control managements; the poor financial support status of the teacher training institutions; the imperfect training teacher systems to satisfy the needs of the national common basic subjects of the 7th curriculum; the unbalance of the supply-demand relation of the teachers; the inefficient managements of the teacher training institutions; the failures of the inducing highly qualified teachers into schools; the present stereotyped curriculums; the inappropriate test policies to appoint teachers.
In addition, if the teacher training system at a graduate school level which pursues the improvement of teachers' professionalism and students' learning ability doesn't provide the distinctive curriculums and the special strategies, this system will not only extend the educational term that will need tremendous social cost, but also show any improvement of the teachers' professionalism as well as any achievement of education.
The discussion on the reform of the current teacher training system is being held at the Committee for the Reform of the Teacher Training System , which was organized in 2004 under the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development. Among the discussion, the following issues are included; how to improve teacher's professionalism during teacher training; how to manage the qualification control; how to balance the supply-demand relation of the teachers; how to relate the curriculums to the schools and the teacher training institutions. Considering the efficiency of the teacher training policy and the possibility of it, the teacher training system at a graduate school level is now under discussion. After accepting various opinions from every level of people, the new frame of teacher training system should be decided and declared soon or later.
In order to draw competent people into schools as well as to improve the teacher's professionalism, the inducing of the new system for the teacher training seems to be compulsory. It is, however, hazardous to insist to choose a certain single specific system, when discussing the teacher training system at a graduate school level. The impatient conclusion without any educational reasons may bring about another greater problem.
The teacher training institutions play a key role in the accomplishment of the national task to train teachers with the professionalism and the grace to perform their duties. Their qualities and the professionalisms as teachers are not molded and completed only at the teacher training institutions. They are rather developed and refined during the period of long teaching careers. They should be focused as a kind of effort to remind the students of the demanding educational requirements from the society.
The purpose of this study is to diagnose the necessity of the teachers' professionalism in advance, in proposing the new trend of teacher training system for our educational development when facing the crisis of the teacher training issue, and to offer a new possible model of teacher training system at a graduate school level, after surveying the current teacher training system and its present status, and analyzing the examples of that of the foreign countries.