(NAME-MCE) * Teaching in Changing Times: Diverse Classrooms Challenge New Teachers' Skills

[Bill Howe]

Public Agenda Alert -- May 21, 2008
* Teaching in Changing Times:
Diverse Classrooms Challenge New Teachers' Skills
* FacingUp.org: Blog Carnival on Medicare
http://www.publicagenda.org
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* Teaching in Changing Times:
Diverse Classrooms Challenge New Teachers' Skills

The third and final installment of our "Lessons Learned"
reports on new teachers finds two specific areas in which
teacher training may be lacking: preparedness for
the diversity of the contemporary American classroom
and teaching students with special needs.

Most new teachers (76 percent) said teaching an
ethnically diverse student body was covered in their
training, but only 39 percent said that training helps
them "a lot" in the classroom. In terms of effectiveness,
that puts this near the bottom of the list of subjects
the new teachers had studied. The survey covered 12
areas of teacher training ranging from direct instruction
to their study of history, philosophy and policy debates
in public education. No other factor examined in the
Public Agenda research showed nearly as great a gap
between how many received training in a given area
and new teachers' assessments of its effectiveness.

Many new teachers also reported inadequacies in training
they received for teaching children with special needs.
Most new teachers (82 percent) say their training had
indeed covered this, but far fewer (47 percent) say their
training helped them "a lot."

This is a particularly important area, the report notes,
because nearly every new teacher reported having at least
some children with special needs in their classroom. Only
5 percent reported having no students with special needs.

To download the report, visit:
http://www.publicagenda.org/lessonslearned3/

-- 
Bill Howe
Asian Pacific American Coalition (APAC) - http://apaact.com/

13th Annual New England Conference on Multicultural Education (NECME)
October 8, 2008, Connecticut Convention Center - Hartford, Connecticut
http://www.necme.org