EDUC 1301 – Introduction to the Teaching Profession
STUDENT NAME __________________________________________
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EDUC 1301
Introduction to the Teaching Profession
CHAPTER PREVIEWS
CHAPTER 1
This chapter looks at classroom life through the teacher's eyes. You may be thinking: I have
spent years in a classroom, watching teachers and what they do. If there is one thing I know, it
is teachers and teaching! But during your years in the classroom, you have looked at teaching
through “student-colored glasses,” a unique but somewhat distorted view, like looking through a
telescope from the lens that makes everything tiny instead of large. In this chapter, we will view
the classroom from the teacher's side of the desk, a very different way of looking at school.
Some of you are taking this course because you want to learn more about schools and
teaching. This text will answer many of your questions and offer useful information. We know
that many of you taking this course are considering a major decision: Do I want to be a teacher?
This first chapter is especially designed to help you answer that question.
The chapter is also about “us.” Yes, us. We are now a team, this textbook, the authors, and you.
When your authors were students, we did not much like our textbooks. They were far from
exciting to read. By extension, we feared that we might not like teaching. In the end, we loved
teaching—but still hated our textbooks. We want this textbook to be different—to be not only
informative but also enjoyable. This first chapter offers us the opportunity to introduce the
textbook and, in a sense, to introduce ourselves.
CHAPTER 2
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, basic educational concepts are being redefined,
reexamined, and expanded. What does “intelligence” really mean? How many kinds of
intelligences are there? What is EQ (emotional intelligence quotient), and is it a better predictor
of success than IQ (intelligence quotient)? How should classrooms best be organized to meet
the needs of different learning styles?
Gender issues are an issue in schools as some argue that girls’ and boys’ learning differences
create the need for separate schools. Are single-sex schools a good idea? Do girls and boys
learn differently? We want you to begin thinking about how teachers can recognize differences
in learning styles while avoiding the dangers of stereotypic thinking, and the current gender
debate is a good place to begin.
Another educational transformation is the increasing numbers of schoolchildren now identified
as learners with exceptionalities—students with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, mental
retardation, and emotional disturbances— all of whom deserve appropriate educational
EDUC 1301 – Introduction to the Teaching Profession
10-12-2012
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EDUC 1301 – Introduction to the Teaching Profession
Page 1 of 3
STUDENT NAME __________________________________________
DATE _________________
strategies and materials. Students with gifts and talents represent another population with
special needs too often lost in the current educational system.
CHAPTER 3
America has just experienced the greatest immigration surge in its history. In the past few
decades, newly minted Americans have arrived mainly from Latin America and Asia, but also
from the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Today, about one in ten
Americans is foreign-born, and the native language of well over 35 million Americans is a
language other than English. By 2023, half of all school children will be minorities (Hispanic,
black, native, and Asian American). These demographics create a remarkable and formidable
challenge for the nation's schools. Some advocate a multicultural approach to education that
recognizes and incorporates this growing student diversity into teaching and the curriculum.
Others fret that disassembling our Eurocentric curriculum and traditional approaches to
education may harm our American culture. For many teachers, the struggle is to teach students
with backgrounds different from their own. How to best do this is a tough question, and one that
this chapter addresses directly not only with breathtaking information and some astute (we
hope) insights but with practical suggestions as well.
CHAPTER 4
School is a culture. Like most cultures, it is filled with its own unique rituals and traditions, and
its own set of norms and mores. In school, even the familiar, such as time, is made new. Time is
told by subjects (“Let’s talk before math”) or periods (“I’m going home after seventh period”).
Students are pinched into passive roles, following schedules created by others, sitting still rather
than being active, and responding to teacher questions but seldom asking any of their own.
Such a system challenges and confines both teachers and students. Peer groups create
friendships and popularity, a strong subculture that makes winners and losers of us all—at least
for a brief time. Adults pick up where children leave off, assigning students to what amounts to
an academic caste system through de facto tracking or ability grouping. While adults focus on
academics, many adolescents and preadolescents are focused on relationships and sexuality.
Economic and social factors are also powerful forces in today’s classrooms, and have reshaped
the family unit. New family patterns abound, challenging the traditional view of the mother,
father, and two children (did we forget the dog?) as the “typical” American family. With these
changes, economic and social problems threaten our children and challenge teachers. We will
describe these challenges so that educators can work to create schools that are safe havens
and institutions of hope.
CHAPTER 5
Although most of us take school for granted, the proper role of this institution continues to evoke
heated debate. Are schools to prepare students for college, for a vocation, or to achieve high
scores on standardized tests? Should schools help students develop good interpersonal
relationships, patriotism, simply adjust to society or more ambitiously change and improve
society?
EDUC 1301 – Introduction to the Teaching Profession
10-12-2012
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EDUC 1301 – Introduction to the Teaching Profession
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STUDENT NAME __________________________________________
DATE _________________
In this chapter, you will have the opportunity to examine the major purposes assigned to schools
and some of the major criticisms that have been leveled at them. The recent emphasis on
standards and tests once again raises the crucial question: What’s a school for? Some believe
that poor test scores mean that America’s schools are failing, and reform efforts have led to the
creation of new schools, quite different from the old neighborhood school that you may have
attended. The creation of virtual schools that teach via the Internet has made even a physical
school building unnecessary. Some concerned parents are giving up on schools entirely,
choosing to educate their children at home. The call for educational reform is not new, but today
it is a national issue. Defining the place and the purpose of schools has never been more
challenging. And sorting out what makes one school effective and another ineffective broadens
the question from what is a school for to what does it take to make a school work well? As we
close this chapter, we will look at the factors associated with effective schools.
CHAPTER 6
“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us,” said Winston Churchill. Had
the noted statesman been a noted educator, he might have rephrased this epigram, substituting
curriculum for buildings, for what children learn in school today will affect the kind of adults they
will become and the kind of society they will eventually create. In fact, it is the power of
curriculum to shape students, and ultimately society, that takes curriculum development out of
the realms of philosophy and education and into the political arena. Children learn through the
formal curriculum, made up of objectives and textbook assignments, and through the more
subtle lessons of the hidden, null, and extracurriculum. This chapter will provide a brief overview
of what has been taught, and how curricular decisions are reached.
Several trends are pushing schools toward a similar curriculum: the indomitable textbook, the
Internet, and the recent emphasis on state standards and testing. Protests (perhaps better titled
“antitests”) have been growing against the increasing influence of standardized tests in general,
and No Child Left Behind in particular. The benefits of standards and the many problems with
high-stakes tests are explored in this chapter, as are more positive and creative ways of looking
at curriculum and testing.
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