Adequate Preparation for the Teacher of Biological Sciences in Secondary SchoolsMcDonald, J. Daley (James Daley)
Science
Adequate Preparation for the Teacher of Biological Sciences in Secondary Schools
McDonald, J. Daley (James Daley)
Teachers -- Training of
Duplication of teachers' courses in special methods would be
eliminated for a single course for all of the departments of
biological science would be sufficient. Biology is the hub, and not
the separate biological sciences, in the courses in this field in the
secondary schools. The methods concerned are _biological methods_,
and therefore a single course for all prospective teachers of
biological science regardless of the nature of their major work, is a
logical procedure. Whether such a course is a success or a failure is
largely dependent on the professor in charge. In the past there have
been many failures, mainly because the person conducting it has never
had secondary school experience, knows little or nothing of the
problems, and has no sincere enthusiasm for the teaching of science to
boys and girls below the university age.
The course suggested would cover an entire year. At least that much
time is required to give any direction or instruction that is worth
while. The first half of the year might well be devoted to a digestion
and correlation of all previous work, organizing it into a form easily
useable in the work to follow. Questions of method, recitation,
laboratory and field work, textbooks and reference books purchase and
use of equipment, must be given consideration in some part of the
course. An outline course, with the separate lessons that make it up
should be worked out in detail, for some particular locality,
preferably the one where practice teaching is to be done. This should
then be carefully tested by the criteria of a good biology course, as
pointed out by the best authorities, and by _common sense_. But why
make this skeleton outline beforehand? Why be prepared in anything? It
will be too late to prepare at the moment the problem has to be met.
Few new teachers will find a well planned course awaiting their
arrival in a new field, and without previous experience a new teacher
is likely to build up a course without due respect to relative values
which comes only with a perspective of a course in its entirety. To
illustrate, in the course given by an inexperienced teacher there is
too much chance of six weeks time being spent on the study of the
grasshopper, with only four weeks left at the end of the school year
to be devoted to the biology of the human. The mapping of a course, by
way of practice, gives the prospective teacher practice in the
exercise of judgment, with helpful constructive criticism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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