Authors: David F. Labaree
ISBN-13: 9780300119787, ISBN-10: 030011978X
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Yale University Press
Date Published: September 2006
Edition: 1st Edition
David F. Labaree is professor in the School of Education at Stanford University. He is the author of How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education and The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838-1939, both published by Yale University Press.
American schools of education get little respect. They are portrayed as intellectual wastelands, as impractical and irrelevant, as the root cause of bad teaching and inadequate learning. In this book a sociologist and historian of education examines the historical developments and contemporary factors that have resulted in the unenviable status of ed schools, offering valuable insights into the problems of these beleaguered institutions.
David F. Labaree explains how the poor reputation of the ed school has had important repercussions, shaping the quality of its programs, its recruitment, and the public response to the knowledge it offers. He notes the special problems faced by ed schools as they prepare teachers and produce research and researchers. And he looks at the consequences of the ed school’s attachment to educational progressivism. Throughout these discussions, Labaree maintains an ambivalent position about education schoolsadmiring their dedication and critiquing their mediocrity, their romantic rhetoric, and their compliant attitudes.
1 | Introduction : the lowly status of the ed school | 1 |
2 | Teacher ed in the past : the roots of its lowly status | 17 |
3 | Teacher ed in the present : the peculiar problems of preparing teachers | 39 |
4 | The peculiar problems of doing educational research | 62 |
5 | The peculiar problems of preparing educational researchers | 83 |
6 | Status dilemmas of education professors | 109 |
7 | The ed school's romance with progressivism | 129 |
8 | The trouble with ed schools : little harm, little help | 170 |