EdD and/or PhD: Perhaps I am Jealous

Yeah! What he said. My point that education is totally bonkers "wish I could use a levicoff word here". It needs to understand that it takes more than an education degree to be a teacher and some without an education degree could be an efficient and effective teacher. Thanks for the help. And the material by Brookfield - a fantastic read. I will look for some of the Conti materials.

 

Brookfield cites Conti in a couple of his books. Most of the conti stuff will be found in adult ed journals or as chapters in many of the adult ed books. He has over 150 publications. He also has chaired more than 60 succesful doctoral committees (Texas A&M, Montana State and most recently Oklahoma State)

 

Why aren't you considered qualified to teach at a HS level? You just have to take the Praxis and you can get am emergency credidential, then after the year, you have your "student teaching" complete. There are also a number of organizations that bring a loop hole to student teaching the first year.

 

Training Teachers

Gee, there is so much in this thread to respond to. Some good points, too.

First off, it is true a Ph.D. in anything is no doubt knowledgeable in an area but that does not guarantee they can communicate or motivate students to learn. Somebody made the point earlier about Ph.D.'s being the hardest to train to be teachers (somebody mentioned earlier about lecturing versus a constructivist “doing” approach… the constructivist approach works best every time and is hardest for the Ph.D. to master). In general, I would agree. Most of that comes with the attitude some bring that "they already are that and more."

The American primary and secondary public school system is pretty ridiculous when it comes to deciding who can and cannot teach, though. Right now, we have tons of people who know education “theory” coming out of their ears but have no content knowledge of their subjects! The current system is a form of union featherbedding in cahoots with these "schools of education" at universities. My experience is some of the WORST instructors I ever had in college were education professors. Tied for “worst” were communication professors. This is motivation for me since I have taught speech for years and have an Ed.S. in instructional technology!

As a former military instructor of trainers, I can tell you it is simply dumb to waste two or more years of a persons' life in meaningless "education" courses. I can take a subject matter expert and make him or her a pretty darn competent teacher a LOT quicker than that. No more than two three unit courses and a working internship. This is why I support alternative certification for primary and secondary faculty.

 

Re: Training Teachers

That suggests a related point, relevant to Californians at least.

As discussed in the '"Applied" Ed.D.' thread, the CSU is generally prohibited from offering doctoral degrees. But many of the CSU's got their start as teachers colleges and have huge education departments. They turn out the majority of the state's school teachers, and train a good percentage of the administrators. Many highly experienced people serve part-time as adjuncts.

But the education doctorates come from a separate set of schools (the UC's) which seem to take a more "scholarly" (read: ivory tower) approach to the subject.

I wonder if that tends to exacerbate the chasm between actual classroom practice on one hand, and weird "post-modern" educational theory on the other.

 

In Texas it's fairly easy for someone with a bachelor's degree to get certified for teaching in secondary schools. For example, Southwest Texas State University has a 15 credit online certification program, consisting of 4 online graduate courses plus an internship. All 15 credits can then be applied toward an M.Ed. if the student wants to continue.

Here's a good quote related to this topic: