How should trainers learn to be trainers. How should teachers be trained. Here’s a little snip of a conversation about the topic.
Someone wrote:
> I’m sure someone is going to flame me for this, but hey, we’ve got to keep
> life exciting, right!
>
> I must agree with Don. While most certainly there are many differences
> between school “teaching” and business “training”, I believe that one of
> the greatest failures of the American educational system has been its
> misguided attempts to elevate and justify the teaching profession by
> making entry into it somehow equivalent to preparing for other professions
> such as law and medicine. I have taken many graduate level education
> courses, and for the most part they were entirely irrelevant to the actual
> business of teaching.
I won’t flame you. I will suggest that you are wrong, and explain why. First, my original area of academic work was in teacher effectiveness and teacher training. I trained teachers at high school level all the way
up to university.
In fact, the problem is the opposite of what you suggest. You are absolutely correct that education courses are woefully inadequate and tend to be disconnected from the business of teaching. Why? Because
historically, teacher education came from EXACTLY the perspective you advocate…that it takes almost no specific knowledge to teach, that it’s so lacking in skill requirements that we historically paid
teachers almost nothing, making it a “place for women” (sorry, but that’s the historical truth of it).
There is a huge body of knowledge that is and can be useful to teachers, but we haven’t generally taught it to them. Hence the appearance that subject matter, and passion were enough. They aren’t except for “born teachers”.
>
> As far as I’m concerned, great teaching and great training have mostly to
> do with 1) having mastery of the subject, 2) having a passion for the
> subject, and 3) repeat steps 1 and 2. I would imagine Don would say that
> his mother loved to cook and had been doing it for a long time; ditto his
> grandfather and carpentry. It doesn’t take years to become a good
> trainer, but it may take years to master the skill or body of knowledge
> one is teaching.
Some people can train without any training at all. And do it well. Same with teaching. Just like some children can play violin at three years of age, but I’m sure we wouldn’t advocate eliminating music lessons for the rest.
The reason, I think people believe what Mirian wrote is that simply, they haven’t had the opportunity or lack the interest in exploring the underpinnings of learning and teaching, both in theory and in practice.
There is such a strong anti-intellectual bias in our field that it’s no wonder that trainers and training departments are seen as superfluous and the first to be chopped. And if what Miriam has said is true, I
guess we deserve the reputation of being soft.
