US elementary schools need new teacher training system(24983)-英语教育-(43)-21英语网

本文作者： EDUCATION WEEK

　　据美国《教育周刊》报道，美国全国教师质量理事会近日发表的一份研究报告称，美国的许多教育学院没有对“准”英语教师进行足够的阅读教学训练，这是造成美国中小学学生英语阅读能力差的一个重要原因。

　　MOST of the colleges of education in the United States are doing an inadequate job of preparing aspiring elementary teachers for teaching children to read, a recent report by the US National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) concludes.

　　Teacher-education programmes across the US are failing to teach the five elements of effective reading instruction that research has proved are essential phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension, according to "What Education Schools Aren't Teaching About Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren't Learning," released by NCTQ.

　　The report's authors gathered information on required reading courses from a sample that was deemed representative of the nation's nearly 1,300 teacher-education programmes. They sifted through the syllabi, textbooks, and other required readings from those courses to gauge whether the five components were taught.

　　"Almost all of the 72 institutions in our sample earned a 'failing' grade," the report says. Only 11 per cent of the colleges reviewed taught all the components, while nearly one-fourth didn't appear to teach any of them. Those elements were identified as necessary for effective reading instruction in the 2000 report of the US National Reading Panel (NRP) and have been the driving force behind state and federal initiatives for raising student achievement ever since.

　　The Washington-based council should incorporate higher standards for teaching reading research into the certification process, and federal officials should mandate that reading teachers know the science of reading, said NCTQ President Kate Walsh, an author of the report.

　　Some experts in the US questioned whether the study's review of course syllabi and textbooks is a thorough enough method for reaching such harsh conclusions, but many agree that teacher education needs to incorporate more reading research into content.

　　"I have to agree with the overall thrust, that too often beginning teachers aren't being taught what they need to know about reading," said Timothy Shanahan, the president of the International Reading Association and a member of NRP. "Even if I changed the methodology of the study, I'd still come away with the conclusion that we aren't doing a good enough job of preparing reading teachers."

　　Many colleges of education have already begun reorganizing their reading courses to include more of the research on effective instruction, Shanahan said.

　　