Assoc. Prof. (Teaching) Ira Lit
By Amy Yuen
Professional education programs must be strengthened so that educators are
equipped to address children's development needs, according to Associate
Professor (Teaching) Ira Lit, who co-authored a new
paper commissioned by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher
Education (NCATE).
"Teachers need not—indeed, cannot—know everything that specialists do
in all the fields of intellectual and professional activity relevant to
teaching," write Lit and co-author John Snyder, dean of the Bank Street
College of Education. "Still, in the same way
that effective teachers must have a solid grounding in the relevant academic
disciplines in which they instruct in order to be successful, they must also
thoroughly understand the field of child and adolescent development as it
pertains to the teaching profession, and they must expertly apply that
understanding to the ever-changing and particularistic world of students in
classrooms, schools, and communities."
In the paper, the co-authors focus on how professional education programs can help
educators acquire and apply knowledge about child and adolescent development. They discuss how such programs can be designed to help educators create successful
classroom and school environments, offer examples from actual educator
preparation programs, and provide policy recommendations for such
programs and accrediting bodies.
Principles and Exemplars for Integrating Developmental
Sciences Knowledge into Educator Preparation, is one of two papers produced by a
national panel of experts convened by NCATE with the support of the Foundation
for Child Development. The panelists, including Stanford Education Professor
Linda Darling-Hammond, also released the new report, The
Road Less Traveled: How the Developmental Sciences Can Prepare Educators to
Improve Student Achievement.
Visit NCATE
for the complete paper, as well as the panel report.