Showing papers by "Pam Grossman published in 1994"

Chapter 4: Considerations of Content and the Circumstances of Secondary School Teaching:

Abstract: The landscape of teaching, learning, and teacher education is changing. Once, teachers majored in elementary or secondary education. Today, most states require that all teachers, elementary and secondary alike, major in an academic subject. Once, mastery of basic skills was considered sufficient education for most students. Society expected only a small percentage of students to finish high school or to attend college. Today, we expect all students to complete high school, and most high school graduates enroll in postsecondary education. Furthermore, students are expected to develop more sophisticated understandings of subject matter to prepare themselves for a changing and increasingly technological society. Once, few teachers questioned the isolation in which they worked. Today, demands for various forms of collaboration have increased, whether the purpose of such collaboration is to meet the needs of students with learning disabilities, to plan interdisciplinary curriculum, or to support teachers in improving practice. Landscapes change slowly, however, barring the occurrence of cataclysmic events. Although publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) sent a jolt throughout education and the subsequent reports on high school (Boyer, 1983; Powell, Farrar, & Cohen, 1985; Sizer, 1984) and on teacher preparation (Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, 1986; Holmes Group, 1986) created waves of aftershocks, expectations for high schools have changed more dramatically than their realities. The gap between changing expectations and unchanging realities reflects, in part, the complexity of schooling. In order for reforms to take root sufficiently to alter