Structural Alternatives

Recent proposals to locate preservice teacher education exclusively or at least partly at the postbachelor’s level are not necessarily new. Their precedents date back at least as far as the opening years of the twentieth century. The reform thrust of the early 1900s, it will be recalled, was to establish teachers’ colleges and to create training units fully coordinate with other academic departments in existing colleges. More important still was the movement to elevate normal departments within universities and place them on the same footing as other constituent departments, schools, and colleges. Among leading reformers were many who sought to emphasize university-based postgraduate instruction for an elite class of educational leaders. Also, the idea that preservice teacher preparatory programs likewise should be located at the graduate level was sometimes advanced. Only after completing a bachelor’s degree, some claimed, should candidates be admitted to a course of specialized training leading to initial licensure.