It struck me as pretty ironic last week that even with Wisconsin?s new looser, alternative path to a teacher?s license, public school teachers probably are more likely to know what they?re doing than the public university teachers many students will get just a couple of years later. Such is the way of the American education system, where K-12 teachers must have years of training and meet multiple state licensing requirements, but the teaching assistants responsible for handling much of the introductory course material in college can know next to squat about teaching. The discrepancy didn?t seem odd to Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell, UW-Madison School of Education associate dean for teacher education, but then, “it?s a system I grew up in. Is it best practice? I doubt it,” she said.
Office of Strategic Communication