Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond Speaks at Montclair State University
on Constructing 21st-Century Teacher Education
Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, Professor Emeritus from Stanford University, recently spoke at Montclair State University on October 24th on teacher education programs and preparing our teachers for the 21st Century classroom. Dr. Darling-Hammond is currently the president of the Learning Policy Institute, an education think tank, and previously served as a professor at Columbia University’s Teacher College.
Education, and the skills necessary to demonstrate success in the classroom, have taken a dramatic turn over the years. High quality teacher education programs have always been in demand in an effort to ensure our teachers are equipped to educate our children into productive, skilled, and engaging members of society. Teaching and learning today requires much more than recitation of facts. Rather, educators in the 21st Century must demonstrate an artful and skillful knowledge to ensure our students think deeply and critically whilst cultivating an environment of collaborative learning with a focus on deep content knowledge. “Three critical components of such programs include tight coherence and integration among courses and between coursework and clinical work in schools, extensive and intensely supervised clinical work integrated with course work using pedagogies that link theory and practice, and closer, proactive relationships with schools that serve diverse learners effectively and develop and model good teaching (Darling-Hammond, 2006).
Dr. Darling-Hammond recently completed a research project on teacher education programs, which included Montclair State University. As noted on the Montclair State University website, “[Dr. Darling-Hammond] has also served as the founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, whose 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching. In 2006, she was named one of the nation’s 10 most influential people affecting educational policy, and in 2008, was a member of President Obama’s education policy transition team.”
