Leslie R. Perry - 'Training'

8/13/2019 Leslie R. Perry - 'Training'

1/11

TRAINING

Leslie R Perry (England)

The problems and apparent contradictions analyzed in the followingarticle for the English situation will strike anyone connected with teachertraining as familiar phenomena. The solutions offered deserve attentionand experiment. The article by Professor Leslie R Perry, of the Universityof Warwick, is based on a paper read to the ATCDE Education Sectionin January 1969 and was published in Educat ion for Teaching in thesummer 1969 issue. It aroused such lively interest and discussion thatthe demand for the issue soon exceeded the available supply. We areglad to reprint this article-with the consent of the author and the journaleditor-for our readers consideration in the context of the internationalperspectives on common problems in teacher training.

Editor

For a long while, I have been puzzled about a problem ofteacher training. This problem does not have to do with theefficiency with which courses ar e car ried out, for staffs a r every conscientious. They ar e , however, responsible for origi-nating one s mystification, for they commonly expres s the viewthat many schools a r e unsuitable for teaching practice becausewhat the teachers a r e doing s not, in the opinion of College ofEducation staffs, what ought to be done. Often i t s added thata college even finds it wn ex-students working in such a waythat they would be quite unsuitable for supervising its presentones. The schools for their part a s often find such new teachers


2/11

Training 57unacceptable to them and they blame initial tr ai ne rs for theo-ret ica l and irrelevant work serving to obscure the problemsof teaching as much a s clarifying them.

This when we reflec t about it is a strange circumstance.On the one hand we may start from the assumption that coursesa r e carried out as efficiently a s possible. On the other itseems that the outcome of initial training is within not a verylong time a large amount of thoroughly bad teaching whichthe schools as rece iv ers of the product do not judge to bebad. Therefore if initial courses a r e efficient as the trainingstaffs say we ought to look closely for reasons why ther eshould be such a contrast between the way in which teach erscarry out their work and the way they did it a t the time ofleaving the College of Education. Many people will be readywith an answer to this problem. They will say that people f a l loff in performance the farther they get away from the stimu-lus of the College of Education. They will say that pupils de-generate by some s o r t of natural process and that trainingdoes not last forever and they will point to refresher coursesas a proof of this. And finally they will say that schools do notattempt to profit by the training that the new staff recrui t hasreceived; they either ignore it o r oppose it. And the schoolsa r e therefore blamed for an anti-initial state of affairs that isfound whereas they deny that any problem exists except inso-far a s students a r e not well trained in the first place.

Now I find myself quite unable to believe that these explana-tions account for what happens. Let us f ir st consider naturaldegeneration: it is clear that i f someone is trained as a short-hand typist she is able to work efficiently a s such for an in-definite time and similarly with ca r mechanics cabinetmakersgardeners foresters. f natural degeneration does not s e t inwith these people why does it with teachers? It may be an-swered that teaching is much more complex than any of theother occupations mentioned. In the case of teaching is initialtraining then necessa rily l e ss effective? If so why do we de-vote s o much time and such enormous expense to initial train-ing and even increase the length of i t? Surely we must be


3/11

158 Leslie R Perry (England)assuming it to be effective for a lengthy period and this inthe face of the evidence from College of Education staffs. Sothe arguments about natural degeneration and about falling-offwhen one is remote from initial training a r e open to doubt.Nobody knows ow long initial training is supposed to las t.Perhaps it is five years. But the complaints one he ar s coverex-pupils only th ree yea rs out from college. Perhaps we havenever faced up to how durable an initial training is. And thenthe argument about schools: a r e we to assume that schools a r ethe natural enemies of initial training and that they devotetime 2nd energy with their new recruits to nullifying initialtraining? Or is it that natural degeneration, remoteness fromthe initial training institution, and atti tude of the school com-bine to produce this r esu lt? Or perhaps the real problem isone that ar i ses from inadequate initial training, as schoolsfrequently ur ge? None of these things appear plausible to thepresent writer.

In attempting to explain this and to answer some of thesequestions, I want to st a r t from some apparently perverse a s -sumptions:

1 If someone is trained to do something, i t la st s indefinitelyi f practised, unless he is re tra ined in a different way of doingthat s am e thing.

2 If someone is not tra ined to do a specific part of a corn-lex job, e. g., teaching, he will not be able to do it, and so must

be trained by someone e lse (e.g., the school).Note. In the present st ate of t rans fer theory, I see no groundfor the la rge assumptions made in initial training about thepupil s power to t rans fe r knowledge and experience gained inthe course. Indeed, the amount of psychologically authenticatedtrans fer admitted seems to me to authorise our neglectingtransfer as a reliable ingredient of something s o complex a steacher training.

The validity of these two assumptions I will argue elsewhere,but it will be easily seen that they open up the possibility ofanother line of explanation than those offered above. According-ly, one may suggest the al ternative explanation that th er e ar e,


4/11

Training 59in fact, two initial training systems and not one. The fi rs t isthe one officially styled as initial training and conducted byColleges of Education. The second is the retraining offered bythe school to its new recruits . This second system is in noway organisationally related to the first apart from a few ex-periments scatte red over the country). It differs from the firstvery radically. Before going on to mention some of the leadingdifferences, however, I should like to meet an argument thatwill come against me at this point hat is, that anyone whostyles what the school does to it s new rec ru it a s a trainingsystem is simply a fool, because training can only go on wherean institution is organised to present it. To which I shall re-ply by a third assumption:

3 Training may go on anywhere and everywhere like lea rn -ing, where either somebody intends to train somebody el se o rel se somebody us es a situation to train himself.

This assumption is also argued elsewhere. If it is true,training is in no way confined to official arrangements, and itis no more possible to control the course of training in a totalsense than it is to di rect the clouds in autumn. In fact, init ialtraining relies partly upon self-training to supplement whatthe official training course omits.

Charac ter ist ic differences of school retraining from initialtraining a r e such as the following:

a) The constant presentation of a very la rge number of dif-ferent practical situations the initial training organisationonly takes a small and selective sample of these).

b) The res tric tion of verbal commentary and discussion toa minimum, often no more than chance conversation initiatedby the new teacher or a staff member sometimes a slightlymor e organised procedure exists).

c) Such verbal commentary as there is is never theoreticalgeneralisation but always related sharply to new situations.Sometimes a simple theoretical interpretation is attempted andthis is commonly traditional and anachronistic.

These last two adjectives ar e not necessarily meant pejora-tively. They a r e intended to describe a type of training which


5/11

160 Leslie R Perry (England)aims fo r the most par t to perpetuate a traditional system. Andsuch a training is not one in which topical knowledge, changingconceptions and current information should be used. It handson a way of acting in which ways of thinking about teaching a r esettled and routinised, and this can be very well done by atraining for the most par t non-verbal. It resembles, say, ca r-pentry. The pupil is trained by being present and learning anddoing at the sam e time. This s o r t of training does not envisagethe situation for which the new teacher s being trained a s achanging one but a stat ic one. And the training s particularlyadju~tedo the production of teachers conforming to the vers ionof the traditional view currently held in the particular schoolabout the work of a teacher. School retraining is the systemthat functions more efficiently in the long run than initial train-ing, because it faithfully and regularly produces la rge numbersof the type of teacher to which Colleges of Education object.(At leas t i f this s not universally the case, it is very often thecase.) The training is longer and more thorough than initialtraining in covering ll aspects of the teacher s life. Whereasinitial training attempts to pre se rve an open mind, school re-training is concerned to s ee that the new teacher subscribesto specific beliefs about teaching and it puts him or her undersocial pre ssure to accept the beliefs and attitudes that a r ecommon to the r es t of the staff. There appear to be few teach-e r s capable of res ist ing this pr es sur e and, consequently, theyopt for a version of teaching recommended by retraining ra th erthan by initial training.

No cr it ic ism of the new teachers s implied in all this. Theya r e placed in a position where they have to earn their livingand a r e subjected to the social press ure involved when one be-comes a member of a small and closed community. This pres -sure s towards conformity with the conditions prevailing inthat community, not least in the ways in which professionalwork is carr ied out. They a r e immature and inexperiencedand faced with a conflict: either to fight a lone battle for amethod learned in college but frequently disfavoured in theschool, o r to abandon the training just left and submit to new


6/11


7/11

162 Leslie R Perry England)they still manage to take an interest in new knowledge and tech-nique.

None of the foregoing wishes to ave rt attention from manyinstances of much more favourable situations and relat ionshipsand of very receptive schools. But the problem sketched aboveexists, we ll agree, and on a large scale.

To reiterate: The salient difference, then, between initialtraining and school retraining is that, whereas the initial sys-tem attempts to cultivate a self-crit ical appraisal of teaching,the school retraining, as said above, regards teaching a s astatic and routine situation for which permanent solutions inte rm s of teaching method a r e applicable. Like all largely non-verbal training situations, school retraining produces a viableand durable type of teacher. That many of us in the trainingworld object to the kind of teacher is a separate point. Whatthere is no doubt about is the success of school retraining inproducing the result . The price it pays, like the non-verbalforms of training, is to atrophy the capacity of the teacher tocritic ise himself, to appraise his mistakes and to develop asensitive response to differing experiences of the teachingsituation, and this is why school retraining is so universallycriticised. I have thought it necessary, however, to labour thisefficiency of school retraining, and to suggest that it is a verymuch more specific training procedure than is often thought,so that full justice might be done to the strength and thorough-ness of it. It follows, if this is so, that the reform o r reshapingof such a well-planned and formidably efficient institution isnot to be achieved in a situation where no procedure for com-munication, let alone thorough interaction, exists in a substan-tial form between the initial and the retraining activities.I have not dwelt upon the details of init ial training, which a r euniversally known to readers, and have taken for granted itsthoroughness and its efficiency. But the implication l ies in myargument that initial training is systematically nullified by thesucceeding unofficial system, and that i f initial training is aworthwhile undertaking, an educational waste of the ve ry firstorder and involving prodigious expense is thereby created.


8/11

Training 163Since I strongly believe that a great deal of very valuable workis done in the initial training years, I wish to consider, beforeleaving this matter , how such training might give us the har-vest which we should hope to see in education and whether thevery powerful and efficient school retraining system can bebrought into constructive relationship with it.

Efforts have been made to experiment with school-basedtraining and the like, out of a consciousness that the two as-pects of training, mentioned above, a r e largely out of com-munication. Rather than think in terms of isolated experiments,le t us place the problem of lack of communication in the cen treas the master-problem and point out that a discussion a s be-tween equals should ensue between the two sides on the train-ing of teachers. n this, theoretical expertise s found with theinitial training staffs and so s successful experience. n theside of the teaching li es cur rent experience, the fact that train-ing in teaching s not complete at the time a teacher beginsher car eer , and th ef ac t that a relation of the initial in-servicephase of teaching to the pre -service phase of t raining is es-sential i f an intelligible initial training policy s to be formed.This relationship wi l l never be made however without (a) aconcession that teacher retraining i s ser ious and thorough un-dertaking, which supplements and often replaces the pre-se rvi ce kind, and (b) an acknowledgment that it s markedlydeficient in its capacity to change with changing thought aboutthe ro le and duties of a teacher. Perhaps it s only when thetheoretical insights available at the College of Education a r ecombined with the practical thoroughness of the school experi-ence, in an initial course of training of five year s duration,of which the latt er two will consis t in a School-College follow-up in detail of the three-year pre-service phase, that we shallbegin to have a completely trained initiation into teaching, andmoreover a training closely related to the peculiar nature andqualities of a teacher s work.This discussion already takes u s into in-service training, i fschool retraining be regarded as pa rt of this. The third phaseof training s in-service training, properly s o called, which


9/11

164 Leslie R. Perry (England)begins, it seems, about five years after a teacher enters ser-vice. Why it should do so is another matter, for there is asense in which in-service training, and the necessity for morehelp, begins on the f i rs t day of teaching. We may assu me thati f the sequence is initial training, school retraining and self-training, then the capacity to continue one s training (self-training) becomes atrophied, owing to school retraining, forthe purpose of which an indefinite capacity to train oneself isnot necessary.

Now, in addition to the th ree assumptions made above, I sh llassume:

4) Teaching is a complex task, unlike a simple practicalskill in its training needs.

5 It is a task which is changing rapidly in conception, partlyowing to the accumulation of new and relevant expert knowl-edge, and partly owing to the rapid shift of value-judgmentsabout what constitutes good teaching.

Again, I am not concerned here to a rgue these assumptions,only a t th is point to s ta te them. Accordingly, it is an implica-tion of this view of the nature of teaching that any version oftraining based upon analogy to a practical skill is in great partinappropriate to what is required. The assumption that it iscomplex and rapidly changing, then, transforms thought aboutthe type of training needed. Here, the teaching emphasis isthat both the complexity and the changing nature of the taskrequire a vigorous training in the capacity to reflect upon andas ses s the resu lts of the training course, and to appra ise one-self of new thought and knowledge and to cultivate a sensitiveresponse t the changing conception of teaching.

This is thought, in te rm s of the present st ructure, to be an-swered by in-se rvice courses. Initial training, it is thought,does not las t, ideas change, the teacher must come out of s e r -vice and be retrained, and she has not had time or occasion toknow of new ideas and techniques in her own profession. Anda period of refreshment, i t seems, in the shape of 6-weekcourses, crash courses, supplementary courses, one-termcourses, summer residential conferences, one-year courses,


10/11

Trainingwill re-equip her and last her the r e s t of a professional life,o r most of it. This assumption s of course as uninvestigatedas some we have previously mentioned. While in-servicecourses do triumphantly cover the unlearning of years ofroutine solutions, whether they bring teachers permanentlyup-to-date is not known, although empirical evidence seems

favourable. Yet, i an intelligible system of teacher trainings to be found, such that i t s a coherent interrelated attempt

to train teachers so that they a r e flexible in response to changeand cu rr en t in their knowledge, then some relation of in-se rv ice training to the initial phases, and some attempt tounderstand when the initial phase should be superseded by thein-service phase and in what manner it should connect with it,is surely overdue. What we need s thought upon a system inwhich the two initial phases a r e closely knit and in which thein-serv ice phase takes over a t a time known to be the optimumfor the particular type of teaching concerned.

This ar ti cl e does not consider pract ical proposals. In theabsence of the several systematic enquiries necessary , noman can deal in mo re than untested supposition. One supposi-tion worth testing s that all training should be under one in-stitution, instead of the administrative congeries we now have,and that in teaching we ar e dealing with a practical ser ies ofta sks of such changing complexity that possibly, af ter an ini-tial pre -serv ice phase, thereafter a constant reciprocal move-ment of training and doing the job may be necessary, st re tch-ing through the school retraining phase and beyond, in whichit s conceived of as doing and learning about doing. Some-thing like this already exist s in commercial laborator ies, andfails to prevail in professions like medicine and law, where its probably necessary. In teaching, however, the matter s of

great urgency: reform does not involve perhaps the expendi-ture of a single additional penny piece, but rather a vast re-grouping of existing training agencies. One s tempted t o thinkthat, though the demands of teaching and the demands madeupon teache rs have radically al tered of l ate, the conception oftraining being used s anachronistic in important aspects; an


11/11

Leslie R. Perry England)attempt has been made to point out some of them here. Thetruth and/or falsi ty of what s said, however, depends upon theassumptions pointed to. The purpose of this art ic le s not tourge immediate action to deal with problems discussed, butrather to urge enquiry into the assumptions in or der to findout what sort of action would be appropriate.

Leslie R. Perry - 'Training'

Documents