4 ms·

Out of curiosity, what was the transition from field work to teaching like? I always hated school (the school bits, I liked the socializing) and thought I might

Out of curiosity, what was the transition from field work to teaching like? I always hated school (the school bits, I liked the socializing) and thought I might like to be a teacher one day for that reason. I have no idea what transitioning would even look like though, it's entirely foreign to me.

mlyle 4y ago
It was an accidental process. I was volunteering running after-school robotics teams and my role steadily increased over a number of years. If you want to do this at a public school, you're going to need to go get a specialized master's degree and teaching credential. Of course, there's some value in what's taught in these programs (pedagogy, classroom management, practical experience, etc). I've studied rather intensely on my own.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Interestingly, none of the college professors I had had any education whatsoever in teaching. Neither did my dad, who was a professor for 20 years. They just knew the material. Feynman, perhaps the greatest physics teacher ever, had 0 teaching credentials. I attended one of his lectures long ago, a privilege I didn't realize until much later.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    This works pretty well in an environment of highly motivated university students. But there are reasons why we expect teachers to be educated on how to teach in general. I highly respect you, and we seem to talk here a lot. But you have this habit of holding up various edge cases that don't quite directly relate to what we're talking about as "gotchas". I have 0 teaching credentials, too, and think I'm pretty great. The current systems we have for younger students require teaching credentials, and there's some good reasons to require some education-in-education before letting someone teach kids.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      There’s no evidence teaching degrees make people better teachers. ::: It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness Neither holding a college major in education nor acquiring a master's degree is correlated with elementary and middle school teaching effectiveness, regardless of the university at which the degree was earned. Teachers generally do become more effective with a few years of teaching experience, but we also find evidence that teachers may become less effective with experience, particularly later in their careers. These and other findings with respect to the correlates of teacher effectiveness are obtained from estimations using value-added models that control for student characteristics as well as school and (where appropriate teacher) fixed effects in order to measure teacher effectiveness in reading and math for Florida students in fourth through eighth grades for eight school years, 2001–2002 through 2008–2009. Research highlights ▶ Majoring in education is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ University attended for college is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Acquiring a master's degree is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Teachers become more effective with a few years of teaching experience. ▶ Teachers may become less effective later in their careers. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775710001755 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...
      - mlyle 4y ago
        I've already read this research. The problem is that there's massive selection biases at work. It doesn't mean taking more people without teaching credentials results in an equal or greater quality of education. e.g. I am a high school dropout who's doing pretty-damn-well at teaching. I do not think this means we need more high school dropouts teaching, though. I've learned a whole lot reading the pedagogy literature and reading about the kinds of strategies that credentialed teachers are required to learn during their practicum and student teaching. It's difficult to imagine that these courses of study are not useful. (The research does probably mean that programs intended to incentivize existing teachers to get graduate degrees are probably flawed, except for some special cases in e.g. secondary math education)
        4y ago
- staticassertion 4y ago
  Hm, yeah so a problem would be that I have no degree, nor any desire to attain one.

mlyle 4y ago

It was an accidental process. I was volunteering running after-school robotics teams and my role steadily increased over a number of years. If you want to do this at a public school, you're going to need to go get a specialized master's degree and teaching credential. Of course, there's some value in what's taught in these programs (pedagogy, classroom management, practical experience, etc). I've studied rather intensely on my own.

WalterBright 4y ago
Interestingly, none of the college professors I had had any education whatsoever in teaching. Neither did my dad, who was a professor for 20 years. They just knew the material. Feynman, perhaps the greatest physics teacher ever, had 0 teaching credentials. I attended one of his lectures long ago, a privilege I didn't realize until much later.
- mlyle 4y ago
  This works pretty well in an environment of highly motivated university students. But there are reasons why we expect teachers to be educated on how to teach in general. I highly respect you, and we seem to talk here a lot. But you have this habit of holding up various edge cases that don't quite directly relate to what we're talking about as "gotchas". I have 0 teaching credentials, too, and think I'm pretty great. The current systems we have for younger students require teaching credentials, and there's some good reasons to require some education-in-education before letting someone teach kids.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    There’s no evidence teaching degrees make people better teachers. ::: It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness Neither holding a college major in education nor acquiring a master's degree is correlated with elementary and middle school teaching effectiveness, regardless of the university at which the degree was earned. Teachers generally do become more effective with a few years of teaching experience, but we also find evidence that teachers may become less effective with experience, particularly later in their careers. These and other findings with respect to the correlates of teacher effectiveness are obtained from estimations using value-added models that control for student characteristics as well as school and (where appropriate teacher) fixed effects in order to measure teacher effectiveness in reading and math for Florida students in fourth through eighth grades for eight school years, 2001–2002 through 2008–2009. Research highlights ▶ Majoring in education is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ University attended for college is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Acquiring a master's degree is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Teachers become more effective with a few years of teaching experience. ▶ Teachers may become less effective later in their careers. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775710001755 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...
    - mlyle 4y ago
      I've already read this research. The problem is that there's massive selection biases at work. It doesn't mean taking more people without teaching credentials results in an equal or greater quality of education. e.g. I am a high school dropout who's doing pretty-damn-well at teaching. I do not think this means we need more high school dropouts teaching, though. I've learned a whole lot reading the pedagogy literature and reading about the kinds of strategies that credentialed teachers are required to learn during their practicum and student teaching. It's difficult to imagine that these courses of study are not useful. (The research does probably mean that programs intended to incentivize existing teachers to get graduate degrees are probably flawed, except for some special cases in e.g. secondary math education)
      - 4y ago
staticassertion 4y ago
Hm, yeah so a problem would be that I have no degree, nor any desire to attain one.