Teacher Education

Teacher Training, education and preparation of individuals enabling them to become professional teachers. Although anyone aiding another individual to learn is in a sense a teacher, special skills and abilities are necessary to succeed in the teaching profession.

Ancient and medieval societies lacked institutions offering instruction in the principles and practices of teaching. Those intending to become teachers were required only to demonstrate a knowledge of the subjects they desired to teach. During the Renaissance, some teachers such as Vittorino da Feltre in Italy, Johannes Sturm in Germany, and John Colet in England gained wide recognition for their learning and ability to teach, but the training of teachers was given little attention. It was not until the rise of democratic principles during the 17th and 18th centuries, with their assertion that the political, social, and economic development of nations could best be achieved through the education of the individual citizen, that measures were taken to establish institutions to provide teacher training.

The earliest-known educational institution to offer a systematic programme of teacher training was the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, which was established in 1685 at Reims, France, by the French priest St John Baptist de la Salle. In the 18th century other such institutions were begun in France and Germany. A government-sponsored school established in France in 1794 was the first to follow the principles of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau believed that educators should concern themselves primarily with the mental and physical development of their pupils and only secondarily with subject matter. This principle was later adopted in a number of teacher-training schools throughout the world. One important educator who applied and developed the pedagogical theories of Rousseau was the late 18th-century Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.

An important advance in teacher-training theories and methods was made in Prussia early in the 19th century with the application of the views of the educator Johann Friedrich Herbart. He stressed the study of the psychological processes of learning as a means of devising educational programmes based on the aptitudes, abilities, and interests of students. Important contributions were made to teaching theory in the 20th century by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget and the American psychologist Jerome Bruner.