NCATE/TESOL Teacher Education Standards

The current NCATE/TESOL teacher education standards are prescriptive, impractical, foster an instrumentalist worldview, and as such as fundamentally flawed and endangering the quality of teacher education programs. As our students (teacher trainees and ESL/EFL students) seek better opportunities in life, they depend on our ability to provide them with quality instruction. What we need is an effective accreditation system relying on peer accreditation in an environment of mutual respect, accountability, and qualitative assessment methods.

Such qualitative assessment could take place through evaluation of narratives in which each domain as defined by NCATE/TESOL (language, culture, planning/implementing/managing instruction, assessment, and professionalism) would be addressed. Reviewers would be able to evaluate these texts based on criteria accepted in the academia (for instance, consistency, treatment of theory and empirical research, adequacy to local needs, and so on). This system would be based on professional evaluation methods such as peer review, self-assessment, and demonstration of knowledge of theory and research. This is the professional model of accreditation.

Unfortunately, instead of such professional model, TESOL focuses on expected candidate outcomes – the prescribed outcomes model. The professional model is ideal for the post-modern world in that it allows multiple approaches and solutions; a prescribed outcomes model promotes a homogeneous curricular mindset based on positivist philosophy and canonical knowledge and “best practices.â€