Alternative teacher certification in Turkey : problems and issues

Abstract

Certification provides teachers with a status that protects them against unfair competition with unqualified teachers. At the same time certification aims to protect children in schools from inadequately prepared teachers. Certification requires a teacher to complete a specific coursework in major subject area and in pedagogy, and an internship in schools. Alternative certification mayor may not conform to these descriptions. Adelman (1986) describes alternative teacher certification as a route that enrols noncertified individuals with at least a bachelor's degree and offers a special program leading to eligibility for a standard teaching certificate. Roth (1989) refers to five characteristics of alternative certification programs (ACPs): (a) They allow an individual to teach before completing the preparation program, (b) they sometimes do not require an indi vidual to complete the preparation to achieve certification, (c) they accept nontraditional students, (d) they bypass traditional preparation programs through accelerated programs, (e) they are established mostly by state policy. The form of ACPs varies greatly in terms of their priorities, students they accept, courses they offer, the nature of collaboration with universities and schools. For example, there are ACPs that accept students with an undergraduate degree in a field other than education. Other programs give priority to bring experienced professionals into teaching. Still others offer individuals emergency certificates to put them in classroom right away without any training, and provide them with on-site support or supervision while taking pedagogical courses for full certification (Feistritzer, 1993). The purpose of ACPs may range from combating teacher shortage in specific subject areas to proposing alternative programs supposedly to train teachers better than regular teacher education programs. Some ACPs may be linked to school reform efforts where traditional teacher education programs (TEPs) are viewed as conservative in responding to the changing conditions of restructured schools (Corbin, 1992). Some ACPs allow more on-the-job training, such as mentoring and extensive classroom teaching experience, and might thereby be favored by policy makers who believe in the importance of experience in real settings. Opponents of ACPs, mainly teacher educators, argue that these programs intend to serve as a shortcut into teaching whereas proponents believe that ACPs reduce the teacher shortage, stimulate professionals into the teaching career, and prepare them through practice. Evaluation of the quality and effectiveness of ACPs is quite complicated since they may not be long-term and run regularly. Evaluation focusing on the content and process may indicate that these programs do not provide sufficient number of courses, credits and experience in comparison to regular TEPs. Such an evaluation may only produce prediction on the performance of the alternatively certified, and this may be insufficient to arrive at a judgment about the quality of these programs (Feistritzer, 1999). Several studies carried out on alternative route teachers (Grossman, 1989; Lenk, 1989; Mitchell, 1987, cited in Darling-Hammond, 1992) found that these teachers have difficulty with curriculum development, pedagogical content knowledge, attending to students' differing learning styles and levels, classroom management and student motivation. In addition they show more ignorance about students' needs and differences and about teaching basics than teachers trained through regular TEPs. Other studies (Barnes, Salmon & Wale, 1989; Dewalt & Ball, 1987, cited in Miller et at., 1998) showed that ACP teachers are not necessarily different from their counterparts trained through regular TEPs in the teaching and learning process they create. So it appears that the present research evidence on ACPs is inconclusive and somewhat contradictory, owing to the differing nature of these programs in terms of purpose, control, student selection, program content and process. Alternative certification in Turkey also presents variance in terms of emphasis, coursework and approaches, and its analysis is important in understanding how alternative routes in teacher education have responded to the demands brought by the changes in and critical needs of the society since the foundation of the Republic.