DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS
This research assesses teachers’ initial training in the French-speaking community of Belgium and is meant to be used as a base for an ongoing reform of teachers’ training. Among other things, it enumerates its main problems today: it is little efficient, the pupils’ level is below the European average, and it fails to reduce inequalities between the students (regarding their skills, background, gender…) but also between the several education system (hierarchy between courses of studies, use of doubling…). There are two main objectives: unifying teaching practices and promoting success through the acquisition of certain skills; better training teachers to make the reform concrete (notably so that the future teachers implement the skills approach). Thirteen skills have also been defined for teachers’ training:
- use knowledge in social studies to interpret correctly the situations in class in order to better adapt to the school audience;
- work efficiently with the institution, the colleagues and the parents;
- keep informed about one’s role in the institution and the work as it is defined in legal texts;
- master the (inter)disciplinary knowledge
- master the disciplinary didactics;
- have an important general knowledge to raise students’ interest;
- develop relational skills;
- be aware of the ethical stakes;
- work in team;
- create, test, assess and regulate teaching devices;
- have a critical and autonomous relation to scientific knowledge
- plan, manage and assess learning situations;
- have a reflexive point of view on one’s practice and organize one’s continuing training.
The report describes the evolution of initial training and its various forms: the type of training, the number of years (3 years, 5 for a master), the type of school (normal schools, universities) where it is done all depend on the level of education the future teacher will work in. The training of teacher trainers is also explained as well as the various forms of continuing training.
There is a shortage of teachers, which might be explained by the many problems addressed in the reports.
One of the most important is the disparity between the theory and practice, between what the future teachers learn and the reality in the classroom. The internship is supposed to prepare the future teachers but many students drop after it and the trainers consider that there are too few periods of internship. The fact that the intern is assisted also makes things different from the teacher’s real work. This results in teachers who are insufficiently prepared. Many new teachers consider that the initial training has not taught them anything about the way school works, which includes relations with colleagues and the authorities, legal constraints, work conditions. Also, pedagogic theories are not applicable, new teachers feel they lack legitimacy and support from their new colleagues, teaching does not correspond to their ideal… Many various skills should be added to the initial training in order to better prepare teachers. It was therefore suggested to extend the length of the training from three to five years, and thus harmonize them with the master and the other European countries, a controversial aspect of the reform. Another point that should be addressed is the training of teacher trainers. Students have indeed pointed out that their trainers lack field experience and consider this as one cause for the difficulty to put theory into practice. A suggested idea is to encourage school teachers to become teacher trainers at the end of their career, or to take a sabbatical year to do it (as it is done in Canada).
REVIEWER’S COMMENTS ON THE PUBLICATION
This massive research assesses teachers’ initial training in the French-speaking community of Belgium and is meant to be used as a base for an ongoing reform of teachers’ training. It first describes the Belgian education system and its evolution since 1831 and contains a lot more information, but our main concern here is the long and detailed description of teachers’ training in French-speaking Belgium, its flaws and the problems new teachers encounter when they start working. It is based on interviews with school actors (new teachers, teacher trainers, internship supervisors…). It is not specifically dedicated to chemistry or even science teaching, but these will be concerned by the reform too and some of the problems of chemistry teaching are those of teaching itself: the difficulty to motivate students, the difference between theory and practice, the discrepancy between the academic knowledge and content of the students’ curriculum.
