Vladimir T. Khmelkov

Recent Developments in Teacher Education in the United States of America.

Two national reports published in 1986 marked the beginning of teacher education reform in the United States of America. Both of these reports proposed a twofold approach to teacher education reform: first, to enrich the professional education of teachers by eliminating undergraduate teacher certification programs and requiring graduate level training; and second, to change the structure of the teaching profession by replacing the existing undifferentiated system in which all teachers have the same rank with a two-tiered system in which lead teachers or career professionals would assume higher level responsibilities and receive higher salaries than regular teachers. A ten-year follow-up report identified some progress toward these goals of teacher education reform but criticised schools of education for not making greater efforts to connect their educational programs to elementary and secondary schools. The report argued specifically for professional development schools to link university schools of education to school systems. Most of the recent efforts to reform teacher education have adopted this approach. A particular focus has been the preparation of new and experienced teachers to educate an increasingly diverse student population.

The Power of Character: Needed for, and Developed from, Teaching and Learning

In this chapter, the authors describe what they call the Smart & Good Schools model of character education, which focuses on performance character and moral character in a way designed to contribute to personal integrity. The Smart & Good Schools approach seeks to maximize the power of moral and performance character by viewing character as needed for and potentially developed from every act of teaching and learning. Character education thus conceived stands at the very center of schooling; it is not conducted as an ancillary or even parallel sequence with academic instruction, but rather in and through the teaching and learning process.

Character development and self-esteem: Psychological foundations and educational implications

Abstract Character refers to the specifically moral dimension of the self. The formation of character involves a self-evaluation process in which individuals compare their description of themselves as they are (Real Self) with their descriptions of themselves as they would like to become (Ideal Self) and as they fear becoming (Dreaded Self). In a cross-sectional study of children and adolescents from the ages of 6 to 16, these self-descriptions were found to have a common structure and were related to age. About half of these descriptions have at least some moral content. Although the correlation between self-esteem and developmental level was not statistically significant, individuals at the higher levels were more likely to be self-critical about their moral behavior. Being self-critical in turn increased the likelihood of having a somewhat lower self-esteem.