Changes in Education employment

Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker suggests that predicting how good a teacher will be has nothing to do with their qualifications.

Research from Harvard educationalists suggest not only what we have always suspected - that you cannot tell how a teacher will perform until they are put in front of a class - but that the difference between a ‘good’ teacher and a ‘bad’ one is quite large. The former may only get through six months’ worth of classroom material in a year, while the latter can cover up to a year and a half’s worth of material in the same time. Ways of finding those who will perform better in the classroom are changing slightly in the United States, with ever increasing emphasis on close observation of videotaped lessons given by trainee teachers.

Gladwell suggests that the education departments could follow the finance industry in widening its sphere for possible teachers, then implementing a three to four year noviciate period where a teacher’s actual performance can be measured. While this will certainly result in less tenured appointments, it will open the field wider to those that may have been barred from entering due to lack of qualifications.