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Senior Lecturer Katherine Merseth's research and writing concentrate on school reform, charter schools, school leadership, teacher education, case-method instruction, mathematics education, and leadership. She was the principal investigator of the Mathematics Case Development Project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and co-principal investigator of the Teacher Education Addressing Mathematics and Science in Boston and Cambridge Project, also funded by the NSF. She founded the Teaching and Curriculum and Mid-Career Math & Science Programs at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is currently the director of Teacher Education Programs at HGSE. Q: You identify four locations in which teachers learn about teaching: classrooms, teacher education programs, student teaching, and during actual teaching. How does each place contribute to a teacher's ultimate success? A: While I talk about the four places, it's difficult to consider each one separately in terms of its specific contributions to a teacher's knowledge and success. In the classrooms, teachers learn through observation. They watch teachers teach, making judgments and setting opinions about how people do this task that you want to be able to do. You decide what works and what does not work. As a student yourself, you determine what is most helpful for students who are trying to learn. There's a lot of very powerful experiential learning that is not made explicit, but that is there to be tapped. The formal teacher education program courses should tap this possibility for learning.
Teacher education courses at the university level should make students aware of the world of research and knowledge that has been generated about teaching. If that were to be pulled out of the equation, learning would be entirely based on one's experience. You would be expected to use your own experiences to immediately teach as a student teacher and then as an experienced teacher. You need university work as a foundation in teacher education because, while teaching may be new to you, it's not new to the world. People have been teaching for many, many thousands of years, and there is a common element in all teaching, regardless of the learners. It's worth pausing and looking at the larger building blocks that constitute teaching as a profession. Student teaching allows you to learn about what it is like on the job. It's one thing to watch teaching as a student, but it's entirely different to reverse the roles and find yourself on the other side of the desk. Student teaching allows you to experience reflection in action. You are doing things, and you are thinking about why and how you choose to do what you do. This differs from experienced teaching because people who have just started teaching are very concerned with how they are seen and understood by their students. As they gain experience, they begin to consider the most effective ways to transfer knowledge to their students and to the curriculum. You build a repertoire of skills that ultimately allows you to consider what methods work best for which children. All of these aspects of teachers, when put together, are the experiences and the knowledge that eventually make us really good practitioners and teachers. Q: Do you have any suggestions for effective ways to make teaching attractive to people who are interested in giving to students but might not consider teaching without some sort of prompting? A: One of the most effective ways to attract people to teaching is to offer a menu of programs, so that we have a program for undergraduates who are interested in teaching, for recent college graduates who are considering teaching, for mid-career people looking for a change in profession, etc. Not only do we need to have different kinds of training programs for these different groups of people, we must also tailor the experience at the student-teaching site by placing people more thoughtfully into appropriate positions. We must acknowledge that a 45-year old needs a different program than a 22-year old, and also that site placement makes a really big difference in where we put teachers, and whom we put them with. Whereas the fundamental act of teaching is still the same act, the context in education—perhaps more so than in other professional fields—significantly impacts the experience of a student teacher.
A lot of very good, very talented people don't think of teaching as a viable career because they have an image of the teacher that's not terribly exciting. It is extremely important to recognize that teaching is great preparation for all sorts of things. If you're a young person, teaching can be a fabulous way of involving yourself with the school or with kids, if you're interested in social service or community service. Deciding to teach does not mean you have to do it forever. Q: How might urban schools, especially those that suffer from a lack of funding, give emphasis to the importance of true understanding and utilization of knowledge obtained during school hours? How can they achieve your definition of true literacy? A: For all students, whether urban, suburban, or rural, we really have an obligation as teachers to make it clear what the knowledge is good for. If we can't, as teachers, answer the questions, "Why am I teaching this? Why am I teaching it in this way?" then we probably shouldn't be teaching it. To say that taught information is necessary for the MCAS [Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System] test, or for the upcoming school year, is a really weak answer. Particularly in urban schools, where there exists the challenge of keeping children in school, teachers need to know why they choose the knowledge they teach. Learning for a standardized test will not inspire children to stay in school if they are already considering dropping out. The other thing that could make a big difference is the linking of future job prospects with the way you actually perform in schools. Some industries are doing this, but many do not. They ask about graduation from high school without considering grades and specific skills, for example, writing and critiquing an essay. Employers, when they are considering high-school graduates for jobs, could exert enormous pressure on student applicants, and their schools, by asking for a concrete demonstration of knowledge. We are teaching for a future that is defined by what will happen after graduation, rather than what will happen next year when students take the MCAS exam. Q: What do you see as some of the benefits of having recent graduates teach for three to five years before pursuing a different career (i.e., as a lawyer)? What will this specific population add to students' learning? A: There are at least two things that I offer to young people as a means of urging them to consider teaching for three to five years. First of all, teaching affords you an opportunity to understand to complexities of teaching and of schooling. Schooling is so ubiquitous, with between 52 and 55 million children in schools, and by getting involved in this profession, you will serve yourself well when you become a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, or an architect. A big part of our world, our society, and our democratic views is grounded in our notion of public education, and to have directly participated in it makes you better equipped to work as a doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. I think it also serves the rest of us very well because, after participating in education, you have a better understanding of its realities and of how to make decisions about it. People vote on school issues during every election, and they need to make important decisions about which schools to send their children to, and so forth. The more exposure to the profession or to the field, the better consumers we will be. Teaching is a real opportunity because it has so many different facets that can allow people to look at it in a very careful, thoughtful way, in order to learn and therefore be well-informed when they need to make decisions. For More Information
HGSE News, Harvard Graduate School of Education
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Kay Merseth profiles the students in HGSE's Mid-Career Math and Science Program (1 minute) 
