Learning: Teacher Education Promise and Problems

Eszterházy Károly Föiskola is an important source of teacher training in Hungary. And, as in many teacher training institutions in the USA, there are constant efforts to improve recruitment, training, and retention of teachers. Among these efforts is establishment of educational partnerships with schools, enabling high quality education for children, while providing timely, substantial, and mentored learning environments for teacher training candidates. An extremely rich example of a partnership can be found in the demonstration school we had the opportunity to visit last week.

We visited a classroom with friendly eight year olds, who had clearly been studying English for some time. We also attended a presentation by József Sándor, the energetic leader and school master of the school. He clearly described and delineated roles of administrators, experienced teachers, mentor teachers, teacher trainees, methodologists (specialists in pedagogy), and college (Föiskola) faculty in the shared responsibility for 'growing' teachers for the future.


We had heard about the 'Bologne' procedure, a new model of teacher training that emphasizes advanced preparation at the Master's level. He spoke of this process as well as the problem that teacher education units face in Hungary -- fewer candidates pursue teaching as a profession, and many who do pursue the teacher credential either do not practice, or drop out of the profession within a relatively short time period. Other problems common to education included funding shortages, problems with matching education to workforce needs, and the need for differentiated learning and adequate supply of specially trained educational personnel to work with a variety of learners.

These problems certainly sounded familiar to someone who teaches in the USA in a College of Education. The same themes, and some of the same solutions. I hope to spend more time in the schools, particularly in English language practice with children during this faculty exchange time. There is so much that is interesting in the full PowerPoint presentation by József Sándor, available at the link below.

Presentation by József Sándor, School Master of the Demonstration School, High School, and Elementary Art School of Eszterházy Károly College in Eger, Hungary. Posted for blog readers by permission.