The institutionalization of high school teacher education at the University of British Columbia

This thesis explores the early twentieth century beginnings of the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, when that university first accepted responsibility for the education of secondary teachers. The university's participation came in successive stages, beginning with summer school sessions, moving to a shared training responsibility for high school teachers with the Normal School, and eventually to total responsibility for the training of high school teachers. In addition to documenting the steps by which high school teacher training became established as a program of university studies, this study analyzes the academic, social and political forces that combined to create a perceived need for, and then to legitimize, the creation of a new university department. The University of British Columbia's acceptance of responsibility for this training was a culmination of a complex social interaction of three groups (including the state, the teachers, and university administrators and faculty) all of whose values were shaped by the newly dominant ideology of professionalism. Accordingly, fundamental assumptions about "appropriate" training for teachers were embedded in a social milieu where professionalization, bureaucratization, and gender issues were compelling forces. The perceived centrality of professionals in a increasingly technocratic society led to pressure being exerted from a number of quarters in British Columbia for the institutionalization of high school teacher training in an appropriately scientific arena - the university. This study focuses on the theoretical principles underlying the dialectic of ideological determinism and human agency, as well as the historical evidence of the way that one such ideology (professionalism) shaped the transition of social policy (high school teacher training). The study concludes by utilizing contemporary theoretical perspectives to discuss the premises which inform not only the ideology of professionalism but also any metanarrative which purports to identify the true way for training teachers and by expressing hope that, as the type of knowledge associated with social power shifts, those who establish any new framework for teacher education will not repeat the mistakes of the past.

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