THE JAPANESE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
Online ISSN : 2187-5278
Print ISSN : 0387-3161
ISSN-L : 0387-3161
Teacher Education in the United States in 19th Century : A Case Study of the Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Emma Willard at Troy Female Seminary
Aki Sakuma
Author information
JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

2000 Volume 67 Issue 3 Pages 333-343

Details
Abstract

In this paper, Emma Willard's posture as a teacher is clarified as well as the actuality of her teacher education, with their meaning examined, by focussing on Troy Female Seminary founded by her in the early 19th century. Troy Female Seminary has been the object of inquiry in the context of female education. However, neither the accomplishment of Willard as a teacher educator nor her pedagogy at the Seminary has been reviewed in the U.S.or in Japan, so that thses areas remain to be studied. Therefore, this case study rewrites the conventional understanding of the U.S history of teacher education in five points as follows. First of all, in the historical studies of American teacher education, it was traditionally said to be established for the first time by state normal schools in the 1830's. In actuality, however, Willard had already created the organs of teacher education and the pedagogy in the 1810's. Indeed, it was the theory developed at the Seminary that provided the logical ground for the establishment of the state normal schools. Second, prior researches explained that the U.S.professionalization movement for teacher education was motivated by rapid increase in demand for teachers for the Common School Movement. However, the case study on Willard indicates that the logic of teacher professionalism and teacher training had already been presented before the increase in the demand. In America, the professionalism emerged, not from the social needs for teacher education, but from the efforts of females who were trying to attain economic independence and expansion of educational opportunities and who were in need of the professionalism of teachers for the purpose of creating a demand for their own services. Third, this case study elucidated that the teacher preparation in the U.S.began as women's higher education. It accounts for the phenomenon in which most students of the State Normal Schools were women. In addition, it enabled a conventionally neglected relationship to be clarified, a relationship between teacher education and women's education, particularly between the low social status of teachers and that of women.Willard made a great success in the tactics of claiming female suitability for teaching profession on the basis of femininity under the then prevailing gender precepts. However, her logic had the unintended consequence of low wages and low social status of teaching profession, prejudiced gender comparison, ranking difference from male managerial jobs, etc. Fourth, the history of teacher education conventionally described conflict between the group of academies thinking much of teacher's scholarly attainment and the group of the State Normal Schools emphasizing teacher's preparatory education. In the subject case study, however, a curriculum integrating the two groups had been created. The curriculum at the Troy Female Seminary was equivalent to that of a college for men though Willard avoided calling it a college for tactical reasons avoiding repulsion from the society. This discovery suggests that"the third trend"existed about 80 years before Dewey, which is worthy of note. Fifth and finally, this case study revealed that Willard and other leaders at Troy Female Seminary had developed as early as the 1820's, unique text books and teacher education methods in which a number of illustrations were used for the purpose of promoting visual understanding based on Pestalozzi's pedagogy. In the prior researches, it was explained such that Edward A. Sheldon at Oswego Normal School first applied Pestalozzi's pedagogy to teacher education in the United States.

Content from these authors
© Japanese Educational Research Association
Previous article Next article
feedback
Top