Dangling Between the Traditional and the Reformist: Reality Shocks for Student Teachers Amid the Tide of Educational Reform in a Test-Oriented Culture

Abstract

Recent education reforms in the United States have been focusing on raising students’ academic standards through high-stakes testing in order to enhance their international competitiveness. Such endeavors have raised concerns among educators about an emerging test-oriented culture in school. This paper provides an international perspective on the current debate by providing a good case in point, examining the reality shocks experienced by student teachers in an East Asian Confucian circle society where high-stakes testing has long been a tradition. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected, including a questionnaire survey with 159 student teachers and in-depth interviews with 34 student teachers from various schools in Taiwan. Three main themes emerged from the interview data analysis, showing that these student teachers were caught between the traditional and reformist ways of education in terms of: purpose of education (training for academic competitiveness vs. education for whole person), way of instruction (teaching to the test vs. teaching relevant to life), and student-teacher relationship (authority figure vs. teacher as equal friend). The sociocultural roots of the traditional test-oriented culture and recent educational reforms in Taiwan were explored. Two implications were presented: (1) teacher educators should help these student-teachers to construct a coherent set of personal theories about teaching with an understanding of the gap between traditional cultural roots and reformist educational changes. (2) Policy makers in the US should closely observe and carefully examine how the East Asian Confucian societies have implemented educational reforms in these years, so they can understand the long-term impacts and thus, make wise decisions.