The Problems that Career and Technical Education Teachers Face and How We Prepare Them

The view of Career and Technical Education teachers for many years was that their occupational abilities were the only abilities they needed to teach, but as time progressed we have learned this is not the case. Career and Technical Education teachers are now expected to incorporate academics by teaching students who may have problems with reading and math skills or those with learning disabilities. Even though these teachers are top-notch in their profession, they may not have the skills or knowledge to teach math and reading, or how to incorporate an individual lesson plan. They weren't trained to be teachers, they were trained in their profession as nurses, carpenters, and mechanics. While studying nursing in a vocational school setting, we were trained to be nurses and create care plans, not lesson plans. Math and reading skills were not part of the curriculum, nor were teaching them. Technology was a four hour course on a computer. It was also thought that those with good occupational and technical skills, although having little teaching skills, was a recipe for a good CTE teacher. A 2001 research study states "It is clear that the old adage that people from the workplace are always a natural teacher is hogwash." Not that we are facing a teacher shortage, how are we preparing these teachers to teach? (W.Camp)


Three decades ago, in the state of Florida, universities had graduate and undergraduate programs for CTE teachers. As years have passed these CTE programs have gradually been reduced. In order to further stay the reduction of these programs, Distance Learning was developed by the American Distance Teaching and Learning. These course were developed for online use with a strong emphasis on standalone units that were designed with short bursts of learning in mind, with a variety of media and problem-based learning techniques. The CTE online programs are an updated, no nonsense approach to learning, using a variety of sources(Blank and Hernandez 28) Other views regarding long distance learning were that using these programs will not achieve the desired results fro CTE educators. (W. Camp 16)


Recent research studies have shown that there has been a decline in CTE teacher education programs in the past decade. Studies also reveal in the upcoming decade there will be an increase in technical programs and an increase in students taking these programs. In the state of Michigan, St. Claire Technical Education Center has developed an on-site program to obtain, keep, and to meet the needs of teachers who have come from occupational jobs and going directly into the teaching field. Their focus was to blend together teacher education, professional development, and other activities to avoid further stress on new teachers by putting in the time and money to do these sorts of activities. (K. Szuminski 28.) Other researchers felt to increase student knowledge, reform efforts were needed. As Linda Darling-Hammond stated "Substantial evidence from prior reform efforts indicates that changes in course-taking, curriculum content, testing, or textbooks make little difference if teachers do not know how to use these tools well, and how to diagnose their student's learning needs."


So, how are we preparing our CTE teachers? Online courses, on-camps classes, close contact with advisors and instructors are a great benefit. In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a workshop known as the New Teacher Institute is of tremendous value, along with the Kentucky Teacher Internship Program to new CTE teachers. In todays economy, one must take into consideration how will funding for education affect today's CTE teacher education, courses, and students? From the days of the Romans, career and technical occupations have been used. If one needed medical care, cars, homes, and technology, who would provide these services?