REVOLUTION IN TEACHER EDUCATION FOR READING INSTRUCTION

Teacher education for reading instruction is undergoing rapid change in response to several professional pressures. The focus is fast shifting to competency attainment. Programs are becoming individualized through the use of self-contained modules utilizing educational technology. Professional organizations, like I.R.A., are facilitating the changes. Useful modules provide objectives and background information, the latter through audio and videotapes and readings. Examination of teaching materials, observation of classroom practices, simulation, and microteaching are also used. Mastery tests of a performance nature evaluate student progress. The new programs are changing the facilities and equipment needed, as well as the task of the reading methods professor. They demand that he bring to his duties a new set of background experiences and expectations for his students. A reading teacher educator who left the profession in 1955 after spending his productive years in educating reading teachers in the ways in vogue in the post-war period would be highly impressed with the changes in his chosen profession if he resumed teaching in 1975. The metamorphosis of R.T.E. (reading teacher education) is a rapidly occurring phenomenon. Those who do not note the trends do so at their own embarrassment. As teacher organizations become more militant, and teachers gain enough confidence to speak their minds about the process through which they were prepared, the nature of R.T.E. threatens to be rudely and em-phatically shaken at the weld joints. There is impatience with the typical new teachers ' lack of ability to confront and confidently manage the basic activities inherent in teaching reading to growing minds of varying back-grounds, strengths, and tendencies. There is resentment directed at the fledgling teachers ' lack of understanding of materials, approaches, and techniques that have been in existence for some time in schools. Reading teacher education in the past has been preoccupied with study about how reading should be taught rather than immersing the student in the process of teaching reading. The directions of change are ominous as well as numerous