Comparing and Contrasting the Implementation of Cascade and Applied Science Models of Teacher Education in Uganda and Kenya

COMPARING AND CONTRASTING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CASCADE AND APPLIED SCIENCE MODELS OF TEACHER EDUCATION IN UGANDA AND KENYA

Introduction

Education is what gives the most important support required to bring about an effective individual’s growth and development and the underlying forces which perform the roles of educating learners are the teachers. Teacher education is a collection of policies, ways and provisions planned to empower future teachers with attitude, knowledge, skills and behaviors which they need in future to do their work competently in schools. Contributing towards the ideas, UNESCO (2015), explains that the whole idea of teacher education is embedded in making the whole original educational base of prospective teachers better; adding on their prior information and conceptions of the disciplines they are to teach, methods of teaching and learning. In trying to explain the same concept, Robinson & Mogliacci,( 2019); Rust,( n.d.), say it is the training program which empower teacher trainees with information in foundations of education such as history of education and sociology, subject knowledge and particular and generalized methods of teaching. They add that trainees are also exposed to different levels of experience got from exposure to schools.

Full sets of ideas on teacher education are embedded in different productive and functional patterns of organized ways through which goals of teacher education are achieved and the ways are referred to as approaches or models of teacher education (Robinson & Mogliacci, 2019). Bett, (2016), Expresses his thinking on the topic and asserts, “Teachers’ continuing professional development is a global interest. There are several approaches to this aspect, the cascade model being one of them”. Approaches or models of teacher education embed various aspects of ideas of teacher education. Some of the models are Cascade, Social justice, Master-apprentice, Applied science or University/College-based, Teacher identity, Competence and Reflective models (Bett, 2016; Ngeze et al., n.d.; Robinson & Mogliacci, 2019; Rust, n.d.).

This paper focuses on the cascade and applied science (University/College-based) models of teacher education. It will compare and contrast the implementation of the models in Uganda and Kenya and further discuss the effects and implications of the models at pre-service and continuous professional levels of teacher education.

The applied science models of teacher education

Is a model of teacher education where teacher trainees are given opportunity to access knowledge or theory before practicing and therefore, priority is first given to academic work in class where students first learn the required skills and knowledge and later apply them in the school settings (Robinson & Mogliacci, 2019)

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