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The Arc Of Teacher Education: From The Normal School To Now, Thomas R. Turner

The Arc of Teacher Education: From Normal Schools to Now

When Horace Mann delivered the dedication address at Bridgewater’s newly completed academic building in 1846 he said “Coiled up in this institution, as in a spring, there is a vigor whose uncoiling may wheel the spheres.” Even a visionary like Mann, however, would undoubtedly be astounded if he could view the multi-purpose university which Bridgewater has become including its College of Business and $100,000,000 Science and Math facility.

While Bridgewater has witnessed enormous change over its 175 years there have nonetheless been areas of strong continuity. One of these is remarkable stability in leadership; the school has had only 11 …

Radical Social Purpose In 19th Century Teacher Education: Normal Schools And The Port Royal Experiment, Mary-Lou Breitborde, Louise Swiniarski

The Arc of Teacher Education: From Normal Schools to Now

State normal schools and the professionalizing of teaching broadened women’s vision and the public and political spheres of their work. The opportunity for higher education and career inspired teachers to improve the lives of children and the health of the nation. Despite the intentions of founding legislators aiming to prepare teachers for the common schools; despite criticisms that the curriculum was too limited, or, conversely, too taxing; despite claims that “normalites” lacked “scholarship,” even “knowledge and interest in human life”[i], countless graduates left with a passion to do good, do it well and do it with a sense …

A Theory-Driven Reappraisal Of The Historiography Of Normal Schools, Garrett Gowen, Ezekiel Kimball

The Arc of Teacher Education: From Normal Schools to Now

Mainstream historiography understates the importance of normal schools; as a result, historians cannot fully appreciate normal schools’ influence on institutional forms. We support this contention through a review of: 1) the description of normal schools in synthetic histories; 2) literature specifically on normal schools; and 3) a reappraisal of each using social theories that illuminate relationships between people, institutions, and society related to normal schools.

The dominant historiography of American higher education relegates the normal school to a discursive cul-de-sac whereby they offered roughly the same academic rigor as a high school and are quickly superseded by teachers colleges (Brubacher …

Finding A Future In Our Past: Student Writers, A Normal School Archive, And What Happens When They Meet, Lee Torda

The Arc of Teacher Education: From Normal Schools to Now

In “A Rediscovered Tradition: European Pedagogy and Composition in Nineteenth-Century Midwestern Normal Schools” Kathryn Fitzgerald argues that the Normal School tradition, though unrecognized by elite institutions, challenges dominant histories of education, offering a democratizing force for post-secondary education today. While Fitzgerald looks at institutional change and the Normal School narrative, this presentation showcases student writing that demonstrates a changed relationship among students and their home institution, former Normal Schools, and the students’ sense of intellectual power.

This presentation describes student work written in a creative nonfiction course, using the archives (dating back to 1840) of the third oldest normal school …

The "Great Experiment" And The Transformation Of The Michigan State Normal School, Ron Flowers, James Barott

The Arc of Teacher Education: From Normal Schools to Now

Of the normal schools that existed in 1910, 180 would evolve into state colleges or universities. One of these, the Michigan State Normal School (MSNS), founded in 1849, would be the first such school outside the original 13 colonies, the fifth normal school in the country, and the first to offer a four-year curriculum leading to a bachelor’s degree. This essay examines the transition of MSNS from a quasi-secondary school into a college-level institution. The conflict that unfolded in 1878 with the beginning of what became known as “the Great Experiment” and ended with the dismissal of Charles Bellows in …