Improving Teacher Education in Liberia

1. The critical factor for the improvement of overall teacher quality in Liberia is to increase the effectiveness of the country's preservice teacher education programs. This study found that the general level of overall competency among Liberian teachers is seen as being so low that they could not benefit from inservice teacher education programs as they are structured, even if all of the problems associated with the inservice teacher education programs were effectively addressed.

2. The critical factor for the improvement of the quality of the output of preservice teacher education programs in Liberia is the rigorous enforcement of the admissions standards for these programs. As long as preservice teacher programs continue to admit unqualified students to the programs, and permit such students to remain in and complete the programs, the overall output from the programs will continue to be substandard.

3. Implementation of the Florida State University recommendations to use the RTTIs for inservice teacher education and to use the elementary education faculty at the teachers colleges for inservice teacher education would prove to be counterproductive to the ove

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ducation programs. One of the recommendations stemming from the findings of this current study was that standards for entry into preservice teacher programs in Liberia be rigorously enforced. Considering the current state of the output of Liberia's educational system, the question arises as to whether, in the event of qualification standards enforcement, anyone would be left to enter teacher preservice training programs and institutions in Liberia. Useful further research, therefore, would involve a study of Liberia's secondary education program to determine the adequacy in number and competency of the graduates of that program who would be interested in and able to successfully pursue a highquality preservice teacher education program. Second, this current study confirmed earlier findings that the low and uncertain compensation for Liberian teachers causes many of these individuals to seek a second job. Because proficiency and motivation are pervasively low, it has been observed that it is often difficult to see any difference between qualified and non qualified teachers in the context of their classroom performance. The assumption often drawn from such a finding is that an improvement in teacher compensation levels wou
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Approximate Word count = 1792
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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