California teaching standards and competency requirements

California Teaching Standards are an example of how industries codify their objectives and establish guidelines for practice. Although I am not an educator, I can appreciate the California Teaching Standards because of how specific and relevant they are to daily practice. If more professional organizations had codified lists of standards, rather than relying on arbitrary and subjective means of assessment, then fewer miscommunications would arise.

Having worked in the corporate sector, I know what it is like to have a painful lack of standards as specific as the California Teaching Standards. In several of the firms I worked for, I sought but could not find absolute guides that could help me to understand my roles and the tasks designated to my post. Without standards, employers find it easy to make workers do tasks that were not included in their job descriptions. Without standards, employees cut corners in order to make it look like they accomplished their goals.

The California Teaching Standards outline what it takes to become a member of the profession. The standards communicate values, missions, and goals to create a community of individuals committed to meeting those same values and goals. The medical profession has similar standards, and without them, we would not trust our doctors. It makes sense to have professional standards. The standards can evolve, as the organizational cultures change and as the society changes. For example, the underlying teaching philosophies might change over time. This would lead to an alteration in the articulation of the California teaching standards. The primary standards include engaging and supporting all students in learning and developing as a professional educator. In my profession, we have no standards other than those that are expressed in the company's mission statement. The mission statement is more of a reflection of company values than it is a prescription for employee behavior.

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Peer review is a processed used in a number of different professions. In fact, all professions with a research or academic component have some type of peer review system. The peer review system is based on the assumption that a community of peers can offer valid feedback and constructive criticism. This in turn helps improve or maintain the integrity of the community. The community as a whole, rather than a body of elites, determines which research or publications reflect or violate the ethics, ideas, and values of that community. Peer reviewing also ensures that an article being published has been scrutinized for errors. It is hard to imagine the sciences surviving without the peer review system. The social sciences are no different. Peer reviewing ensures the long-term credibility of the profession. In education, peer reviewing helps to make research-based practices available for shaping public policy. Policy makers would value a peer reviewed study much more than a study that was self-published or published in an unaccredited journal with spurious editorial content.