Question:
Is there an eighteen credit course that you
know of to achieve the certification at home? Going to school is not an option
as my time is very limited.
Answer:
While you are assuming the credits should have something to do with teaching,
the original post doesn't actually say that. It simply requires 18 credits.
I wouldn't be surprised if those are simply vocational school or college
credits or any sort. Such credential hoops are all too common in education.
As for teaching people to teach, in the U.S. we are increasingly rigerous
about teacher training requirements in the k-12 system, and yet at the
college level and above there are few standards, and virtually no training in
the actual practice of teaching. I was fortunate enough to be in a graduate
program that actually considered it worth their time to train graduate
students to teach, but we were virtually the only department on campus that
went as far as having a required graduate course on teaching before setting
us loose in the classroom. Since tenure is usually viewed as a reward for
publication, not teaching quality, most graduate programs consider time spent
teaching future college teachers to teach will be a waste of time that should
be spent doing research, writing, or taking a seminar with a faculty member
who may well be an example of how not to teach, but who has published a lot
on their narrow subject.
