Unification of Two Approaches to Teacher Training in Iran: A Critical Review of Farhangiyan University’s Charter

The historical facts imbedded in the century-old Iranian experience in teacher training reveal two different and coexisting approaches. One is a university-based four-year program aiming at training high school teachers, while the other is a two-year program administered by the Ministry of Education aiming at training elementary/guidance school teachers. The first is focused on establishing few comprehensive institutions, but the other emphasizes establishment of numerous, yet limited, centers engaged in situational practices based on “contentment” and “generosity”. Within the final forty years of implementing these two approaches, the main achievements are claimed to be “teaching based on contemporary knowledge” and “maintaining the standards of higher education” by the first, and “speedy response to the risen needs” and “practical teaching within the real school environment” by the second. Such claims caused the proponents of each approach to add features of the other approach to their own domain of governance, and hence, preparing the grounds for the unification of the two approaches within the charter of Farhangiyan University by the end of last decade, wherein all the century-old shortcomings and conflicts of the two approaches are apparent, setting up, be it just in the name, a “university” for teacher training.