Normal school
A teacher-training institution that prepares educators for classroom work and promotes common teaching methods and standards.
École normale supérieure: A French institution founded during the Revolution to train teachers and prepare them to teach others. Its founding in 1794 helped establish the normal-school model in France.
Teacher education: Preparation for teaching that develops subject knowledge, pedagogical skill, and professional judgment. Normal schools were a major institutional form of teacher education.
Professionalization of teaching: The development of teaching into an occupation with specialized preparation, standards, and professional identity. Normal schools helped distinguish trained teachers from instructors without formal preparation.
Teachers college: A postsecondary institution specializing in the preparation of teachers and educational professionals. Many normal schools expanded or changed names as teacher preparation moved into higher education.
Battersea Training College: A nineteenth-century British institution established to train teachers for elementary schools. It illustrates the teacher-training college tradition that developed alongside normal schools.
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi: A Swiss educational reformer who advocated teaching through observation, activity, and gradual development. His methods shaped early teacher-training programs and normal-school instruction.
Pedagogy: The theory and practice of teaching, including decisions about instruction, learning, and assessment. Normal schools taught methods for organizing lessons and guiding pupils.
Compulsory education: Laws requiring children to attend school for specified ages or periods. Expanding compulsory schooling increased the need for a large, consistently trained teaching workforce.
College of education: A university division that prepares educators and conducts research in education. It represents a university-based alternative to the stand-alone normal school.
Lexington Normal School: The Massachusetts state normal school that opened in Lexington in 1839 as the first publicly funded teacher-training school in the United States. Its opening marked the start of the state normal-school system in the United States.