Lopez, with data from about 6000 teachers, concludes that about 7 years are required for teachers to maximize their students' test performance. An alternative paradigm for research in educational productivity. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas, Austin. Apparently, even with a program of teacher education, classroom teaching is too complex a job to be learned very rapidly. If high quality teaching methods courses do exist, and in those courses there is an emphasis on the techniques and principles that help to translate subject matter knowledge into cognitive structures that are useful and accessible for students, then the worth of teaching methods courses is easily defended.
Universities provide limited models of instructional methods for their students.
Even when future educators are exposed to innovative teaching methods at the university, they are offered no place to study how those methods work, why they work, and under what conditions they should be used. Teaching methods courses provide the fora for such investigations.