Toward a Framework of Resources for Learning to Teach: Rethinking U.S. Teacher Preparation (original) (raw)
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2019
The current narrative surrounding urban education, while incomplete, often focuses on concerns related to student achievement, failing schools, and teacher quality. This article targets teacher preparation as one response to these challenges and investigates the extent to which liberal arts colleges and universities are involved in this work. The article provides a summary of practices associated with effective urban-focused teacher preparation and analyzes data from liberal arts teacher education programs. Based on this research, the author categorizes the programs’ various approaches and offers recommendations for maximizing the ability of such programs to effectively engage in this crucial work.
1999
The purpose of this article is to delineate the charges being brought against education today. An historical perspective and brief survey of the preceding three decades concerning educational reform are given. Varying, representative levels of criticism toward the elementary, middle school and high school levels are discussed. A sample review of the criticism being made against higher levels of learning is depicted also, particularly at the undergraduate one in the nation's universities and colleges. In addition, a condensed reflection and evaluative emphasis on teacher preparation programs are highlighted. The article is in two parts: the first part being the survey and review of the literature and the citing of the problems stated. The second part deals with fashioning a conceptual approach toward addressing those challenges to schools, colleges and departments of education [SCDEs] noted in the first part of the article. This recommendation for infusion of teacher education programs with such an understanding is not meant to serve as an instructional sequence model. However, it is meant to serve as a request for readers to consider developing their own conceptual and operating models based upon the priorities they uniquely face and those voiced in the perspective held in this article.
Studying teacher preparation: The questions that drive research
European Educational Research Journal, 2015
This article argues that research on teacher preparation over the last 100 years can be understood in terms of the major questions that researchers examined. The analysis is guided by the framework of “research as historically situated social practice,” which emphasizes that researchers’ interests, commitments, and social experiences guide the research questions they pursue and the theories and perspectives they adopt. Past research on initial teacher education is described in terms of the emergence of three broad questions: “the curriculum question,” “the effectiveness question,” and “the knowledge question.” Present research focuses on two broad animating questions: “the policy question” and “the learning question.” We recommend that future research address questions that link teacher learning with student learning and teacher candidates’ beliefs and practices as well as questions that examine the relationships between research practices and social, economic and institutional power.
Unpacking the “Urban” in Urban Teacher Education
Journal of Teacher Education, 2014
The literature on preparing teachers for urban schools provides a rationale for helping candidates understand the particular cultures of students. However, research has not sufficiently “unpacked” features of the setting that programs can address; nor has it discussed how programs tailor teaching approaches to their specific contexts. Drawing from program descriptions, syllabi, and interviews, we describe the “context-specific” approach of the University of Chicago Urban Teacher Education Program that prepares teachers for Chicago Public Schools and ways that it helps candidates make meaning of that setting. We present a framework to show how the program defines and then teaches as content essential knowledge about a district and its children—including community and neighborhood histories, district curricula, and policies—that must inform teaching and learning. We include examples of context-specific teacher preparation that illustrate how candidates learn about particularities of C...
“Context-Specific” Teacher Preparation for New York City
Urban Education, 2015
In this article, we examine a residency program that was developed to prepare teachers specifically for New York City schools—the Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching Urban Teacher Residency program. This focused preparation on the particular urban context of New York City provides us with a unique opportunity to examine the nature of preparation—how such targeted preparation is conceptualized and organized, what it offers, and what might be missing and need to be strengthened. We also describe the development of a yearlong course aimed at preparing teachers for New York, which emerged from this study.
An Evidence-Based Approach to Teacher Preparation
2016
Recently, a variety of education policy organizations, researchers, legislators and government officials have called for improvements to teacher preparation, as well as concrete evidence that programs are graduating effective teachers. For example, the National Council on Teacher Quality is seeking to achieve fundamental changes in the policy and practices of teacher preparation programs. The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation has advanced evidence-based accreditation to assure quality and support continuous improvement to strengthen student learning. Deans for Impact is supporting its network in sharing data, program designs, and strategies, in an effort to improve student-learning outcomes by transforming the field of educator preparation. The Transforming Teaching Project calls for the creation of vertically aligned pathways that run from teacher preparation through induction and continue into ongoing school-based learning. The TeachStrong coalition, with 50-plus member organizations, seeks to reimagine teacher preparation to make it more rooted in classroom practice and a professional knowledge base, with universal high standards for all candidates. While a recent paper raises questions about the appropriate policy responses to these calls for action in light of the limited and conflicting research base regarding which teacher qualifications and components of teacher preparation lead to teacher effectiveness (Aldeman & LiBetti Mitchel, 2016), it is possible to draw lessons from research to inform practice. One approach teacher preparation providers can take is to build a teacher program from the ground up, investing in elements of teacher preparation which research indicates are related to teacher effectiveness and student gains. Another is for teacher preparation programs to take responsibility for assessing their participants' effectiveness prior to program completion, drawing on lessons from research on teacher evaluation. Urban Teachers has elected to implement both of these approaches at once. This paper provides a description of our model, its theory of change, and the literature base that supports and informs our model. In 2009, Urban Teachers, an innovative, residency-based teacher preparation program, was founded to supply high-need schools with effective new teachers. Urban Teachers takes a multifaceted approach to producing effective teachers, beginning with a strategic, rigorous selection process, followed by four years of intensive training and support, extensive classroom experience, and regular coaching visits. Along the way, Urban Teachers systematically evaluates the performance of its participants in several dimensions in order to make a final determination for or against teacher licensure, based on the proven effectiveness of its participants.
Reexamining Pitfalls of Experience In Urban Teacher Preparation
Over 30 years ago, Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann (1985) wrote about " pitfalls of experience " in teacher education. In the current study, I share vignettes of three student teachers engaged in an urban teacher preparation program to highlight how these pitfalls are still operating—and are arguably even more problematic— as we prepare teachers to work with minoritized youth. I add additional detail to the familiarity pitfall and also suggest the existence of a new standardization pitfall. I end with cautions for teacher educators and a call for reimagined student teaching experiences as we consider these and other pitfalls in the preparation of teachers for urban settings.
This study investigates the learning reported by a set of volunteer participants from three university teacher education programs: from one Southwestern U.S. University, the program in secondary English/Language Arts Education and the program in Elementary Education; and from one Southeastern U.S. University, the program in secondary English/Language Arts Education. Based on interviews conducted between the end of coursework and the beginning of student teaching, this study uses a sociocultural perspective to consider not only the manner in which the teacher candidates' learning was mediated by a host of factors, including formal teacher education courses and mentor teacher guidance, but also a wide range of factors that introduced competing conceptions of effective teaching. The interviews were analyzed collaboratively by the two authors, who relied on a sociocultural analysis attending to the pedagogical tools, attribution of learning to specific sources and the settings in which they were located, the areas of teaching in which the tools were applicable, and goals toward which the pedagogical tools were deployed. Findings suggest that even with the three programs having radically different structures and processes, the teacher candidates reported very similar learning, yet with variations conceivably following from their program structures. Furthermore, teacher education emerged as one of several sites of learning named by teacher candidates, rather than serving as their sole or even primary source of learning. The study concludes with a consideration of the many factors that contribute to teacher candidates' conceptual understanding of effective teaching and the role of teacher education programs within this vast complex of goals, epistemologies, and practices.
Teacher Preparation and Teacher Learning A Changing Policy Landscape
2008
The last two decades have witnessed a remarkable amount of policy directed at teacher education—and an intense debate about whether and how various approaches to preparing and supporting teachers make a difference. Beginning in the mid-1980s with the report of the Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession, the Holmes Group (1986), and the founding of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in 1987, a collection of analysts, policy makers, and practitioners of teaching and teacher education argued for the centrality of expertise to effective practice and the need to build a more knowledgeable and skillful professional teaching force. A set of policy initiatives was launched to design professional standards, strengthen teacher education and certifi cation requirements, increase investments in induction mentoring and professional development, and transform roles for teachers (see, e.g., National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future [NCTAF], 1996). Me...