November/December JTE Looks at Improvement Science for Teacher Development
Are you looking to catch up on your reading over the holiday break? While you wait for the new issue of the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) to arrive, here are some highlights of the current issue—which is also the final one edited by Stephanie Knight and her editorial team at Pennsylvania State University. (And the new editors at Michigan State University are eager to bring you their first issue in January!)
Containing general-topic articles as well as a special section addressing the theme of “Improvement Science for Teacher Professional Development,” the November/December 2015 issue is available online here. The theme section draws on the major forum organized by the JTE editors at the 2015 AACTE Annual Meeting (see video of the forum here) and is guest-edited by Paul LeMahieu, Ann Edwards, and Louis Gomez of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
This month’s editorial offers a peek behind the editorial curtain with a 5-year retrospective on Penn State’s term serving the journal. The editors provide a frank analysis of their work and insightful observations about challenges faced by the field related to rigor and relevance in teacher education research. They also include their usual overview of the current issue, which features the following articles:
General Topic
- Jane Arnold Lincove, Cynthia Osborne, Nick Mills, and Laura Bellows collaborate on an analysis of Texas’ diverse array of pathways into the teaching profession, examining the relative effectiveness of university-based preparation and alternative program types. Their article, “Teacher Preparation for Profit or Prestige: Analysis of a Diverse Market for Teacher Preparation,” finds selected positive effects of certain program types on student performance.
- Inspired by a recent essay by an education dean, JTE Coeditor Fran Arbaugh invited four College of Education deans to respond to a series of questions, captured in the article “Deans’ Corner: Views on the State of Teacher Education in 2015.” Read what Deborah Loewenberg Ball (University of Michigan), Pam Grossman (University of Pennsylvania), Donald E. Heller (Michigan State University), and David Monk (Penn State University) think about where the field stands today.
Theme Section
- Guest editors LeMahieu, Edwards, and Gomez introduce the special section in a piece called “At the Nexus of Improvement Science and Teaching,” reminding us that context matters when trying to bring ideas to scale.
- In “Embedding Language Support in Developmental Mathematics Lessons: Exploring the Value of Design as Professional Development for Community College Mathematics Instructors,” Kimberley Gomez, Louis M. Gomez, Katherine C. Rodela, Emily S. Horton, Jahneille Cunningham, and Rocio Ambrocio report on the attempt to use improvement science techniques to inform community college faculty work on developmental math lessons.
- In another article focused on mathematics faculty in the Community College Pathways initiative, “Designing for Improvement in Professional Development for Community College Developmental Mathematics Faculty,” Ann R. Edwards, Carlos Sandoval, and Haley McNamara describe the user-centered redesign of a professional development program accompanied by a system to measure its success.
- W. Gary Martin and Howard Gobstein write in “Generating a Networked Improvement Community to Improve Secondary Mathematics Teacher Preparation” about the Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership, a Networked Improvement Community working to address the undersupply of new secondary math teachers prepared to help high school students meet college- and career-ready standards.
- “Using Improvement Science to Better Support Beginning Teachers” by Maggie Hannan, Jennifer Lin Russell, Sola Takahashi, and Sandra Park analyzes the Building a Teaching Effectiveness Network, a collaborative effort to reduce turnover among novice teachers that seems to be helping participants overcome negative norms.
Remember, abstracts of each JTE article are accessible to the public, but AACTE members may access the full text online for free. Simply log in to the AACTE web site and then click through from the blue button on this page to the JTE site hosted by SAGE.
