AACTE Government Relations Director Deborah Koolbeck will offer three free webinars this month for AACTE members. Register online to learn about the latest goings-on in Washington and how you can enlist policy makers to cosponsor legislation.
AACTE welcomed more than 2,050 participants to Las Vegas last week for its 68th Annual Meeting, focused on the theme “Meeting the Demands of Professional Practice: Tough Questions, Tough Choices.” Ed Prep Matters will feature coverage of various sessions in the coming days, but other content is available right now—so why wait?
During their meeting February 22, members of AACTE’s Board of Directors chose officers for the coming year to serve with new Board Chair Jane Bray (see press release).
Effective today through next February, the Executive Committee includes the following leaders:
AACTE has selected Ena Goodrich Shelley, professor and dean of the College of Education at Butler University (IN), to receive the 2016 AACTE Edward C. Pomeroy Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teacher Education. The award will be presented at the 68th AACTE Annual Meeting Welcoming Session, Tuesday, February 23, at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.
The Pomeroy Award, named for longtime AACTE Executive Director Edward C. Pomeroy, recognizes distinguished service either to the educator preparation community or to the development and promotion of outstanding practices in educator preparation at the collegiate, state, or national level.
Dean Shelley wins accolades in both of these categories, captured in an impressive nomination portfolio submitted by a passionate coalition of faculty, staff, and students at Butler and beyond.
AACTE has chosen Matthew Ronfeldt of the University of Michigan School of Education to receive the 2016 AACTE Outstanding Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) Article Award for his article “Field Placement Schools and Instructional Effectiveness,” published in the September/October 2015 issue of the journal. The award will be presented at the 68th AACTE Annual Meeting Speaker Spotlight Session, Thursday, February 25, at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.
Ronfeldt’s study aimed to determine (a) what types of schools in an urban district are used most for preservice field placement, (b) what school characteristics make a difference in the effectiveness (gauged by value-added measures, or VAM, in reading and math) of the teachers placed there, and (c) whether teachers’ effectiveness corresponds to the degree of match between their preparation sites and the schools where they currently work.
AACTE will honor Monica T. Billen, assistant professor in the Kremen School of Education at California State University, Fresno, with the 2016 AACTE Outstanding Dissertation Award for her study #Learningtoteach: Using Instagram to Elicit Pre-service Teacher Reflection. The award will be presented at the 68th AACTE Annual Meeting Speaker Spotlight Session, Thursday, February 25, at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.
Billen’s study investigated how using participant-driven images on Instagram influenced reflective expression among preservice teachers during a yearlong internship. By employing a photojournalistic approach, teacher candidates constantly noticed their surroundings and used these “noticings” as catalysts for deeper, more critical reflections. Participants touted this method as much more connected to real life, collaborative, and interesting than traditional reflection methods. Amassing more than 1,800 photos over a year’s time, preservice teachers built a unique visual data set using familiar technology combined with written and oral reflections.
AACTE will honor Anthony S. Bryk, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, with the 2016 AACTE Lifetime Achievement Award. The award will be presented at the 68th AACTE Annual Meeting Speaker Spotlight Session, Thursday, February 25, at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.
Bryk will be honored especially for his transformative work at the Carnegie Foundation developing the field of improvement science in education—lessons of which he will then be sharing as a panelist at the Speaker Spotlight Session.
AACTE has chosen Rethinking Field Experiences in Preservice Teacher Preparation: Meeting New Challenges for Accountability, edited by Etta Hollins of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, to receive the 2016 AACTE Outstanding Book Award. The award will be presented at the 68th AACTE Annual Meeting Welcoming Session, Tuesday, February 23, at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.
Published by Routledge in 2015, this edited volume offers a robust set of perspectives on critical and challenging elements of teacher preparation—how field experiences are designed to support preservice teachers while they are learning to teach. Chapters are organized into three sections focusing on “approximation and representation of practice,” “learning teaching situated in context,” and performance assessment and program improvement. The book provides a collection of models of field experiences across a variety of teacher preparation contexts and deeply examines how the experiences are theorized, designed, and implemented for preservice teacher learning.
AACTE has selected the Loyola Marymount University School of Education (CA) to receive the 2016 AACTE Best Practice Award in Support of Multicultural Education and Diversity. The award will be presented at the 68th AACTE Annual Meeting Welcoming Session, Tuesday, February 23, at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.
All of the education programs at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) are grounded in principles such as the promotion of social justice, cultural responsiveness, inclusion, value and respect for all individuals, and leadership that is moral, intellectual, responsible, and caring. Their effectiveness is evident in the conceptual framework, curriculum, commitment of faculty and staff, and the culturally and linguistically diverse teacher candidates and students throughout the programs.
AACTE has selected the Global Gateway for Teachers, offered through the School of Education at Indiana University (Bloomington), to receive the 2016 AACTE Best Practice Award in Support of Global and International Perspectives. The award will be presented at the 68th AACTE Annual Meeting Welcoming Session, Tuesday, February 23, at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.
The Gateway program, in existence in various forms for over 40 years, aims to enhance and engage the professional preparation of future educators by offering them experiences in schools, homes, and communities of culturally and linguistic diverse groups in 18 countries and in domestic placements on Navajo reservations and in urban Chicago. Participants are engaged in 18 weeks of student teaching abroad as well as domestically where they immerse themselves in the language, the culture, and the educational system of that nation or community.
The program is directed by Laura L. Stachowski and enjoys strong support from the School of Education’s administration, including Dean Emeritus Gerardo Gonzalez and Interim Dean Terrence Mason.
Congratulations to Thomas S. Tucker, superintendent of Princeton City Schools in Cincinnati, Ohio, who has been named 2016 AASA National Superintendent of the Year!
Tucker’s selection was announced February 11 at the National Conference on Education hosted by AASA, The School Superintendents Association. He was one of four finalists for the honor; others included Pamela Moran of Charlottesville, Virginia; Steven Webb of Vancouver, Washington; and Freddie Williamson of Raeford, North Carolina.
The annual National edTPA Implementation Conference will be held March 31 – April 2 at the Savannah Marriott Riverfront in Savannah, GA. The program planning committee seeks session proposals by Monday, February 15, from implementers of edTPA, the PK-12 community, and others involved in supporting teachers and candidates in using the assessment.
The conference, “Building Bridges to Highly Accomplished Teaching: From Preservice to Teacher Leader,” aims to include interactive sessions to share and develop practices, perspectives, and research aligned with the following strands:
Ed Prep Matters is featuring “Stories of Impact” to showcase AACTE member institutions with educator preparation programs that are making a positive impact in their communities and beyond through innovative practices. We are committed to sharing members’ success stories and encourage you to do the same.
In one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of Portland, Oregon, a flourishing partnership between Concordia University and the PK-8 Faubion School has spawned ambitious plans for a new model of education to help disenfranchised students and the whole community.
Two new studies commissioned by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) credit the collaborative professional learning of teachers in British Columbia, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore with their students’ strong performance on international assessments. NCEE’s Center on International Education Benchmarking organized a half-day forum last month featuring panel discussions of these countries’ policies that support such systems—and what lessons the United States should draw from them.
Rather than treating professional development as an add-on program such as monthly workshops, the studies say, successful education systems embed it broadly. Teacher-led collaborative learning is deliberately planned into structures such as well-defined career ladders, mentorship programs, and schools’ daily schedules. Although some of these features can be found in U.S. districts, none is widely used or as robust as described in the reports, and panelists advocated for a stronger systems approach.
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:
