03 Mar2020
“Resisting Hate, Restoring Hope: Engaging in Courageous Actions”
By Matthew Wales
Now through May 27, AACTE is accepting session proposals for the 73rd Annual Meeting, to be held in Seattle, WA, February 26 – 28, 2021. We also invite applications by May 13 for AACTE member faculty to review proposals.
The conference theme is “Resisting Hate, Restoring Hope: Engaging in Courageous Actions,” conceptualized as follows in the call for proposals:
Collectively, we are losing traction in our democracy and experiencing reversals in the civil and human rights that leaders such as Cesar Chavez, Delores Huerta, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Harvey Milk all fought to advance. Children are being educated in an environment fraught with violence on our school campuses and in our communities. They are assaulted by guns, words, and legislation that create an unsafe, hateful, and fearful climate. We are living in a time when children are taken from their families, retained in deplorable circumstances, and denied access to basic needs and education. The term “all” seems to only mean some, and people who speak out against these injustices are attacked by words and actions.
03 Mar2020
By Katrina Norfleet
Holmes Program Scholars Monique Matute-Chavarria, Claudine McLaren Turner, and Ayan Mitra are the first, second, and third place winners, respectively, in the 2020 Holmes Scholars Dissertation Funding Competition (DFC). The competition was held during the Holmes Preconference at the AACTE 72nd Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA.
The DFC is a 10-minute session open to doctoral candidates to present their anticipated dissertation at the “pre-data collection” stage in a creative and compelling way. The first place awardee receives $3,000, the second place winner receives $1,250, and the third place winner receives $750 to support the finalists’ dissertation research proposal related expenses.
29 Feb2020
AACTE Conference Addresses How to Disrupt Inequities in Education
By AACTE
Nearly 2,000 teacher educators kicked off the 72nd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis yesterday. The conference, themed “Disrupting Inequities: Educating for Change,” is being held February 28 – March 1. Attendees include deans, faculty, students, and administrators from undergraduate and graduate education programs, community colleges, and K-12 schools, as well as representatives from state and federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, and foundations.
America’s educator preparation community is keenly aware of and uniquely positioned to change the systemic challenges occurring in PK-16 environments that serve the nation’s most vulnerable populations—students of color, students with disabilities, students from immigrant families, students from low-income families, and LGBTQ students. Under its 2020 theme, the AACTE conference offers attendees hundreds of concurrent sessions that explore how to redefine the meaning of success for all students and encourage them to become active learners, productive citizens, critical thinkers, and leaders in their communities and across the globe.
26 Feb2020
By Kimberly White Smith
The American education system was not created to support the liberation of the powerless. Instead, it was designed to instill skills, habits, beliefs, and discipline that would allow for better control of the masses. The colonizers who became the architects of this country built a system that perpetuates the status of white-skinned privilege and wealth, while leaving those in the lower and middle classes burdened with the laborious task of building and supporting our nation’s economy and infrastructure.
Throughout the history of the United States, minoritized racial groups and those who live in poverty have suffered disparities in education through laws and policies that prohibited them from socioeconomic advancement, physical safety, and basic civil rights. The anti-literacy laws enacted before, during, and after the Civil War are just one example of how white-skinned privilege and power was used to perpetuate the oppression of enslaved Blacks and concretize a system that generated more wealth for those in power.
Our current education system continues to enable inequity through policies and practices that claim to be fair, colorblind, and neutral, but tend to privilege a small, elite portion of the U.S. population. We can no longer live by the adage “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” when those who deserve a better education continue to be plagued by disparities. Addressing the persistent opportunity gap between our nation’s socioeconomic classes requires sustained engagement from leaders across every field of education.
21 Feb2020
By Dustin Wunderlich
The articles below originally appeared on the University of Washington College of Education website and are reprinted with permission.
Jo
ining doctoral research and teacher education program improvement
While incorporating issues of equity and social justice in the preparation of future teachers has long been a focus at the University of Washington College of Education, it wasn’t well understood until recently how that commitment is reflected in graduates’ daily teaching practice.
That picture is getting clearer thanks to an internship for UW doctoral students in teacher education launched three years ago. In a new podcast, Patrick Sexton, assistant dean for teacher education, and Cristina Betancourt, a graduate student in teaching and curriculum, discuss the College’s work to marry teacher education program improvement with the learning of its doctoral students through its Teacher Education Research and Inquiry (TERI) internship.
Sexton and Betancourt are part of a team who will present their work developing case studies of recent alumni for program improvement at the 2020 meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
Read more.
Incorporating disability studies curriculum in teacher education
While Washington has recognized October as Disability History Month for more than a decade — and schools are asked to honor the month in some fashion — teachers have had limited resources available to help them actually enact disability studies curriculum in the classroom.
20 Feb2020
By Terrance McNeil
As the AACTE 72nd Annual Meeting theme suggests, decades of societal inequities extending into and from our P-16 institutional environments have left us hungry for change. Persistent achievement gap disparities and teacher shortages trouble us and often make us wonder how we will achieve the changes we seek. In terms of teacher diversity, one solution that many have found are the Educator Preparation programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). While making up only 3% of the nation’s higher education institutions, HBCUs provide over 50% of the nation’s African American teachers.
Several research projects and partnerships on the district and institutional level are demonstrating the capacity for HBCUs to bring their unique positionality to bear in the broader conversation on teacher diversity. A recent project involving Virginia Commonwealth University and Tennessee State University bears the potential to help the academic community understand more about creating a culturally responsive teacher workforce. Similarly, the “Call Me Mister” program and the “Florida Fund for Minority Teachers” historically have involved HBCUs in recruiting African American teachers. Through a variety of works, HBCUs continue to improve on their capacity to influence the teacher diversity conversation.
This year’s HBCU Teacher Education Topical Action Group (TAG) Business Meeting, which will take place February 27 at 3:00 p.m, will bring together AACTE members with over two dozen HBCU affiliations. Participants need not be HBCU graduates or currently working at an HBCU. The meeting will feature conversations on HBCU-led research agendas, proposed partnerships, CAEP accreditation, and improving preservice teacher performance on the Praxis. We are excited to have Ereka Williams of Fayetteville State University, Kathy Pruner, director of Professional Educator Programs at ETS, Jennifer Young-Wallace, Association of Teacher Educators board members, and Clara Young of Tennessee State University as contributors to this year’s business meeting.
18 Feb2020
By Dustin Wunderlich
This article originally appeared on the University of Washington College of Education website and is reprinted with permission.
While mentoring novice teachers is a complex task, particularly as it happens inside the action of teaching, mentor teachers typically have little preparation for their role.
Addressing that gap was the focus of a recent effort by University of Washington teacher educators in the UW Accelerated Certification for Teachers (U-ACT) program that will be presented during the 2020 meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
In a new podcast, Megan Kelley-Petersen, U-ACT director, and Taylor Stafford, U-ACT instructor and doctoral student in teacher education and math education, discuss findings of their work to create opportunities for mentors to become both teachers of teachers and learners of teaching.
18 Feb2020
By Meghan Grenda
We invite all attendees of the 72nd Annual Meeting to visit the AACTE Gallery. This year, the Gallery will feature poster presentations, small group discussions to network with colleagues, multiple opportunities to win prizes, and even a chance to win a free registration for the 2021 Annual Meeting!
Poster Presentations
AACTE Holmes Scholars and National Association of Community College Teacher Education Programs (NACCTEP) members will present their research in the Gallery during the timeslots below:
- NACCTEP Poster Session: Friday, February 28 from 10:00 – 11: 00 a.m.
- Holmes Poster Session: Saturday, February 29 from 10:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Coffee and Conversations
The Gallery will feature small roundtable discussions where members can meet, learn from each other, and join the conversation on a variety of topics facilitated by the AACTE Topical Action Groups (TAGs). Below are just a few of the conversations taking place:
13 Feb2020
By Michael Putman
In acknowledging the diversification of the P-12 population in U.S. classrooms, is your college or university prepared to develop candidates’ global competencies? AACTE’s Committee on Global Diversity is hosting a preconference workshop, “Internationalization of Teacher Education: Building a Strategic Framework for Developing Candidates’ Global Competencies,” which will assist in this process.
This preconference event will explore methods to infuse global competency into the curriculum and provide strategies for educator preparation programs to incorporate local and international opportunities—with a focus on developing successful partnerships to facilitate these opportunities.
Participants will actively engage with AACTE award recipients as well as influential experts in the field. Together they will hold meaningful discussions on best practices, innovative experiences and partnerships and, importantly, ways to develop authentic and meaningful programs that prepare mindful teacher candidates who advocate for and insist on multicultural education and diverse global perspectives within the classroom.
12 Feb2020
By Linda Minor
AACTE’s Annual Meeting is just a few weeks away, and one place you certainly must visit during the meeting is the Conference Community Center, located on the Marquis Level of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis Hotel. The Center is the place for you to take a break, socialize, network, greet old friends, and meet new ones—all while engaging with our Annual Meeting sponsors.
10 Feb2020
By Katrina Norfleet
AACTE is delighted to announce Indiana University School of Education as the recipient of the 2020 AACTE Best Practice Award in Support of Global and International Perspectives for its K-16 Global Education Initiatives across Indiana program. Vesna Dimitrieska, coordinator, Global Education Initiatives at Indiana University School of Education and Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, will be recognized formally with the award at the AACTE 72nd Annual Meeting, February 28 – March 1, in Atlanta, GA.
The uniqueness of Indiana University’s program lies in its structure as a joint program between its School of Education and its Hamilton Lugar School (HLS) of Global and International Studies, working collaboratively to create globally competent teachers. Hosted at the School of Education, the program ensures graduates enter the workforce with deep global knowledge and “strong fluency in the regional cultures, languages, and perspectives shaping our world.” By combining the resources that are available from the two schools, the program is providing equitable access to urban, suburban, and rural parts of Indiana and initiating, maintaining, and expanding partnerships with educators in schools from 18 different counties across the state.
10 Feb2020
By Jerrica Thurman
AACTE has chosen an article by Amy Rector-Aranda, Ph.D. of Texas A&M University, the recipient of the 2020 AACTE Outstanding Journal of Teacher Education Article Award. Her article, “Critically Compassionate Intellectualism in Teacher Education: The Contributions of Relational-Cultural Theory,” was published in the September/October 2019 issue of the journal and will be recognized formally with the award at the AACTE 72nd Annual Meeting, February 28 – March 1, in Atlanta, GA.
In the article, Rector‐Aranda explores how the critically compassionate intellectualism framework might translate as a framework for teacher education. Educational theorists Cammarota and Romero describe critically compassionate intellectualism (CCI) as a trilogy of critical pedagogy, authentic caring, and social‐justice oriented curriculum used to lift up previously disempowered Latinx youth. Because the compassion element in CCI is understudied in teacher education, yet crucial to the success of the framework as a whole, Rector‐Aranda applies the tents of Relational‐Cultural Theory (RCT) to enhance understandings of this component. Based in feminist theories of psychosocial and moral development, RCT expands the original framework to account for varied experiences of privilege and vulnerability when applying CCI to teacher education while retaining core emphases on relationships, empathy, and associate aspects of authentic caring. This study makes a conceptual contribution by offering an integrated framework for teacher education.
10 Feb2020
By Jerrica Thurman
AACTE is delighted to announce Christina Restrepo Nazar, Ph.D. as the recipient of the 2020 AACTE Outstanding Dissertation Award for Youth as Teacher Educators: Supporting Preservice Teachers in the Developing Youth Centered, Equity-Oriented Science Teaching Practices. The author completed her dissertation for the Ph.D. at Michigan State University College of Education. She currently serves as assistant professor of K-12 science education in the Charter College of Education at California State University Los Angeles. She will be recognized formally with the award at the AACTE 72nd Annual Meeting, February 28 – March 1, in Atlanta, GA.
In her dissertation, Restrepo Nazar conducted three separate, but interrelated studies that examine the ways preservice teachers (PSTs) generatively developed youth-centered, equity-oriented pedagogical imaginaries in their methods courses and how they enacted these practice(s) in their field experiences. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how and in what ways a science methods course can support PSTs in the critical uptake of youth (and community) knowledge(s) and practice(s) and how classroom communities in the field can shift/shape these enactments. In this work, Restrepo Nazar foregrounds youth counternarratives of the culture of power in science as a critical part of learning to teach science for PSTs—a study that has never been done before.
10 Feb2020
By Katrina Norfleet
AACTE is delighted to announce the selection of the nine authors of the book, Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education, as winners of the 2020 AACTE Outstanding Book Award. They will be recognized formally with the award at the AACTE 72nd Annual Meeting, February 28 – March 1, in Atlanta, GA.
The book, published by Teachers College Press in 2018, provides the field of teacher education with a paradigm-shifting take on accountability, an issue that is central to the theory, policy, and practice of teacher education. The book’s insights and arguments are supported by rigorous scholarship regarding the historical, sociopolitical, and policy contexts of teacher education accountability. The authors created an eight-dimensional framework to critically examine the current dominant accountability paradigm, to deconstruct four influential accountability initiatives, and finally, to envision a new paradigm of democratic accountability.
“Their framework is powerful as a tool used not only for critique, but also for providing a structure for envisioning an entirely different accountability paradigm—one that values democracy, equity, professional responsibility, and deliberative and critical democratic education,” said Tamara Lucas, Dean of the College of Education and Human Services, Montclair State University.
10 Feb2020
By Katrina Norfleet
AACTE is delighted to announce the Salisbury University School of Education as the recipient of the 2020 AACTE Best Practice Award for Innovative Use of Technology for integrating maker education throughout its educator preparation program. Diallo Sessoms, associate professor, Samuel W. and Marilyn C. Seidel School of Education, Salisbury University, will be recognized formally with the award at the AACTE 72nd Annual Meeting, February 28 – March 1, in Atlanta, GA.
Salisbury University is pioneering the idea of “classrooms” as makerspaces, which will push future educators to inspire their students to be makers, inventors, and entrepreneurs. The official makerspace, a physical space for faculty and students to generate visceral experiences, opened in fall 2018. Both faculty and students are learning to infuse the maker mindset into their teaching philosophies by applying a combination of programming, design thinking, 3D modeling, and physical computing experiences. While the university’s educator preparation program has a stand-alone technology course, it is also emphasizing the integration of concepts across all instructional methods courses. To build capacity for in-service educators, the School of Education is also offering professional development in invention literacy for practicing teachers to increase play-based learning and makerspace access.
