08 Apr2014
By Kristin McCabe
Seeking to identify promising research areas in teacher preparation as well as roles for the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) in advancing and disseminating the field’s knowledge base, JTE editor Stephanie Knight (Penn State University) and AACTE assembled a group of advisers for a meeting last week in Philadelphia.
The meeting, held in conjunction with the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), also included AACTE President/CEO Sharon P. Robinson and the following advisers:
25 Mar2014
By Jessica Milton
On March 19, I attended the release event of Beginners in the Classroom: What the Changing Demographics of Teaching Mean for Schools, Students, and Society, a report that examines the causes, conditions, and consequences of the rise of less-experienced teachers in the classroom.
Issued by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the report cites research showing that the shift toward greater numbers of inexperienced teachers has “serious financial, structural, and educational consequences for American public education—straining budgets, disrupting school cultures, and, most significantly, depressing student achievement.” (AACTE, too, seeks to address these problems through its Educator Workforce Advisory Task Force, an initiative of the new Innovation Exchange.)
01 Mar2014
By Kristin McCabe
AACTE today announced the official launch of an initiative to support innovation in the professional community and speed the pace of change in university-based educator preparation. The Innovation Exchange will serve as a forum for AACTE members, partners, and other constituents to share experiences and findings as they work together to address the most urgent issues of student achievement, curriculum reform, and educator preparation program advancement.
Through this national initiative, AACTE will seek to strengthen educator preparation, demonstrate the necessity and effectiveness of educator preparation, and enhance members’ opportunities to collaborate on key issues.
24 Feb2014
By Kristin McCabe
AACTE, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) have announced a partnership to support teacher preparation programs in including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues in their curriculum.
Research suggests that positive, supportive, and inclusive classroom environments lead to better academic and psychosocial outcomes for students. While some teacher preparation programs incorporate LGBT-inclusive content and awareness into their curriculum, there has been no deliberate, comprehensive effort to expand the practice throughout the profession.
19 Feb2014
By Kristin McCabe
AACTE is delighted to announce the winners of our 2014 awards!
The following awards will be presented during the Welcoming Session (March 1) and the Speaker Spotlight Session (March 3) at AACTE’s Annual Meeting in Indianapolis:
- Outstanding Dissertation Award: Empathic Interaction: White Female Teachers and Their Black Male Students, by Chezare A. Warren (University of Illinois at Chicago; Steven E. Tozer, adviser)
04 Feb2014
By Kristin McCabe
The March/April 2014 issue of the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) is now available online. See what Volume 65 Number 2 has to offer!
- In this month’s editorial, “Research as a Catalyst for Change,” JTE‘s editors at Penn State University relate the issue’s contents to AACTE’s 66th Annual Meeting theme, Taking Charge of Change. Heralding the theme as an opportunity to champion the role of research in informing policy and practice, the editors highlight the articles’ contributions to knowledge about innovative practices in the development of both preservice and in-service educators.
03 Feb2014
By Christine Tambini
AACTE is excited to announce a new research fellowship that aims to cultivate emerging scholars and support high-quality research in the area of educator preparation.
The AACTE Research Fellowship for Educator Preparation will engage education researchers in collecting, documenting, and disseminating research on innovative educator preparation practices to fuel program improvement and influence policy decisions.
31 Jan2014
By Alicia Ardila-Rey
A new resource from AACTE’s Professional Education Data System (PEDS) shows that although minority-serving institutions collectively represent a small percentage of AACTE members, they are responsible for the preparation of a disproportionately large number of minority teachers.
17 Jan2014
By Deborah Schussler and Lisa Johnson
The authors are members of AACTE’s topical action group on Teacher Education as a Moral Community. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
A recent National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) report evaluates teacher preparation programs for their attention to an important element of preparation: classroom management. Unfortunately, the report’s few helpful suggestions get lost in the slough of misguided assumptions and questionable claims by the report’s authors.
09 Jan2014
By Alicia Ardila-Rey and Yupin Bae
The 2014 AACTE Professional Education Data System (PEDS) data collection will open February 3 and close at the end of April. The 2014 survey incorporates recommendations made by an ad-hoc task force convened by AACTE in 2013 to help identify changes needed and to improve the quality and usefulness of the data.
The following changes have been made throughout all forms in Parts A and B:
- Changed wording to align with terms used by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) or other current usage, or to better define items.
- Added new pop-ups and glossary items with refined or added definitions.
- Added Other as an option in multiple-choice items as needed.
Other changes to Part A include the following:
07 Jan2014
By Kristin McCabe
A new report from the Wallace Foundation’s Principal Pipeline Initiative highlights practices for the preparation and support of new principals. Cultivating Talent Through a Principal Pipeline is the second in a series of evaluations of the initiative, prepared by Policy Studies Associates. It describes results from the initiative’s first 2 years as participating districts worked to beef up their principal corps through training and ongoing support.
19 Dec2013
By Jane E. West
On December 17, the U.S. Department of Education issued a formal Request for Information (RFI) about the development of its new system for rating institutions of higher education, officially known as the Postsecondary Institution Ratings System (PIRS). (Note: This system aims to rate institutions as a whole, not their various divisions, although educator preparation programs would be a part of their institutions’ rating.)
The Department is urging higher education faculty, students, parents, researchers, data experts, advocacy groups, organizations with expertise in developing rating systems, and others to provide information about what should be included in this rating system. The deadline for submission is January 31.
18 Dec2013
By Aimee Hall
AACTE invites member institutions to apply to join a new initiative, Changing the Demographic Makeup of the Teaching Workforce, which will help 10 institutions increase the number of Black and Hispanic men receiving initial teaching certification through their programs.
The initiative will be AACTE’s first “networked improvement community” (NIC). NICs use the principles of improvement science to analyze a problem and design innovations. They leverage the community of participants to test and refine those interventions in a variety of contexts and to distribute those interventions broadly. AACTE’s NIC will focus on areas for intervention such as recruitment strategies, equity-based admissions policies, incentives to pursue a career in teaching, and others identified by NIC members.
17 Dec2013
By Tim Finklea
On December 12, the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) and Pearson’s Center for Educator Effectiveness released a research report at an interactive launch event at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
At the event, a panel of several former teachers of the year joined American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar Frederick Hess to discuss the conditions necessary to develop sustainable career pathways that might make teaching a more attractive career option for a new generation of educators. The panel also discussed the benefits of teacher preparation resources such as edTPA and the role of educator preparation programs in enhancing teacher leadership roles.
10 Dec2013
By Lisa Johnson Kiefer and Mary Harrill
As AACTE’s Mary Harrill-McClellan alerted members last week, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released its latest critique of university-based teacher preparation today, Training Our Future Teachers: Classroom Management.
The report follows the standard NCTQ model of using a review of course materials from a small sample of programs to support the broad claim that the teacher preparation profession is not getting the job done.
AACTE issued a statement citing specific concerns with the report, including mainly that the report does not actually tell us whether programs are adequately preparing teacher candidates to manage classrooms. Other concerns noted in the statement are that the report contains no evidence to support the sweeping claims about “the field” of teacher preparation and that the assertions that edTPA does not focus on classroom management skills are incorrect.
