Increasing Student Achievement
by Improving Teacher Education
High quality teachers are a key ingredient in student achievement. Study after study has shown that students struggle to learn if they don’t have properly prepared teachers.
So what needs to be done to better prepare students who are seeking a profession in classroom teaching?
Teachers for a New Era is answering that question by helping 11 colleges and universities overhaul their schools of education. AED is assisting these institutions implement the programs.
Virtual Library on Teacher Education As part of its liaison role, AED originally sent out electronic summaries of research the participants may have found useful as they developed and implemented their programs.
At the suggestion of one of the sites, AED created a “virtual library”—a searchable database of information pertaining to the three design principles of the project and overall research on teacher preparation.
The virtual library can be accessed at the Teachers for a New Era Web site, and is open to the public. |
The initiative has three essential design principles:
- Evidence. Decisions about the program must be driven by evidence. This includes recent research on the best ways to prepare teachers for the classroom, and an evaluation of the program’s effectiveness that includes data on the achievement of the K-12 students taught by graduates of the program. The theory is that if the university is effective in preparing high-quality teachers, the students will perform better academically.
- Engaging Arts and Sciences Faculty. Every program must include the active engagement of the arts and sciences faculty in the preparation of aspiring teachers. Traditionally schools of education and schools of arts and sciences have remained separate, with one focusing on pedagogy and the other on subject knowledge. That meant that a teaching student would learn how to teach math to elementary school students from faculty in the education department, but the pedagogy may not be coordinated with the content they learn from the mathematics department. Teachers for a New Era requires that both sets of faculty work together to ensure that teacher education candidates have both a subject knowledge and strong base in pedagogy.
- Teaching as a Clinical Profession. Traditionally a teacher-prepartion program ends once a student finishes his or her coursework and student teaching. However, Teachers for a New Era takes that preparation one step further by assisting novice educators through their first two years of teaching. This experience is considered a “residency” period that requires supervision and mentoring from the university or college faculty. The aspiring teacher completes the preparation program once this period of induction has ended.
“Taken together, these three principles are a new approach,” said Robin White, a senior program and policy director at the AED National Institute for Work and Learning. “TNE is one of the most revolutionary reform initiatives in teacher preparation.”
Essential Liaisons
AED provides the 11 TNE sites with a wide range of supports including a liaison who is assigned to that institution. The services range from assisting with project design and implementation to convening workshops and disseminating research.
Teachers for a New Era is funded by three private foundations: The Carnegie Corporation of New York; The Ford Foundation; The Annenberg Foundation. An independent evaluation of the TNE initiative is supported by The Rockefeller Foundation and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.
“AED has helped us think through the changes we want to bring about at the university through Teachers for a New Era, and kept us in touch with the other TNE sites so that we can learn from one another,” said Philip Handler, Vice Provost, California State University, Northridge.
‘Lasting Impact’
With more and more emphasis being placed on preparing high-quality teachers, programs like Teachers for a New Era are being closely watched in the field.
“This program is likely to have a lasting impact,” said Bryna Shore Fraser, associate director of the AED National Institute for Work and Learning. “Not only on the participating colleges and universities, but also on other institutions looking at Teachers for a New Era as a source of strategies for improving teacher preparation at their schools.”
The 11 higher education institutions participating in TNE are: Bank Street College of Education; Boston College; California State University, Northridge; Florida A & M University; Michigan State University; Stanford University; University of Connecticut; University of Texas, El Paso; University of Virginia; University of Washington; and University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
For more information, visit the Teachers for a New Era Web site, or contact Robin White.
