Georgia Association of Teacher Educators Volume 28, Issue 2 April 2018
GATEways to Teacher Education
Cover artwork by Georgette “Gigi” Epperson, 5th grade, East Newton Elementary School, Covington, Georgia 3rd Place Winner in the GATE 2017 Conference Program Art Contest “Preparing Educators for a World Beyond Imagination”
GATEways to Teacher Education April 2018: Volume 28, Issue 2
Contents Developing the Critical Literacy Instructional Abilities of Pre-Service Educators By Anne Katz, Patricia Coberly-Holt, and Vivian Bynoe
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Pre-service educators applied their knowledge of the critical literacy conceptual framework through a series of faculty-facilitated discussions and guest speakers. Results and reflections on strategies that can be utilized to teach reading from a critical literacy viewpoint were evaluated.
The Development and Implementation of the Professional Behaviors and Dispositions Assessment (PBDA) By Mary Ariail and Sallie Averitt Miller
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A task force of teacher educators developed the Professional Behaviors and Dispositions Assessment (PBDA) to provide a framework for instruction in the essential characteristics of successful teachers and assess the characteristics that lead to successful careers in education.
I Can’t Get Online: Access and Equity in Mathematics for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities By Barbara Serianni and Lisa Dieker
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Teachers are asked to work in inclusive classrooms where students have a wide range of academic abilities and disabilities, pervasive skill deficits, and unmet social-emotional needs, as well as emotional and behavioral disorders. This article describes how teachers can use a form of blended learning, the Flex Model, to collaborate with co-teachers to support all learners.
Online Teacher Professional Development for Designing and Facilitating K-12 Blended and Online Learning By Kim C. Huett and Phoebe Balentyne
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Blended and online learning in traditional public school settings is growing rapidly, but many teachers who are expected to implement it are underprepared. This study describes a cohort of teachers engaged in a two-phased online professional development program to grow competency with designing and facilitating blended and online learning for use in their instructional settings.
The Path to a Model Curriculum in Clinical Teacher Education By Sylvia Dietrich, Chunling Niu, and Cassie Zippay
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Aiming to better prepare secondary teacher candidates as first-year professionals ready to meet the demands of teaching, this School of Teacher Education designed and implemented a classroombased clinical model that occurs during the two consecutive semesters preceding student teaching.
A Retrospective Look at Using Differentiated Faculty Development Practices to Promote Assessment and Continuous Improvement By Leigh Funk and Jessica Chafin
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As teacher educators, it is our business to create engaging, interactive, and differentiated learning environments. Why then do we not utilize similar approaches in professional learning for teacher education faculty? This article shares how a large EPP designed a professional learning series to promote faculty knowledge and skills related to student learning and program assessment.
Tears and Fears – Sighs and High Fives: Listening to the Words of Teacher Candidates After edTPA Submission By Yvonne Hefner and Dawn Souter The expectation is that edTPA be adopted as a requirement for the award of an education degree and/or teacher licensure. In this study, student teachers’ comments and perspectives of the edTPA process were captured to examine their underlying conceptions and perceptions after completing the edTPA process.
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GATEways to Teacher Education A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators
Developing the Critical Literacy Instructional Abilities of Pre-Service Educators Anne Katz, Patricia Coberly-Holt, and Vivian Bynoe, Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus
Critical literacy “accounts for ways that literacy can be used in service of self-actualization and social change” (Riley, 2015, p. 418). Reading has social, cultural, and political ramifications. When students become aware of the messages about race, gender, and power within the text, they can better connect with their own views about how these issues influence their interpretation of what they read (Hall and Piazza, 2008). Reading through the lens of critical literacy allows students to understand what they are reading from diverse perspectives (Norris, Lucas, & Prudhoe, 2012). The Problem Students learn how to read, but are not always taught how to analyze the text critically (Jones, 2006). This can often be attributed to the fact that their teachers may not have learned how to teach students to read texts from a critical perspective (Norris, et al., 2012). The goal of this collaboration was to address the efficacy of combining critical literacy and training in diverse literature for candidates in Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus’ College of Education. This Teaching and Learning grant-funded initiative fostered meaningful collaboration between the reference and instruction librarian for the College of Education and a Professor of Adult Education and Community Leadership as well as an Assistant Professor of Reading, in addition to providing valuable opportunities for dissemination of lessons learned. This framework will enable students to develop techniques to integrate critical literacy strategies throughout the curriculum of their future classrooms.
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Anticipated Outcomes Anticipated outcomes of this collaboration were as follows: Teacher candidates’ use of critical literacy will increase. Teacher candidates will discuss strategies that can be used in a classroom to teach students to read from a critical literacy viewpoint. Collaboration will be fostered between the university library and the College of Education, as well as between junior and senior faculty members. Research Methods Hefflin & Barksdale-Ladd (as cited in Iwai, 2013) assert the significance of using multicultural literature in schools. This is a powerful tool which helps students develop multiple perspectives about their culture and provides them with insights about understanding other cultures and people (Iwai, 2013). By including literature with differing perspectives, teachers can ensure that all students can make connections while also “providing a realistic view of our pluralistic society” (Landt, 2013, p. 22). Therefore, undergraduate students enrolled in a course taken prior to applying for admission to College of Education degree programs were chosen to participate in this study. Students in a fall 2016 section of EDUC 2120: Exploring Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Diversity in Educational Contexts, with a focus of this course centered on utilizing sociocultural perspectives to analyze the nature and function of culture and social class, were introduced to the concept of critical literacy and participated in
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an interactive series of faculty-facilitated small group discussions. The students’ initial use of critical literacy was assessed through a pre-test and reassessed using a post-test composed of open-ended questions. An additional evaluation measure at the end of the course involved class discussions when students described how critical literacy strategies can be implemented in their future classroom. Participants There were 22 students, including 18 females and 4 males, enrolled in the sophomore level course Exploring Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Diversity in Educational Contexts, which is completed prior to acceptance in the Teacher Education program at a small state university in a southern coastal city. The students’ intended majors included pre-education in elementary, secondary, and P-12 areas. Group members ranged in age from 19 to 57, with 18 (81.81%) of the 22 participants between 19 and 29 years of age. They consisted of 7 African American, 1 multi-racial, and 15 Caucasian students. Research Procedures Participants participated in faculty-led discussions on a set number of chapters scheduled every few weeks throughout the fifteen-week semester. During each book discussion session, university faculty introduced various critical reading activities, inviting participant involvement to discuss the work of fiction from these viewpoints. As the semester progressed, an adolescent with the same cultural background as the main character of the book they were reading visited with the participants, providing them with an opportunity to test any bias and stereotypes they might have held. During the final class discussion, faculty asked open-ended questions regarding their experience. This included new insights gained regarding multicultural literature, reflections on critical literacy, and the project’s impact on students’ future teaching skills. Activities and Methods Book description. Students who participated in the study were each provided with a copy of the young adult novel Does My
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Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah (2008). The text, selected by the librarian, is a young adult novel featuring a seventeen-year-old Australian-Palestinian-Muslim woman who decides to wear her hijab, the traditional head covering worn by Muslims as a part of their faith, on a full-time basis. Over her winter break, Amal makes the decision to wear the hijab while watching an episode of the television show “Friends.” Amal has friends from a range of backgrounds who each have their own opinion regarding her decision to wear the hijab. The reader learns about intricacies of the main character’s cultural background as well as influences from her parents, family, and peers throughout the course of the book. The story deals with issues that any high school student faces, with the additional pressure that Amal must tackle. She struggles to be authentically herself in an environment that is not always welcoming to anyone who is different. Close reading and critical literacy theory workshop. The Assistant Professor of Reading presented a workshop on close reading strategies to students enrolled in the course at the beginning of the semester. “Close reading was introduced as a lens through which the reader sets a purpose for the literacy task, interprets words and phrases, analyzes the structure (visual and text elements), finds patterns and relationships between details, seeks to understand the author’s reasoning and use of evidence, integrates ideas from the text, and promotes connections (Lehman & Roberts, 2013). A rationale for the importance of close reading strategies was also presented. This led to a discussion of how the process of close reading can help students concentrate on what is being read, encourages sustained effort to understand the text, and develops critical reading and thinking skills. Overall, the value of close reading strategies to facilitate students’ ability to become strategic and independent readers was modeled” (Katz, 2018, p. 281). Students were invited to participate in a close reading demonstration with Avery colored dots. Before they began reading an article from the National Public Radio news website on the topic of print versus online reading (Weiner, 2015), students were asked to jot down their
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purpose for reading on a post-it note. For their first reading of the material, students were invited to overview the article in order to figure out what the text said. During the second reading, they were asked to consider how the text worked. With a pink Avery post-it dot, students recorded a text-to-self connection they generated while reading, along with a short note to remind them about the connection later. Next, they were asked to record a memorable word choice or sentence with an orange Avery post-it dot. Lastly, students utilized a green Avery colored dot to record language that conveyed the author’s perspective as they read. In the margin, they were invited to note why they selected this language as contributing to the author’s point of view. This was followed by the “Knew-New-Q” activity (Gambrell, 2014), when students annotated the text. If the information in the article was content that they already knew, students placed a “K” in the margin. If the information was new to them, students placed an “N” in the margin. If students had a question regarding a portion of the article, students placed a “Q” in the margin. Afterwards, students shared their reflections with a peer and wrote a sentence to solidify their “Knew-New-Q” insights. Additional close reading strategies were introduced and reinforced throughout the course of the semester. This included a “what do you notice?” chart to record ideas and spark discussion as well as additional annotation strategies that can be utilized while reading. Visual literacy activities with post-it notes were modeled, such as determining important concepts while reading and noting connections with lines, circles, arrows, and symbols to show the relationship between the ideas. Strategies such as re-writing the text as a series of tweets, discussion circle roles, analyzing a text from different viewpoints, and creating studentgenerated discussion questions to accompany a text were also introduced. Critical literacy strategies employed throughout discussions. Students were invited to employ a range of close reading and critical literacy strategies throughout their reading of the book and class discussions. These included the Avery colored dot strategy, the K-N-Q activity,
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making connections, visual outlines, and annotation strategies, among other means. College of Education students were invited to reflect upon how these strategies created a more critical reader. In addition, they were asked to share insights related to how a close reading lens could impact their teaching style as future educators. Student comments from the conclusion of the project yielded valuable data, demonstrating the impact of this project on these future teachers. Additional learning opportunities. High School Student Guest Speaker. A local Muslim high school student was invited to visit the course. She shared her personal experience of recently beginning to wear a hijab to school. This included her peers’ reactions as well as its impact on her participation in school activities, such as roles in the school play and gym attire. Students posed questions to the guest speaker, who spoke honestly regarding a range of inquiries about her family’s influence on her decision and her future life goals, both personally and professionally. Faculty Guest Speaker. Dr. Stephanie Jones, professor at the University of Georgia in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice, teaches courses on ethnographic- and place-based teaching, feminist theory and pedagogy, social class and poverty, early childhood education, and literacy. Dr. Jones delivered a Friday lunchtime lecture to faculty, students, and invited community guests. Her presentation focused on how to implement critical literacy not only in the classroom, but also in everyday life. During her visit, Dr. Jones worked with this class, teaching students how to “read their world” from a critical perspective and ways to encourage critical thinking in the classroom. College of Education Brown Bag Session. A Brown Bag session was held at the conclusion of the project in order to share insights gleaned from the critical literacy project with the College of Education community. The session introduced the context for the project, provided details on the course as well as the guest speaker from the local high school who recently started wearing a hijab, and modeled close reading and critical literacy strategies for attendees. Two
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undergraduate students from the course helped convey their viewpoints during this informal conversation. Both students described what they learned from participating in the book discussion and how they will apply critical literacy strategies to their own teaching practices as future educators. The Brown Bag provided a valuable opportunity to disseminate information about teaching critical literacy in the classroom to College of Education faculty and students. Results Many of the students in the course revealed that they learned how to approach reading from a more critical perspective when asked to provide answers to several reflective questions. Those questions were as follows: In what ways does the book reproduce stereotypes? In what ways does the book undo stereotypes? Who is benefiting from this kind of presentation of the text? What critical literacy strategies have you learned from this initiative? How has your view of literacy instruction for future students evolved over the course of the semester? Please be specific. How has this project impacted your own perspectives on the reading process? When responding to the open-ended questions during the classroom discussion component, student responses included the following: What critical literacy strategies have you learned from this initiative? “I realized that I have been reading incorrectly – that’s why I have to read information multiple times to actually retain the information.” “I learned a multi-cultural perspective evaluation of a work that at first glance seemed to be a ‘kids book,’ but it has appeal and a message for all ages.” “From this book and these workshops, I have learned to close read while still connecting to the character.” “I really liked the different colored dots connection method because it helped me read the text more deeply. I have always
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been a good reader so I had never really thought about having questions about details of the readings.” How has your view of literacy instruction for future students evolved over the course of the semester? Please be specific. “My view has changed a lot because I never realized how important it is for students to know and understand what they’re actually reading and relate to it themselves.” “Before I just saw reading as enjoyment, especially with a book like this. Now I see the importance of writing and connecting to the book.” “I realized that it’s important to teach students how to dissect text so that they are actually retaining the information.” “It has made my reading deeper and more critical in the way I think.” How has this project impacted your own perspectives on the reading process? “I really have learned to question what I read now. I’ve enjoyed diving deeper into it [the book].” “I have learned that looking beyond what we think we know is important. KWL, charts, and using colored dot techniques [were helpful].” “I feel all different kinds of people can benefit from this [book]. Young Muslim females, future educators, and really anyone else. Personally, this text helped me very much. It has helped me see things from a different view.” “It has opened up my mind and ability to [participate in] active learning.” Responses suggest that participants gained critical literacy skills and learned how to incorporate strategies throughout their classroom lessons through this lens. In addition, reading and discussing literature that focuses on the experiences of characters with perspectives different from their own encouraged critical thinking. Students were able to generate authentic connections with the main character, providing a realistic view of a pluralistic society.
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Impact on Preservice Educators and Project Effect on the College of Education Throughout the course of the semester, preservice education majors became familiar with a range of critical literacy techniques to utilize in their own future classrooms. In addition, teacher candidates learned that incorporating close reading strategies through young adult multicultural literature can facilitate better understanding of the diversity and various perspectives around them, while teaching critical thinking skills that will be used throughout a lifetime. This project served as a meaningful collaboration between a university librarian and two faculty members in the College of Education. Each put forth meaningful contributions to enrich this learning opportunity for students and the larger university community. “For faculty [and staff] to be effective in supporting students’ learning, they must connect with Association of American College and University tenets that ‘broaden students’ perspectives and engage them in problem-centered inquiry about pressing and perennial issues. By bringing students into communities where they learn from those whose experiences and views (may be) different from their own, it also builds important capacities we need to succeed as a diverse and collaborative democracy’” (Katz, 2018, p. 267). The book discussion and accompanying critical literacy project addresses the need to bridge theory with practice. In addition, by providing university students who are in the early stages of their degree program within the College of Education with this experience, this project assisted the College of Education with accomplishing its strategic goals of providing transformative student learning experiences and increasing retention. According to Gaston (2015), “too many students experience general education not as a conspicuously useful and meaningful component of a coherent baccalaureate education, but as a curricular impediment that they must ‘get out of the way’ prior to study in a major . . . they may be unable to visualize a meaningful trajectory in their curriculum, with an attendant loss of motivation and commitment to persist” (p. 5). In addition, information about teaching critical literacy in the classroom was disseminated to
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faculty members as well as members of the wider community as a result of this project. Insights yielded from this initiative have helped us examine how we can better prepare our students for the demands of twenty-first century teaching through a collaborative approach. References Abdel-Fattah, R. (2008). Does my head look big in this? New York, NY: Orchard Books. Gaston, P. L. (2015). General education transformed: How we can, why we must. Washington, DC: American Association of Colleges and Universities. Gambrell, L. (2014, October). Reading informational text with pleasure, proficiency, and passion. Keynote presentation at Georgia Reading Association Conference, Macon, GA. Hall, L. A., & Piazza, S. V. (2008). Critically reading texts: What students do and how teachers can help. The Reading Teacher 62(1), 32-41. Iwai, Y. (2013). Multicultural children’s literature and teacher candidates’ awareness and attitudes toward cultural diversity. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 5(2), 185-198. Jones, S. R. (2006). Girls, social class, and literacy: What teachers can do to make a difference. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Katz, A. (2018) Capturing educator voices: Graduate students tackle twenty-first century literacy challenges in an online environment. In J. Keengwe (Ed.), Handbook of research on pedagogical models for next-generation teaching and learning (pp. 265-284). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Landt, S. M. (2013). Children’s literature with diverse perspectives: Reflecting all students. The Dragon Lode, 32(1), 21-31. Lehman, C., & Roberts, K. (2013). Falling in love with close reading: Lessons for analyzing texts – and life. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Norris, K., Lucas, L., & Prudhoe, C. (2012). Examining critical literacy: Preparing preservice teachers to use critical literacy in the early childhood classroom. Multicultural Education, 19(2), 59-62. Riley, K, (2015). Enacting critical literacy in English classrooms: How a teacher learning community supported critical inquiry. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(5), 417-425. Weiner, E. (2015, May 28). Technology of books has changed, but bookstores are hanging in there. Morning Edition: The Week’s Best Stories from NPR Books. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/ 2015/05/28/408787099/the-technology-of-bookshas-changed-but-bookstores-are-hanging-in
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About the Authors Anne Katz, Ph.D. Dr. Katz is an Assistant Professor of Reading in the College of Education at Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus in Savannah, Georgia. She is involved in literacy research and community outreach projects in local schools. Dr. Katz was selected as a Governor’s Teaching Fellow by The University of Georgia Institute of Higher Education in 2015, and currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Children’s Literature and Reading Special Interest Group of the International Literacy Association. She enjoys mentoring future educators. Patricia Coberly-Holt, Ed.D. Dr. Coberly-Holt is a Professor of Adult Education and Community Leadership in the College of Education at Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus in Savannah, Georgia. She has published and presented on topics related to diversity in education and the development of cultural understanding. Dr. Holt teaches EDUC 2120: Exploring Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Diversity in Educational Contexts. Vivian Bynoe, MLIS Ms. Bynoe is a reference and instruction librarian at Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus in Savannah, Georgia. As the Lane Library liaison to the College of Education, she is well-acquainted with the educational objectives of the College and its goal to graduate culturally competent teachers. Her interest in critical literacy began prior to her academic career when she worked as a children’s librarian and developed an expertise in Young Adult Literature. This combination of skills and knowledge was essential to the development of the grant initiative.
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GATEways to Teacher Education A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators
The Development and Implementation of the Professional Behaviors and Dispositions Assessment Mary Ariail, University of Southern Mississippi, and Sallie Averitt Miller, Columbus State University
The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) reviews schools and colleges that prepare teachers and other educators. CAEP emphasizes the need for educator preparation providers (EPPs) to provide evidence of quality and continuous improvement using valid and reliable instruments to assess knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Although the importance of knowledge and skills have long been stressed in teacher education, emphasis on the area of dispositions is relatively recent, gaining momentum in 2000 with the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education’s (NCATE) revised set of standards (Damon, 2007). NCATE’s definition of dispositions, which appeared in the glossary of the 2001 Standards for Professional Schools, is as follows: Dispositions: The values, commitments, and professional ethics that influence practices and behaviors toward students, families, colleagues, and communities and affect student learning, motivation, and development as well as the educator’s own professional growth. Dispositions are guided by knowledge bases and beliefs and attitudes related to values such as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice. For example, they might include a belief that all students can learn, a vision of high and challenging standards, or a commitment to a safe and supportive learning environment. (NCATE, 2001) While the NCATE definition does not include specific references to professional behaviors, this concept will be included in this discussion, as
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dispositions and professional behaviors are inextricably intertwined. Indeed, any assessment of dispositions, without consideration of outward behaviors, would be impossible. CAEP, which is replacing NCATE accreditation for many schools of education, focuses on dispositions in four of its five standards and requires valid and reliable assessments to continuously monitor, evaluate, and improve EPP programs. For example, CAEP Standard 1.1 refers explicitly to the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Standards, which place strong emphasis on teachers’ knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions (CAEP, 2011; InTASC, 2013). Few educator preparation programs include courses specifically designed to teach candidates about professional behaviors and dispositions. However, education professionals who serve in teacher preparation programs often observe that unprofessional behaviors and dispositions are more likely to impede the success of teacher candidates or novice teachers than their lack of content knowledge or teaching skills (Ariail & Miller, 2016). Thus, it is imperative for teacher education programs to teach candidates explicitly about professional behaviors and dispositions throughout the program and to use an appropriate assessment instrument to monitor the developing professionalism of candidates. Dottin (2009) suggests that “dispositional conduct should be nurtured and assessed in preparation programs so that candidates may transfer their dispositional conduct to professional settings. . . . [P]rofessional
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education units must create cultures in which the habits of pedagogical mindfulness and thoughtfulness that facilitate intelligent action and professional judgment are seen by candidates, are encouraged and orchestrated through candidate/ candidate interaction, and are taught directly” (p. 86). This article describes the processes used to identify essential assessment criteria, as suggested by Georgia school systems and EPPs, and to create the Professional Behaviors and Dispositions Assessment (PBDA; see Appendix A) for use as an instructional framework and tool for assessment. The PBDA is intended to be used for guiding teacher candidates as they develop and refine their professional behaviors and dispositions. In addition, the PBDA may be easily adapted for use with in-service teachers. Project Phase I To date, the project has been completed in two phases – Phase I and Phase II. In Phase I, data were collected and analyzed to identify the essential criteria that would be included on an assessment instrument for professional behaviors and dispositions. A description of Phase I was included in an earlier issue of this journal (Ariail & Miller, 2016), and excerpts of that article are used here to provide a context for discussion of Phase II. In Phase II, the assessment instrument was developed, and guidelines for implementation were established. The resulting assessment is currently being piloted with several cooperating institutions. In Phase III, the researchers will use the pilot data to establish predictive validity for the instrument. The impetus for the project was initially influenced by CAEP’s requirement for EPPs to provide evidence of program quality using valid and reliable assessments. One of the authors of this article had been asked on many occasions to complete and submit hiring reference forms for students graduating from the teacher preparation program. She observed that far more questions on the forms were related to dispositions and professional conduct than to knowledge and skills. At the same time, she was serving as chair of the unit’s assessment committee, involved in preparing the teacher preparation programs at her university for future accreditation reviews and
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seeking an appropriate dispositions assessment instrument. In addition, she wanted the instrument to be useful for helping candidates understand the importance of professional behaviors and attitudes when working in school settings. After an extensive search, no satisfactory instrument was found, so she decided to create an instrument for her university, which would be based on dispositional elements included on school system hiring reference forms. This decision was based on the assumption that the items included on hiring reference forms represented the characteristics that teachers need for successful careers at their schools. The researcher examined the hiring reference forms from several school systems and informally compared the criteria, which she found to be notably consistent across the forms. This observation led to the idea of gathering as many forms as possible and completing a larger comparison. It quickly became apparent that this project would be too labor-intensive for one person to accomplish, so she invited a researcher from another university, the second author on this article, to assist with the project. Together, they presented the idea at a state meeting of assessment directors and immediately gained support from additional educators with similar interests. Twelve members from the assessment association volunteered to help with distribution of the request for forms. The researchers obtained contact information for the human resources department of every school district in the state and assigned each volunteer a portion of the departments to contact. For consistency, a form letter, personalized for the director of human resources for each school district, was sent by email. After several weeks, having received 25 usable forms, the two researchers began their analysis of the data, creating a spreadsheet with a column for dispositional criteria down the left side of the page and a column for each participating school system across the top. Beginning with School System A, each dispositional criterion was listed from the hiring reference form and a “1” was placed in the corresponding cell. With the next school system, similar criteria were considered. If a match for a criterion was noted, a number “1” was placed in its corresponding cell. Using a
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numerical value to mark each item facilitated electronic calculations of totals. When a criterion was encountered that had not been identified from previous forms, it was added to the list. The last column on the right showed totals for each criterion, which were used to calculate frequency of responses. Table 1 is a simplified representation showing how the data were organized in the frequency chart.
1
1
1
TOTALS
1
School System D
School System C
Cooperative; collaborative
School System B
Disposition Criteria
School System A
Table 1 Sample Frequency Chart for Dispositions
1
1
3
3
Punctual Relates well to adults Relates well to children Uses good judgment
1
1
1
1
1
1
The two project co-directors reviewed the items on each form independently, entering appropriate marks as they decided how each criterion should be categorized. After completing each form independently, they talked through their decisions for each criterion together. For most of the criteria, the researchers’ categorizations were identical. In the few cases where there was disagreement, the researchers discussed the criterion and arrived at consensus for its designation. Criteria that were worded differently but were similar in content were collapsed into a single category. For example, the researchers decided that cooperation and collaboration were similar constructs and could be grouped together. Other criteria, though similar in wording, were not collapsed. For example, the researchers agreed that relationships with adults should be separate from relationships
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3
1
with students, as the first is more relevant outside the classroom, while the latter is more relevant to effectively working with students in the teaching environment. Criteria that referred only to knowledge or skills were not included. When data from all the school districts were entered, the researchers ranked the criteria according to frequency. The following list shows the ranking of the identified dispositional criteria from the analysis of the hiring reference forms, with the frequency of the response in parentheses (Ariail & Miller, 2016): 1. Cooperation/Collaboration (19) 2. Attitude - Enthusiastic/Professional/ Positive/Flexible (18) 3. Relationships with Adults (17) 4. Communication - Professional/Effective (15) 5. Attendance/Punctuality (14) 6. Relationships with Students (14) 7. Initiative/Personal Motivation/Creativity/ Resourcefulness 13) 8. Composure/Self-Control (e.g., accepts constructive criticism) (12) 9. Judgment - Professional (12) 10. Ethics/Character/Integrity (11) 11. Willingness to Assist/Accept Responsibilities (11) 12. Appearance and Dress - Professional (9) 13. Dependability/Reliability (8) 14. Organization/Time Management (7) 15. Willingness to Learn and/or Grow Professionally (6) 16. Supports School Mission/Visions; Loyal to Employer (6) 17. Commitment to/Enthusiasm for the Profession (5) 18. Understands/Follows Policies, Procedures, Rules (5) 19. Role Model for Others (5) 20. Tact (5) 21. Neatness/Accuracy/Timeliness with Work (4) 22. Confidentiality (3) 23. Expectations High for Students (3) 24. Problem Solving Ability (1) 25. Respect/Understanding (1) The top seven items on the list appeared on more than 50% of the hiring forms and were selected for inclusion on the assessment instrument based
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on frequency. The most frequently mentioned criterion was cooperation/collaboration, which was included on 76% of the forms. The prevalence of this criterion suggests that schools do not expect teachers to develop their professional practice in isolation. Rather, schools desire and need teachers who are willing to draw upon and contribute to the resources of other professionals and to work toward common goals in ways that are collegial and productive. The least frequently mentioned criteria, mentioned on only one form each, were problem-solving ability and respect/understanding. It should be noted that although the criteria were ranked in order of frequency, the researchers do not suggest a hierarchy of importance related to the rankings. That is, the highest ranked criteria are not necessarily more critical to teacher success than the least frequently mentioned, only that they appeared more frequently on the forms. The rankings do, however, suggest commonly held expectations for the criteria that are recognized by school systems as important for teacher success. Following analysis of the data and the selection of the high frequency indicators, the researchers presented their findings at the next meeting of state assessment directors and solicited feedback from members at the meeting. The researchers presented the data on the spreadsheet to the association members and asked them to submit written comments. Significant among the responses were comments about what was missing, such as attitudes toward students with diverse backgrounds and cultures. The researchers agreed with the suggestion from the state assessment directors that there was a need for dispositional criteria that are also important for teacher success, a recognition that led to the inclusion of additional criteria from another source – EPPs. At approximately the same time the researchers were analyzing the school district data, three members of the assessment directors’ group were also investigating criteria on dispositions assessments created by EPPs and were conducting frequency counts on the data. Their analysis resulted in 12 indicators with 50% or higher agreement. Five of the 12 indicators from the EPP data were the same as those identified in the hiring reference
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forms from the school districts. The researchers agreed to add the remaining 7 EPP high frequency indicators, for a total of 14 unique indicators to be included on the PBDA. The researchers then asked the association members to address the following question: How can these data from the 25 school systems inform the development of an assessment of dispositions for pre-service teachers in this state? Among the responses was, “These data can assist the development of professionalism/dispositions assessments by incorporating districts’ expectations into our own.” The researchers interpreted this response to indicate that the perspectives of both the school systems and the teacher preparation programs should be included in any assessment used to measure candidates’ dispositions. Project Phase II The second phase of the project involved using the criteria identified in Phase I to design a rubric that could be used with confidence to assess professional behaviors and dispositions. A task force was formed to implement Phase II, consisting of a collaborative group of professional educator volunteers from nine universities who collaborated for more than a year, both face-to-face and in online webinars, to construct the rubric. The criteria for the rubric includes the top 7 criteria identified by the 25 participating school systems and the top 7 additional criteria drawn from EPPs from dispositions assessments. The first step in Phase II was to turn each of the 14 criteria into outcome statements. For example, the criterion “Attendance” became “The teacher or teacher candidate adheres to policies regarding attendance and punctuality.” Next, the task force members discussed each outcome statement to develop descriptors for each level of the rubric related to the outcome statement. For some of the descriptors, the task force included hypothetical examples to help clarify the descriptor. When a satisfactory draft of the rubric was completed, eight EPPs piloted the rubric to further refine and validate it, offering feedback that was reviewed by the task force to improve the rubric. Finally, the instrument was reviewed by four educators who serve as program and unit
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reviewers for CAEP. Again, the feedback was reviewed and the rubric was again revised in response to the feedback. The resulting instrument is the PBDA in its current form. Validity Validity is the most basic consideration in developing and evaluating assessments. It is about the appropriateness of the results of an assessment for a specific purpose. The CAEP Evidence Guide (2015) describes four types of validity: 1. Construct validity: To what extent does the evaluation measure what it claims to measure? 2. Content validity: Are the right attributes being measured in the right balance? 3. Predictive validity: Is there evidence that teachers graduating from highly rated teacher preparation programs prove more effective in the classroom? 4. Face validity: Is a measure subjectively viewed as being important and relevant to assessing teacher preparation programs? (p. 17) In developing the PBDA, we have attempted to establish content validity based on expert agreement. Content validity for this research is based on the expert judgment of the school district personnel who developed the hiring reference forms, authors of the EPP disposition assessments, reviews and feedback from state assessment directors, current CAEP reviewers, university task force members, and representatives from state education agencies. The first seven indicators included in the PBDA were selected by reviewing the employment hiring reference forms from 25 school districts. The underlying assumption is that school systems use their expert judgment and years of experience to determine which professional behaviors and dispositions are critical for success as teachers in their schools. Thus, school districts are important stakeholders when applicants are hired as teachers and can be considered as experts in knowing the professional behaviors and dispositions that are essential in the hiring process. Likewise, professional educators who work with teacher candidates in EPPs use their expert judgment
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and years of experience to determine criteria for their disposition assessments. Content validity is the appropriateness of the content of an assessment; that is, “are the right attributes being measured in the right balance?” (CAEP, 2015, p. 17) For this research, the attributes are professional behaviors and dispositions that the school districts want their teachers to possess and those that the EPPs deem important for their candidates’ success. The assumption is that the hiring reference forms were created through a deliberative process involving input from numerous qualified school district experts who agree that the indicators are essential. A similar deliberative process for the EPPs’ dispositions assessment indicators was assumed. The qualifier for inclusion of each indicator in the PBDA was that the particular professional behavior or disposition appeared on 50% or more of the 25 school districts’ teacher hiring reference forms and those of the 12 EPPs’ high frequency indicators. The 50% cutoff was chosen to validate the PBDA because of its similarity to the Lawshe technique, which measures the agreement of a group of panelists who deem criteria as essential (Lawshe, 1975). According to Lawshe, values greater than 50% agreement indicate a content validity ratio (CVR) greater than zero. Ayre and Scally (2014) note that the Lawshe CVR involves a panel of subject matter “experts” rating items into one of three categories: “essential,” “useful, but not essential,” or “not necessary.” Items deemed “essential” by a critical number of panel members are then included within the final instrument, with items failing to achieve this critical level discarded. For purposes of this project, the frequency counts on the hiring reference forms and the EPP dispositions assessments are comparable to Lawshe’s panel of experts. That is, frequency counts above 50% indicate agreement. The following Table II, School District Data, displays the seven professional behaviors or dispositions based on the expert agreement [frequency counts] with values greater than 50% and CRV values greater than zero. These professional behaviors and dispositions are included as content for the PBDA.
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Table 2 School District Data Methodology Frequency Count and Content Validity Ratio % of Total Agreement
"n" School District/ Frequency/ Agreeing Essential
Total Experts Frequency Count
Content Validity Ratio (CVR) = (n-n/2) / (n/2)
Cooperation/Collaboration*
76%
19
25
0.52
Enthusiastic Attitude / Professional / Positive / Flexible*
72%
18
25
0.44
Relationships with Adults*
68%
17
25
0.36
Professional / Effective Communication*
60%
15
25
0.20
Attendance / Punctuality
56%
14
25
0.12
Relationships with Students*
56%
14
25
0.12
Initiative / Personal Motivation / Creativity / Resourcefulness
52%
13
25
0.04
School District Data Professional Behaviors and Dispositions
Table 2 School District Data Notes: 1. All professional behaviors and dispositions with greater than 50% expert agreement based on frequency counts; CVR > 0 represents more than 50% agreement were selected to include in the PBDA. 2. The “*” denotes a duplicated professional behavior / disposition listed by the EPPs. 3. CRV values range from -1.0 to +1.0; values greater than zero represent greater than 50% expert agreement. 4. The professional behaviors and dispositions align with the CAEP Standards (2011) and the InTASC Standards (2013).
The following Table III, Educator Preparation Provider (EPP) data, displays the seven professional behaviors or dispositions based on the expert agreement [frequency counts] with values greater than 50% and CRV values greater than zero. These professional behaviors and dispositions are included as content for the PBDA.
Table 3 Educator Preparation Providers Data Methodology Frequency Count and Content Validity Ratio Educator Preparation Providers Data Professional Behaviors and Dispositions
% of Total Agreement
"n" EPP/ Frequency/ Agreeing Essential
Total Experts Frequency Count
Content Validity Ratio (CVR) = (n-n/2) / (n/2)
Professional Appearance and Demeanor
100%
12
12
1.00
Legal and Ethical Conduct
83%
10
12
0.67
67%
8
12
0.33
67%
8
12
0.33
67%
8
12
0.33
Commitment to student learning
58%
7
12
0.17
Commitment to improvement
58%
7
12
0.17
Respect for and understanding students’ and others’ diversity Creates positive learning environment / classroom management / shared decision-making in the classroom Time management / effective planning and organization
Table 3 Educator Preparation Provider Notes: 1. The two researchers [co-project directors] selected all professional behaviors and dispositions with greater than 50% expert agreement based on frequency counts; CVR > 0 represents more than 50% agreement. 2. CRV values range from -1.0 to +1.0; values greater than zero represent greater than 50% expert agreement. 3. The professional behaviors and dispositions align with the CAEP Standards (2011) and the InTASC Standards (2013).
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In summary, to avoid duplicate CVR counting, the researchers deleted five of the EPP professional behaviors and dispositions that overlapped with those of the school districts. After merging the professional behaviors and dispositions meeting the greater than 50% agreement for both the school districts and EPPs, the final assessment includes 14 unique professional behaviors and dispositions. Phase II of the project was devoted primarily to the development of the assessment instrument using the 14 indicators that were identified as essential criteria during Phase I. The project codirectors once again invited members of the state assessment directors’ association to participate. Volunteers included associate deans, assessment directors, department chairs, and university faculty. Seven education professionals, in addition to the two co-project directors, joined together as a task force for a total of nine members representing nine different universities. The task force met in weekly online webinars for more than a year for a total of more than 60 hours. The project co-directors met with each other in between the online discussions for approximately 60 additional hours. The codirectors also met together for a total of seven days of intensive analysis meetings for more than 110 hours. In all, a conservative estimate of the number of hours spent in meetings to develop the PBDA exceeds 230 meeting hours. This figure does not include the hours spent by individual task force members on various assignments related to the development of the instrument. The number of project hours that the members of the task force invested in the development of the PBDA suggests a high degree of commitment, rigor, and collaboration in developing a highquality instrument for assessment. Thus, rigorous attempts have been made to support the establishment of content validity. Furthermore, following the analysis of pilot data, the task force will work toward establishing predictive validity. Reliability Reliability is the consistency of a measure as a necessary condition for validity (Gorowara, n.d.) and may be defined as the extent to which scores are repeatable and stable; that is, similar results for the PBDA for a given subject would be
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produced by multiple assessors. According to the CAEP Evidence Guide (2015), at the heart of reliability is the question, “Can the evidence be corroborated?” A second question is, “Can the findings be replicated?” (p.18). Section 4 of the CAEP Evaluation Framework requires EPPs to demonstrate the reliability of the data resulting from all EPPcreated assessment instruments; at a minimum, EPPs should report the percentage of interrater agreement (CAEP, 2017). The standard deviation indicates the extent to which assessors agree or disagree with each other; the smaller the standard deviation, the more agreement. It should be noted that a single “outlying” response can distort the standard deviation and the sense of agreement (Posner, 2018). Because of the variability among the ways EPPs may use the PBDA, the task force cannot make claims of reliability. Therefore, it is recommended that the CAEP-required interrater reliability percentage be derived within each institution by calculating percent agreements by the assessors. Calculating percent agreements for more multiple assessors can quickly become unwieldly; therefore, institutions may consider using computer software for calculating the standard deviation and other relevant statistics for determining reliability. Some platform providers (e.g., LiveText, TK20) include statistical software that accomplishes these calculations automatically when rubric data are entered electronically through the platform. Although securing the interrater reliability percentage is easily calculated, especially when using assessment software, thorough assessor training is a critical component for achieving consistent and stable results. Each EPP or school system using the PBDA is encouraged to train their assessors to use the rubric and to conduct rigorous in-house studies to ensure reliability. Guidelines for Use of the PBDA The PBDA is intended to be shared. The amount of labor and research that went into creating this research-based, comprehensive, and rigorous instrument would be far too demanding for a single individual or institution. It is based on the contributions of dozens of education experts who spent hundreds of hours in its development,
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and the task force members encourage use of the PBDA with EPPs and school systems as they support teacher candidates or in-service teachers in their developing understandings of their professional responsibilities. However, because of the rigor involved in creating the assessment and to support attempts to establish validity, the task force strongly discourages changing any of the content of the PBDA when using it for assessment. Individual institutions may add dispositional assessment criteria and indicators as long as they are not designated as part of the PBDA. They may also change the physical characteristics of the PBDA instrument. For example, columns for the levels may be rearranged. One reviewer told the project directors that her institution preferred the ratings for the levels to proceed from left to right from “Exceeds Expectations” to “Does Not Meet Expectations” because a progression from high to low is used for other rubrics at her institution. The rubric may be used in pencil/paper form, or the institution may choose to transfer the contents to an electronic platform. Such physical changes to the rubric are acceptable, as long as the content remains intact. There are several advantages of using an electronic platform. As discussed earlier, the electronic format makes it simple to calculate interrater reliability. In addition, InTASC or other standards may be electronically linked to the rubric, facilitating the collection of aggregate data for how well the candidates are performing on each of the standards. Physical changes to the rubric may be accomplished easily without the need to recreate the entire document. At the time of this writing, the rubric has already been created in LiveText as an assessment document, complete with electronic links to InTASC standards. Institutions interested in piloting the PBDA may contact the authors of this article for access to the LiveText rubric. While education professionals commonly acknowledge that teacher candidates must demonstrate the values, attitudes, beliefs, and professional behaviors necessary for successful careers in teaching, the mandate to provide valid and reliable evidence poses challenges that are not associated with assessment of knowledge and skills. First, the assessment of professional
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behaviors is situational and subjective. For example, teacher educators agree that teacher candidates should maintain a professional appearance. However, expectations for personal appearance vary widely across school settings and raise questions about how an assessor makes evaluative decisions when assessing a candidate. How does an assessor select a rating for an indicator for professional appearance if the candidate wears jeans to the school or has visible tattoos, purple hair, or nose rings? Although the assessor may find the candidate’s appearance objectionable, s/he is expected to make a fair and objective decision regarding the candidate’s professional appearance in a specific school context. Second, and even more problematic, is the assessment of characteristics that are strictly dispositional. It is, of course, impossible to directly assess personal traits such as “attitude” or “initiative.” Internal dispositions can only be evaluated by observing the actions or inactions of the candidate and then inferring the underlying dispositions that led to the observable behaviors. Such inferences require sufficient observations and interactions with the candidate to develop a repertoire of observable behaviors from which the assessor can infer the nature of the underlying traits. In addition, as with the assessment of professional behaviors, the assessment of dispositions is also contextual and subjective. The same candidate who speaks up in a faculty meeting to challenge a proposed change in the schedule may be deemed as having superior initiative in one school setting but may be perceived as “pushy” or “insubordinate” in another. Finally, the perception of personal traits is subject to interpretation by the assessor, whose own attitudes, beliefs, and values may influence his or her analysis of the dispositions underlying specific behaviors. These and other challenges may be mitigated by adhering to the guidelines outlined below. The PBDA is designed for use in teacher preparation programs, although it may be easily adapted for in-service teachers at any point in their careers. Within teacher preparation programs, the PBDA is intended to be embedded in a longitudinal, comprehensive, and systematic
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plan for supporting preservice teachers. The following guidelines are recommended for each EPP using the PBDA for assessing teacher candidates and may be revised as needed to make them appropriate for in-service teachers: 1. Provide explicit and systematic instruction for professional behaviors and dispositions throughout the program. a. Examine existing curriculum to ensure that professional behaviors and dispositions are explicitly taught throughout the program. b. If specific courses related to professional behaviors and dispositions are not included in the curriculum, add seminars or workshops that are explicitly dedicated to instructing candidates in expectations for professionalism. c. Provide each candidate with a copy of the PBDA at the beginning of his/her program. Discuss each of the criteria and the expectations for success on each element of the assessment. Ask candidates to assess themselves on each of the criteria on the rubric as a baseline for later use. d. Ask candidates to assess themselves again on each of the criteria of the PBDA at or near the end of program; compare this assessment with the baseline assessment completed at the beginning of the program and reflect on their growth and increased understanding of the expectations for professional behaviors and dispositions. Note: The beginning and ending selfassessments and reflective narratives could be included in requirements for a program portfolio. 2. Administer the PBDA a minimum of three times during each candidate’s program by multiple assessors at each of three transition points. Assessors should include faculty members, supervisors, and/or mentor teachers who have extensive knowledge of the candidate’s performance and have been carefully trained in the use of the PBDA.
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Administer the assessment at the following transition points: a. During the first semester after admittance to teacher education. Note that some items may need to be marked N/A at this point if no field experiences have been observed. b. During field experiences (approximately midpoint of program) c. At or near the end of student teaching 3. If concerns are identified and documented for a candidate at any point in the program, s/he should be counseled, provided a written plan for improvement, monitored, and assessed more frequently. The institution should clearly define consequences for any candidate not meeting expectations and provide a plan of remediation to the candidate. If improved performance is not demonstrated within a reasonable time (e.g., one semester), the faculty should consider dismissing the candidate from the program. 4. Program completers should pass the assessment with a minimum score of “Meets Expectations” on each of the 14 indicators. Individual EPPs should develop plans of consequences for students who fail to achieve minimum expectations on the PBDA. 5. Aggregate data from the assessments should be analyzed for each point of administration, shared with program faculty, and used to identify areas in the program where additional instruction and support for candidates may be needed. Careful adherence to these guidelines will help to ensure that teacher candidates are aware of the expectations for the behaviors and dispositions they will need for success as beginning teachers. References Ariail, M., & Miller, S. A. (2016). What schools look for when hiring new teachers: An examination of dispositions on hiring reference forms. GATEways to Teacher Education 27(1), 47-52. Retrieved from https://issuu.com/gaate/docs/gateways_fall_2016 Ayre, C. & Scally, A. (2014). Critical values for Lawshe’s content validity ratio: Revisiting the original methods of calculation. Measurement and
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Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 47(1) 79-86. Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation. (2011). Candidate knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions 1.1. Retrieved from http://caepnet.org/standards/standard-1 Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation. (2015). CAEP evidence guide. Retrieved from http://caepnet.org/~/media/Files/caep/knowledgecenter/caep-evidence-guide.pdf Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation. (2017). CAEP evaluation framework for EPPcreated assessments. Retrieved from http://caepnet. org/~/media/Files/caep/accreditation-resources/caepassessment-tool.pdf?la=en Damon, W. (2007). Dispositions and teacher assessment. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(5), 365-369. Dottin, E. (2009). Professional judgment and dispositions in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(1), 83-88.
Gorowara, C. C. (n.d.). Quality of evidence. Retrieved fromhttp://caepnet.org/~/media/Files/caep/conferenc es-meetings/breakout-v-quality-evidence.pdf?la=en Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium. (2013). InTASC model core teaching standards and learning progressions for teachers 1.0. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers. Retrieved from: http://www.ccsso.org/sites/default/ files/201712/2013_INTASC_Learning_Progressions_for_ Teachers.pdf Lawshe, C. H. (1975). A quantitative approach to content validity. Personnel Psychology, 28(4), 563-575. National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. (2001). Standards for professional development schools. Retrieved from http://www.ncate.org/ documents/pdsStandards.pdf Posner, B. (2018). What does standard deviation mean? The Leadership Challenge. Retrieved from http:// www.leadershipchallenge.com/resource/what-doesstandard-deviation-mean.aspx
Appendix A Professional Behaviors and Dispositions Assessment (PBDA) Outcome Statement Professional Behaviors and Dispositions 1. Collaboration The teacher or teacher candidate collaborates with others. CAEP 1.1; InTASC CrossCutting Themes 1(k), 3(k), 3(l), 3(nm), 5(u), 5(v), 6(m), 7(l), 8(s), 9(l), 10(k), 10(l)
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Does Not Meet Expectations (0) Acknowledges verbally or in writing a reluctance or unwillingness to collaborate with others OR is confrontational, argumentative, or unwilling to cooperate with others in collaborative settings
Developing
Meets Expectations
Exceeds Expectations
(1)
(2)
(3)
Acknowledges verbally or in writing the need for or the importance of collaboration but does not engage in productive, collaborative work
Collaborates with others AND makes positive contributions toward productive, collaborative work
Actively seeks opportunities to collaborate with others AND makes positive contributions to collaborative work
Not Observed
Evidence That Supports Assessor Rating
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Outcome Statement Professional Behaviors and Dispositions 2. Attitude The teacher or teacher candidate demonstrates a positive attitude. CAEP 1.1; InTASC 9
Does Not Meet Expectations (0) Demonstrates a negative attitude
Example: Gossips or complains excessively or engages in other negative discourse
Note: This criterion is measurable only by observation of the candidate’s behaviors. Examples are provided but are not intended to be inclusive of all behaviors related to the criterion.
3. Relationship with Adults The teacher or teacher candidate maintains positive relationships with adults (parents, colleagues, guardians, staff, administration, etc.). CAEP 1.1; InTASC 3, 10 Note: This criterion is measurable only by observation of the candidate’s behaviors. Examples are provided but are not intended to be inclusive of all behaviors related to the criterion.
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Developing
Meets Expectations
Exceeds Expectations
(1)
(2)
(3)
Demonstrates a positive attitude under typical, circumstances, but response to challenging situations is often unpredictable
Example: Requires guidance to seek positive solutions for challenging situations
Acts toward others in ways that are disrespectful or inappropriate
Example: Often OR egregiously demonstrates a lack of respect for others; communicates inappropriately; behaves in ways that are disrespectful to others’ feelings, perspectives, and/or cultures
Generally maintains positive relationships with adults, with few lapses
Example: Generally respectful of others; communicates appropriately; considers others’ feelings, perspectives, and cultures
Demonstrates a positive attitude in typical AND challenging situations
Example: Focuses on positive outcomes when faced with challenging situations; avoids complaining; is pleasant to others; faces challenges or problems with a demeanor of hope or optimism; exhibits flexibility and openness while working with colleagues Maintains positive relationships with adults at all times
Example: Always respectful and kind toward others; communicates appropriately; considers others’ feelings, perspectives, and cultures
Not Observed
Evidence That Supports Assessor Rating
Demonstrates a positive attitude in typical and challenging situations AND is proactive in promoting positive attitudes among others
Example: Views constructive criticism as an opportunity for growth; recognizes the strengths in others rather than their deficits
Maintains positive relationships with adults at all times AND is proactive in creating and promoting an environment that is mutually respectful
Example: Encourages others to develop and maintain positive relationships amongst themselves
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Outcome Statement Professional Behaviors and Dispositions 4. Communication The teacher or teacher candidate communicates effectively. CAEP 1.1; InTASC CrossCutting Themes 3(o), 3(n), 6(o), 8(u), 10 (a, d-g, k, m, n q, r)
Does Not Meet Expectations (0) Acknowledges verbally or in writing a reluctance or unwillingness to use effective and appropriate communications with others (e.g., students, parents or guardians, district and school personnel) OR lacks the verbal, non-verbal, and written communication techniques that foster positive interactions and promote learning in the classroom and school environment
Developing
Meets Expectations
Exceeds Expectations
(1)
(2)
(3)
Acknowledges verbally or in writing the importance of effective communication (e.g., with students, parents or guardians, district and school personnel) BUT sometimes lacks the verbal, nonverbal, and written communication techniques that foster positive interactions and promote learning in the classroom and school environment
Communicates effectively with all stakeholders (e.g., students, parents or guardians, district and school personnel) AND uses verbal, nonverbal, and written communication techniques to foster positive interactions and promote learning in the classroom and school environment
Communicates effectively with all stakeholders (e.g., students, parents or guardians, district and school personnel) and uses verbal, nonverbal, and written communication techniques to foster positive interactions and promote learning in the classroom and school environment; AND communicates with individuals outside the school environment to promote awareness of educationrelated issues
Example: Uses negative or closed body language; speaks harshly; ignores others
5. Attendance The teacher or teacher candidate adheres to policies regarding attendance and punctuality. CAEP 1.1; InTASC 9
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Absences and/or late arrivals violate university, school, and/or district policies regarding attendance and punctuality.
Not Observed
Evidence That Supports Assessor Rating
Example: Speaks at a local service organization; writes a letter to their congress-person; presents a workshop or seminar at a professional conference; creates and distributes a newsletter for parents Works toward becoming knowledgeable of university, school, and/or district policies regarding attendance and punctuality AND attempts to comply with policies
Knows and adheres to university, school, and/or district policies regarding attendance and punctuality
Knows and adheres to university, school, and/or district policies regarding attendance and punctuality AND attends school related events that are not required, such as extracurricular school activities, parent organization meetings, community events related to the school
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Outcome Statement Professional Behaviors and Dispositions 6. Relationship with Students The teacher or teacher candidate interacts appropriately and positively with others. CAEP 1.1; InTASC 3, 10
7. Initiative The teacher or teacher candidate demonstrates evidence of initiative. CAEP 1.1; InTASC 10
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Does Not Meet Expectations
Developing
Meets Expectations
Exceeds Expectations
(0)
(1)
(2)
(3)
Interacts inappropriately or negatively toward students OR provides instruction that disregards, disrespects, or is not aligned with the intellectual, social, cultural, emotional, and physical needs of the age group
Interacts appropriately and positively with students BUT provides instruction that disregards, disrespects, or is not aligned with the intellectual, social, cultural, emotional, and physical needs of the age group
Interacts appropriately and positively with students AND provides instruction that respects and aligns with the intellectual, social, cultural, emotional, and physical needs of the age group
Example: Shows bias and/or favoritism toward students; engages in inappropriate physical or social interactions with students
Example: Plans/teaches lessons that are age-inappropriate or which portray certain cultures in stereotypical ways
Interacts appropriately and positively with students and provides instruction that respects and aligns with the intellectual, social, cultural, emotional, and physical needs of the age group AND is proactive in promoting respect for and understanding of students’ needs and interests
Avoids opportunities to initiate and/or complete responsibilities
Completes assigned responsibilities when prompted
Initiates and completes responsibilities without prompting
Example: Reflects on experience and suggests possibilities for approaching new situations and challenges
Example: Is proactive in asking questions and seeking guidance for areas of uncertainty; draws on knowledge and experience to respond to new situations and challenges; anticipates and plans for the unexpected
Initiates and completes responsibilities without prompting AND seeks opportunities to take on new responsibilities and challenges
Example: Blames others rather than taking personal responsibility; provides excuses, such as lack of understanding or support
Not Observed
Evidence That Supports Assessor Rating
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Outcome Statement Professional Behaviors and Dispositions 8. Professional Appearance The teacher or teacher candidate adheres to good hygiene and follows university, school, and/or district policies for professional appearance.
Does Not Meet Expectations (0) Does not meet minimum expectations for personal hygiene OR violates university, school, and/or district policies for professional appearance
Developing
Meets Expectations
Exceeds Expectations
(1)
(2)
(3)
Is clean and neat BUT occasionally fails to adhere to university, school, and/or district policies for professional appearance
Is clean and neat AND adheres to university, school, and/or district policies for professional appearance
The teacher or teacher candidate adheres to legal and ethical standards for behavior. CAEP 1.1; InTASC 9
Does not adhere to university, school, and/or district policies; OR deliberately fails to uphold the State Code of Ethics
Example: Falsifies information on student records
Reviews and seeks guidance for gaining knowledge of and adhering to university, school, and/or district policies related to legal and ethical standards of behavior AND asks questions or pursues information to increase understanding of the State Code of Ethics
Example: Seeks guidance on the equitable treatment of others and protecting students from conditions that interfere with learning or are harmful to their health and safety
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Evidence That Supports Assessor Rating
Is clean and neat AND consistently exceeds university, school, and/or district minimum standards for professional appearance
Example: A male teacher wears a long-sleeve shirt and tie on most days, even though it is not required by school policy.
CAEP 1.1; InTASC 9
9. Legal and Ethical Conduct
Not Observed
Knowledgeable of and adheres to university, school, and/or district policies related to legal and ethical standards of behavior AND upholds the State Code of Ethics for Educators
Example: Exhibits equitable treatment of others and exerts reasonable effort to protect students from conditions that interfere with learning or are harmful to their health and safety
Knowledgeable of and adheres to university, school, and/or district policies related to legal and ethical standards of behavior and upholds the State Code of Ethics for Educators AND advocates for equitable treatment of others AND develops preventative methods to protect students and/or teachers from conditions that interfere with learning or are harmful to their health and safety
Example: Develops a workshop for students or others in which s/he explicitly teaches the State Code of Ethics for Educators
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Outcome Statement Professional Behaviors and Dispositions 10. Diversity The teacher or teacher candidate demonstrates respect for and appreciation for a wide variety of individual differences. CAEP 1.1; InTASC 2
11. Learning Environment The teacher or teacher candidate demonstrates a commitment to creating a positive, low-risk learning environment.
Does Not Meet Expectations
Developing
Meets Expectations
Exceeds Expectations
(0)
(1)
(2)
(3)
Does not listen and respond appropriately to others’ opinions AND/OR demonstrates a lack of respect for or insensitivity to those of different cultural backgrounds, cognitive and physical abilities, and personal ideologies
Listens and responds appropriately to others’ opinions AND seeks guidance on how to exhibit respect for those of different cultural backgrounds, cognitive and physical abilities, and personal ideologies
Listens and responds appropriately to others’ opinions AND exhibits respect for those of different cultural backgrounds, cognitive and physical abilities, and personal ideologies
Listens and responds appropriately to others’ opinions and exhibits respect for those of different cultural backgrounds, cognitive and physical abilities, and personal ideologies AND advocates for fair and equitable treatment for all
Does not demonstrate a willingness to create a positive, low-risk learning environment OR allows disruptive behavior to interfere with learning
Demonstrates progress toward creating a positive, low-risk learning environment AND provides students with choices, makes relevant connections, builds understanding, and develops relationships that create a sense of belonging between and among learners
Demonstrates a commitment to creating a positive, low-risk learning environment by providing students with choices, making relevant connections, building understanding, and developing relationships that create a sense of belonging between and among learners
Demonstrates a commitment to creating a positive, low-risk learning environment by providing students with choices, making relevant connections, building understanding, and developing relationships that create a sense of belonging between and among learners AND is proactive in disseminating information with others about how to create a positive learning environment
Demonstrates no evidence of a reliable system for planning and scheduling
Demonstrates progress toward development of a reliable system for planning and scheduling
Demonstrates effective use of time through thoughtful planning, thorough preparation, and efficient organization
Demonstrates effective use of time through thoughtful planning, thorough preparation, and efficient organization AND supports others in helping them to learn time management skills
CAEP 1.1; InTASC 3
12. Time Management The teacher or teacher candidate uses time effectively. CAEP 1.1; InTASC 7
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Example: Waits until the last minute to prepare; does not use a reliable system for planning and scheduling
Example: Sometimes waits until the last minute to prepare; does not use a reliable system for planning and scheduling
Example: Prepares in advance for events and uses a reliable system for planning and scheduling
Not Observed
Evidence That Supports Assessor Rating
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Outcome Statement Professional Behaviors and Dispositions 12. 13.
13. Commitment to Student Learning The teacher or teacher candidate demonstrates a commitment to students’ learning. CAEP 1.1, 1.3; InTASC 1, 2, 7
14. Commitment to Continuous Improvement The teacher or teacher candidate demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement as an educator. CAEP 1.1; InTASC 10
Does Not Meet Expectations (0) Demonstrates little or no evidence of commitment to student learning
Demonstrates commitment to student learning by identifying student strengths OR needs based on evaluations, assessments
Demonstrates commitment to student learning by evaluating student strengths AND needs
Demonstrates evidence of a developing commitment to continuous improvement as an educator through use of information and feedback related to professional practice
Demonstrates commitment to continuous improvement as an educator through intentional use of information and feedback related to professional practice
Example: Lesson plans are poorly constructed and/or inadequately aligned with learning objectives
Demonstrates little or no evidence of commitment to continuous improvement as a professional educator
Example: Restricts efforts to meet minimum requirements with no evidence of ongoing professional development
Developing
Meets Expectations
Exceeds Expectations
(1)
(2)
(3)
Example: Demonstrates a willingness to analyze and apply data to guide instruction in the classroom; accepts and attempts to apply feedback and/or constructive criticism; attends recommended workshops, conferences, and job-related meetings
Example: Plans instruction and assessments that are clearly aligned with learning objectives; takes time to know every student and their learning need; differentiates instruction and assessments based on identified strengths and areas for improvement
Example: Analyzes and applies data to guide instruction in the classroom; seeks feedback; accepts constructive criticism; attends recommended workshops, conferences, and job-related meetings
Not Observed
Evidence That Supports Assessor Rating
Demonstrates commitment to student learning by evaluating student strengths and needs AND advocates for optimal student learning opportunities based on the latest research and, if applicable, using the latest technology
Demonstrates commitment to continuous improvement as an educator through intentional use of information, feedback, and research related to professional practice to guide instruction in the classroom AND engages in professional learning opportunities, seeks feedback from others, holds membership in professional organizations
Georgia Educators’ Task Force Professional Behaviors and Dispositions Assessment (PBDA) – Spring 2017 Copyright © 2017 by Co-Project Leaders: Dr. Mary Ariail and Dr. Sallie Averitt Miller Task Force Members – Phase II: Dr. Bonnie Anderson, Dr. Cynthia Bolton, Dr. Susan Hagood, Dr. Sharon Livingston, Dr. Holley Roberts, Ms. Carla Tanguay, and Dr. Deborah Thomas Piloting Institutions: Augusta University, Georgia Gwinnett College, Georgia Southwestern State University, Georgia State University, LaGrange College, Thomas University, University of West Georgia Invited Reviewers: Dr. Bobbi Ford, Dr. Deirdre Greer, Dr. Beverly Mitchell, Dr. Debbie Stoulig
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About the Authors Mary Ariail, Ph.D. Dr. Mary Ariail serves as Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education at The University of Southern Mississippi. She previously served at Georgia State University as Associate Chair of the Department of Middle and Secondary Education, Chair of the Assessment Committee to the College of Education and Human Development, and Co-Chair of the GSU Graduate Assessment Committee. Her research interests and scholarship include investigations of adolescent language and literacy, program assessment, and professional dispositions. Sallie Averitt Miller, Ed.D. Dr. Miller is the Associate Dean for Assessment and Accreditation and is a Professor of Reading Education at Columbus State University. Dr. Miller serves as a Site Visitor / Program Reviewer for the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) as well as the Georgia Professional Standards Commission (GaPSC), the Title II Coordinator, the 2016-2017 President of the Georgia Assessment Directors Association, and a member of the Georgia Professional Standards Commission’s Program Preparation Effectiveness Measure Program Advisory Council. Her professional activities include numerous articles and presentations, as well as active memberships and offices in national and state professional organizations.
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I Can’t Get Online: Access and Equity in Mathematics for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities Barbara Serianni, Georgia Southern University-Armstrong Campus, and Lisa Dieker, University of Central Florida
A smaller student, Austin is frequently bullied by other students. He often fights for his choice of seat, his place at the computer, and attention from the teacher, Mr. Santiago. His teacher often ignores him, putting him on a computer to work online. Mr. Santiago has limited knowledge about working with students like Austin who have a behavioral disability and as a result, regulates much of his learning to online environments as a way to try and keep him engaged and away from some of the other behavioral challenges in the class. Ms. Snyder will be assigned as a co-teacher in Austin’s math class in the spring semester. She is optimistic about some ideas she has to shape the online environment and address the challenges presented by Austin’s struggles in both mathematics and behavior as well as similar challenges presented by four other students with emotional behavioral disabilities (EBD) in the classroom. She also wants to ensure her practices are designed to support the entire class of students in this urban environment who present unique challenges in both learning and behavior. She hopes to bring her strong behavioral management practices into the classroom while she and her coteacher learn to take advantage of their school’s new one-to-one adoption of computers. Mr. Santiago is overwhelmed with the range of abilities and disabilities in the class as well as the use of new online environments, but he is committed including students with EBD in the rich discourse and dialogue in his classroom. He welcomes a co-teacher but worries about how to
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structure the environment of their combined expertise to meet the range of students’ needs in the classroom. The trifecta of challenges Mr. Santiago and Ms. Snyder face in content, behavior, and technology are not uncommon for teachers in today’s middle school classrooms. As new oneto-one programs, bring your own device initiatives, and personalized learning tools become increasingly a part of mathematics classrooms, so do the challenges of how to best use these tools in the complex role of dialogue and discourse while taking advantage of the opportunities for students presented by coteaching and inclusion. Yet, for students with gaps in learning, behavioral challenges, and struggles with peer interactions, a hybrid of approaches may be needed. The development of online environments creates a unique opportunity for this population, often marginalized in all aspects of learning and outcomes from graduation to access to advanced math classes. According to the 37th Annual Report to Congress (U.S. Department of Education, 2015), the trend of students with disabilities being educated in the general education classroom continues to grow with over 90% of students with disabilities learning, for at least some portion of the school day, in the general education setting. Many receive this support through co-teaching, which is a service delivery model described by Bauwens, Hourcade, and Friend (1989) as an approach to instruction where general and special educators work
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collaboratively to provide instruction to heterogeneous groups of students in mathematics. Mathematics is the gateway to graduation as well as a stepping-stone to advanced careers (Wiggins, 2011). As online learning is changing the face of education (Watson, Pape, Murin, Gemin, & Vashaw, 2014), a dearth of research exists on effective online instructional practices for students with EBD and the impact of those practices on the social/emotional and behavioral goals of this population of students (Black, Ferdig, & DiPietro, 2008; Cavanaugh, Barbour, & Clark, 2009; Vasquez and Straub, 2012). Despite a lack of research evidence on the effectiveness of online instruction, the staffing and financial benefits of this mode of instruction may increase the likelihood that more schools and districts will choose online instructional delivery for students who struggle with behavior, like students identified with EBD. The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), an agency of the U.S. Department of Education, has recognized the critical need for research in this area. In January 2012, OSEP funded the Center on Online Learning for Students with Disabilities, a collaborative project that includes the Center for Research on Learning at the University of Kansas, the Center for Applied Special Education Technology, and the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE, Inc.). The center manages a variety of research efforts designed to evaluate existing practices in virtual environments and the accessibility of online courses. This resource is one that Ms. Snyder is using to help think through some of the practices she will use as a co-teacher. Ms. Snyder is focused on the range of problems that adversely affect academic and behavioral performance of students with EBD and how they can be addressed in a blended learning environment. The environment involves support from the teacher for opportunities to be engaged in online tools that align with and enrich the curriculum while providing ample opportunities for teacher-directed dialogue with peers. However, considerations ensuring equity and access of this population in collaboration with co-teachers are provided. The approach these two teachers took encompassed the Flex model defined by Staker
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and Horn (2012). In the Flex model, students in the mathematics classroom and their teachers work together collaboratively to provide both online learning and enrichment activities to which all students, including students with EBD, respond positively in the class. Yet, both teachers’ concerns were that these environments still be rich in discourse and teacher-directed, while including peer-engaged tools both in face-to-face and online environments. The peer engagement in mathematics was especially a concern for both teachers, as the students with EBD had, in most cases, the intellectual ability to learn content, but often their conflict with peers got in the way of their learning. Mr. Santiago believes in rich discourse among students as a core value in his teaching mathematics, but the behavioral challenges this year with an added online component and the students in his class made him question both his approach to teaching and his ability to manage such a complex model with students who did not transition easily or were difficult to engage in positive peer discussions and discourse. The use of the Flex model allowed the two teachers to meet the needs of their students and their individual and collective approach to teaching. The diagram in Figure 1 depicts the design features of the classroom that reflect the Flex model and allow these two teachers to meet their goals for mathematical, behavioral, and online learning components of instruction.
Figure 1. Flex Model of Blended Learning in Mathematics.
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Using this Flex model in the blended environment, the teachers provide a variety of face-to-face supports, peer interactions, and access to online content. The following vignette typifies a day in their classroom using the time frame that was standardized as part of their practice during their 90-minute block of instruction (see Table 1). Table 1. Schedule Time
Activity
20 minutes
Large group instruction by both teachers
45 minutes
Rotation from computer time to intervention time – 15 minute rotations (one teacher does the intervention with 3 groups of 15 minutes each; the other works with large group and one-to-one intervention as needed)
10 minutes
Large group review or remediation of a target skill
Students have a 90-minute block of mathematics and are in either large group discussions; in an online environment with small group mini lessons or coaching for behavioral challenges; or rotating to one of two stations, one led by the mathematics teacher and the other student-led and supported by the co-teacher. Students enter the mathematics classroom and make their way to an opening activity in the large group area where they learn their group assignment for the day. Each student has a letter, number, and shape associated with their name, which is used to allow a variety of flexible grouping options. The daily group assignment tells students how and with whom they will rotate for the day’s activities. This structure is a standardized model used to provide routine for the two coteachers and most importantly for the students with EBD. This model also allows Mr. Santiago to use his online tools as almost a third co-teacher in the room, not simply to isolate challenging
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students to online learning. Once online, the students are expected to independently read, listen, and answer questions as part of the online instruction. Students are asked to follow the classroom rule of asking three peers before asking a teacher for help with any technological aspects of the online environment. Also, students are allowed to quietly talk with a peer during the online instruction about anything interesting or confusing involving the math content. The teacher supporting the one-on-one or small group often asks students to discuss a concept as she monitors the online environment. The special education teacher most often leads the computer and small group because of her rich background in remediation strategies in math and her skill in teaching and addressing behavioral challenges for students during this instructional time. During her intervention time she adds a behavioral component by teaching a direct social skill using word problems in math with an integrated social skill lesson during her small group instruction. Additionally, she has overlaid the principles of behavioral support throughout the class (PBIS, 2018). In response to students’ requests for assistance, the co-teachers move to each student to provide one-on-one assistance and maintain order, preventing students from unnecessary movement. All academic support is provided at the students’ computer stations when they are in an online environment. Many questions students ask involve reading support or reminders about math concepts and procedures they should already know. If a student is unable to make the connection and move forward, the teacher provides on-the-spot remediation or support to help them work problems, understand concepts, and move forward. Each student works in a grade-level mathematics course and is generally at a unique place in the curriculum. Despite the diversity of progress in the curriculum, the coteachers repeatedly address the same types of help questions; most involve arithmetic skills first taught in elementary school. They also further identify critical gaps and goals during the online instruction to incorporate into large or small group instruction. They have found the online time to be a great way to gather analytics from the sessions to further build activities into the
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prescribed district curriculum to fill in large gaps or to use during targeted intervention time. The frequent student requests for help often make it necessary for students to wait for help, increasing time off task and disruptive behavior. The “ask three before me” rule was implemented in part to address those concerns. The teachers also incorporated more movement, which helps reduce behavior problems by providing some structured opportunities for student movement during the class period. Having a standardized schedule for all students allows both teachers to use their expertise in co-teaching while allowing for the goal of a rich discourse that takes advantage of online tools to emerge. The Flex model creates the perfect environment to incorporate coteaching, mathematical discourse, and individualized instruction. The layer of positive behavioral supports provides tools to address the unique challenges presented by the inclusion of students with EBD. Once this structure was in place and consistently implemented, both teachers articulated their surprise that this population of students was quite capable of learning given the right structure, supports, and instruction. The co-teachers included in their classroom structure the following four recommendations made by Mulcahy, Maccini, Wright, and Miller (2014), who conducted a comprehensive analysis of the literature for students with EBD in mathematics. (1) Use peer-mediated instruction for academic and social benefits; the large group activities all occurred with cooperative grouping, while the online instruction had an anchored peer-tutoring component. (2) Incorporate different modes of representation and delivery formats for instruction; the Flex model provided a structure to embrace the range of behaviors, learning needs and best practice all at the same time. (3) Combine grade level expectations for behavior with academic interventions; use of small group instruction that included a component of social skills instruction and a PBIS framework reflected best practice. (4) Ensure that strategy interventions incorporate a variety of methods including manipulatives, mnemonics, flashcards, and real- world
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applications including self-monitoring; the use of self-monitoring was not implemented, but the small group instruction included the array of strategy interventions suggested. The use of blended learning models such as the Rotation or Flex models (Mulcahy et al., 2014), may “solve” a number of teacher’s classroom struggles for students who are EBD or even a district’s dilemmas about ensuring the least restrictive environment is considered in the placement of students with EBD (Vasquez and Serianni, 2012). Without providing students the behavioral and social/emotional services and supports they need to be successful in the general education setting, the outcome is that students may or may not meet the changes in standards and practices for richer discourse amongst students. The human contact, teacher-student relationships, peer-to-peer interactions, and critical opportunities to practice appropriate behavioral and social skills could be lost if this population is only regulated to an online environment. Students with EBD have a documented academic need for mathematics intervention and researchers have found this population to be responsive to a variety of mathematics interventions and strategies (Hodge, Riccomini, Buford, & Herbst, 2006; Templeton, Neel, & Blood, 2008). Teachers need to evaluate not only the academic outcomes of online learning for students with EBD, but also question the impact of many of the latent factors of the online environment. What are the effects of the physical and social isolation inherent in online learning for students with EBD on developing social skills and peer relationships? In pure online learning environments, what is the impact of no human contact or touch on the social and behavioral goals for students with EBD? To what extent does online or blended learning improve academic persistence or time on task for students with EBD? What types of online environments foster the best blends of technology and human interaction to meet the academic, social/emotional, and behavioral needs of students with EBD? The field of special education and mathematics together has more questions than answers in how to best meet the needs of all students, including students with
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EBD, but the model created by Mr. Santiago and Ms. Snyder provide an example to build upon in the field. Pedagogical implications for teacher preparation programs that want to prepare teachers to understand and employ blended learning models are numerous, especially in mathematics classrooms. These implications are summarized in the following list: Teacher educators need to spend time in P-12 classrooms to better understand the challenges of today’s schools. While many instructors in teacher preparation programs have come from P-12 schools, decades may have passed since they spent considerable amounts of sustained time in a classroom. In addition, many of today’s higher education mathematics instructors come from content backgrounds with limited pedagogical knowledge, with many coming from industries other than schools. These instructors often not have been in a public school classroom since they attended high school. Teacher candidates and faculty could all benefit from courses taught onsite at P-12 schools rather than in college classrooms. This experience provides exposure to schools, classrooms, and students, along with observation and field experience opportunities unique to the school-based environment. A shift needs to occur away from traditional instructional practices, such as textbook- and lecture-based courses. Instruction in teacher preparation classrooms should model collaborative and student-centered learning that focuses on current evidence based practices and interventions to ensure new teachers take these types of practices into their classrooms. Teacher educators should model exemplary technology integration, including technology-rich blended learning models. If teacher candidates are to learn this skill, they need to experience it in their preparation programs. Assignments and practicums should include advanced application of technology
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integration, including forms of blended learning, to address the needs of the wide variety of learners in a single classroom. An emphasis on collaboration and coteaching needs to occur across disciplines so all teachers learn to work alongside specially certified teachers who support students with disabilities, students who are gifted, and English learners in inclusive classrooms. Co-taught courses across content areas, as well as joint practicums, should provide the opportunity to bring general and special education teacher candidates together to collaborate and co-teach. As classrooms become richer in both diversity and technology, so should the way teachers provide instruction. The need for continued research and more effective instructional methodologies is evident in the poor learning outcomes in many P-12 schools. Much of the research that generates new evidence-based practices and innovative instruction comes from higher education. As a result, it is teacher educators who must bridge the research-topractice gap by including new evidence-based technology-enhanced pedagogies and innovative practices into their programs and courses. thereby increasing the likelihood that these practices will make their way into P-12 classrooms. References Bauwens, J., Hourcade, J., & Friend, M. (1989). Cooperative teaching: A model for general and special education integration. Remedial and Special Education, 10(2), 17-22. Black, E. W., Ferdig, R. E., & DiPietro, M. (2008). An overview of evaluative instrumentation for virtual high schools. American Journal of Distance Education, 22(1), 24-45. Cavanaugh, C. S., Barbour, M. K., & Clark, T. (2009). Research and practice in K-12 online learning: A review of open access literature. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(1), 1-22. Hodge, J., Riccomini, P. J., Buford, R., & Herbst, M. H. (2006). A review of instructional interventions in mathematics for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Behavioral Disorders, 31(3), 297-311. Mulcahy, C. A., Maccini, P., Wright, K., & Miller, J. (2014). An examination of intervention research with secondary students with EBD in light of
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Common Core State Standards for mathematics. Behavioral Disorders, 39(3), 146-164. NASDSE, Inc. (n.d.). Projects: Center on online learning. Retreived from www.nasdse.org PBIS. (2018). Positive behavior intervention & supports. Retreived from http://www.pbis.org Staker, H. & Horn, M. B. (2012). Classifying K-12 blended learning. Innosight Institute, Inc. Retrieved from: https://www.christenseninstitute.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/04/Classifying-K-12-blendedlearning.pdf Templeton, T. N., Neel, R. S., & Blood, E. (2008). Metaanalysis of math interventions for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 16(4), 226-239. U.S. Department of Education. (2015). 37th Annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Washington, DC. Retrieved from https://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/ annual/osep/2015/parts-b-c/37th-arc-for-idea.pdf Vasquez, E., & Serianni, B. A. (2012). Research and practice in distance education for K-12 students with disabilities. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 31(4), 33–42. Vasquez, E., & Straub, C. (2012). Online instruction for K-12 special education: A review of the empirical literature. Journal of Special Education Technology, 27(3), 31-40. Watson, J., Pape, L., Murin, A., Gemin, B., & Vashaw, L. (2014). Keeping pace with K-12 digital learning: An annual review of policy and practice. Evergreen Education Group. Retrieved from https://www. inacol.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/03/EEG_KP201 4-fnl-lr.pdf Wiggins, G. (2011). A diploma worth having. Educational Leadership, 68(6), 28-33.
preparing teachers to effectively integrate technology in K-12 classrooms, including the use of digital tools as assistive technology to support students with disabilities in mathematics. She has done extensive research on the use of virtual manipulatives as a substitute for physical manipulatives as part of the concrete to representational to abstract sequence of instruction related to conceptual understanding of fraction equivalency. Lisa Dieker, Ph.D. Dr. Dieker is a Professor and Lockheed Martin Eminent Scholar at the University of Central Florida. She received her undergraduate and master's degrees from Eastern Illinois University and her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. Her primary area of research focuses on collaboration between general and special education teachers with a specific interest in the unique opportunities that exist in urban schools in the areas of mathematics and science. She also has a passion for how technology, specifically virtual classrooms, can be used to impact teacher preparation.
About the Authors Barbara Serianni, Ph.D. Dr. Serianni is an Assistant Professor in Special Education at Georgia Southern University Armstrong Campus. She received both her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Central Florida. Her primary research interest lies in
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Online Teacher Professional Development for Designing and Facilitating K-12 Blended and Online Learning Kim C. Huett, University of West Georgia, and Phoebe Balentyne, Northern Illinois University School districts are under pressure to evolve into a more relevant, student-centered educational model that prepares students for the possibility of postsecondary education and the challenges of the 21st Century workplace, and technology is integral to such transformations (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Jonassen, 1999; U.S. Department of Education, 2016). The most effective teachers of the 21st Century will be able to integrate digital components into their face-toface instruction to create technology-enhanced, blended learning experiences (Archambault & Kennedy, 2014). However, teachers are often underprepared to design or facilitate technologyenhanced learning (Ertmer & OttenbreitLeftwich, 2010; Kennedy & Archambault, 2015; Parks, Oliver, & Carson, 2016; Wang, Hsu, Campbell, Coster, & Longhurst, 2014). In this paper, the authors share the outcomes of an online teacher professional development program (oTPD) implemented with twelve Georgia educators during the 2014-2015 school year. The program was developed to aid teachers in designing and facilitating digital learning with their students. Examining teacher performance and perspectives, this paper offers teacher professional developers insights into ways to support teachers in facilitating blended and online learning using online professional development. Blended and Online Learning in K-12 School Districts The past several decades have seen notable growth in K-12 online and blended learning (Clark & Barbour, 2015). In online learning, the
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teacher and learner are physically apart, and the learner interacts with the teacher and content through internet-connected technologies (Watson & Kalmon, 2005). In blended learning, “a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace, and at least in part at a supervised brickand-mortar location away from home” (Staker & Horn, 2012, p. 3). Large school districts, such as the one that inspired the professional development (PD) model in this paper, often provide a range of technology-enhanced learning options to students, including blended learning in the traditional classroom with online learning options for those students who need it – whether through enrollment in single, supplemental online courses, or in fully online programs. Blended learning comes in “infinite permutations,” making it hard to define: each teacher, school, or district may use different toolsets and strategies in its practice (Watson, Pape, Murin, Vashaw, & Gemin, 2014, p. 4). The multiple instructional needs of large school districts, combined with unique factors in classrooms, mean teachers increasingly need to be able to teach in both blended and online settings. Considerable initial and ongoing PD are required to prepare teachers to design and deliver online content (Kennedy & Archambault, 2015; Wang et al., 2014), but many teacher preparation program offerings do not offer online clinical experiences (Kennedy & Archambault, 2015). Parks et al. (2016) found that teachers who claim
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to be providing their students with blended learning only possess novice or emerging competency in blended instruction. To be effective in blended classroom environments, teachers must possess or attain certain skills, and these can look different from the skills required of a traditional classroom teacher (Archambault & Kennedy, 2014). Partly in response to the lack of formal training in teacher education programs, virtual schools have begun developing training for prospective teachers (Kennedy & Archambault, 2015; Wortmann et al., 2008). Teacher Professional Development Research in traditional in-service teacher PD suggests it should be long-term (Abilock, Harada, & Fontichiaro, 2013; Burke, 2013); focused on changes in teacher practice (Penuel, Fishman, Yamaguchi, & Gallagher, 2007); collaborative, particularly among faculty in the same school (Burke, 2013); and situated within and focused on teachers’ practice (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009; Dawson & Dana, 2014; Penuel et al., 2007). Furthermore, PD is more effective when teachers have opportunities to practice new strategies (Caine & Caine, 2010) and reflect on what they have learned (Burke, 2013; Caine & Caine, 2010). Best practices in traditional teacher PD are helpful and informative when creating opportunities for online teachers (Dawson & Dana, 2014). Parks et al. (2016) recommend personalized PD for blended teachers because of their greatly varied gaps in knowledge. Online Teacher Professional Development The use of online teacher professional development (oTPD) has increased in recent decades, and this format may be especially relevant when helping teachers implement digital learning (Dede, 2006). The use of oTPD can individualize teacher learning, and online discussion boards can encourage reflection and learning through collaboration (Killion, 2013). oTPD that models use of technology tools teachers may bring into their own online or faceto-face classrooms provides valuable, hands-on learning experiences (Dawson & Dana, 2014). oTPD for prospective online teachers can also serve as a field experience, which provides
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insights into online design and facilitation strategies (Archambault & Kennedy, 2014). Professional Development Purpose and Partnership The purpose of the oTPD program featured in this paper was to increase secondary (grades 612) science teachers’ knowledge and skills related to principles of effective design and teaching in online and blended learning environments. The program was designed around the needs of a large suburban school district in the State of Georgia. School District Context and Technology Goals The district served more than 100,000 students in 2014-2015; 45% of students qualified for the federal free and reduced lunch program, and the student body was 39% White, 32% African-American, 20% Hispanic, 5% Asian, and 4% Multiracial, with nearly 10,000 English Language Learners (GOSA, 2016). In addition to traditional face-to-face offerings, the district offered its students the options of pursuing grades 9-12 coursework entirely online. In order that middle grades students could succeed in online formats in high school, the district was actively working to adopt a blended learning model across grades 6-12 core subjects. District needs assessment data indicated that teachers needed help growing their skills using technology to support instruction and assessment. PD Partnership A team of university-based educators situated in the University System of Georgia and a district curriculum director led the development of the professional development program. The Georgia Virtual School (GaVS) was brought in to partner to expand the team’s expertise in K-12 online learning. TOOL curriculum Around the same time, the first version of the GaVS’ Teaching Open Online Learning (TOOL) curriculum was released. The TOOL course was a publicly-available massive open online course (MOOC), and GaVS designed it to prepare potential GaVS teachers to teach in online
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environments. Looking at the school district’s needs and strategic objectives for blended and online instruction, the team reviewed the TOOL course and deemed it appropriate for preparing teachers for both blended and online design and facilitation. The course was estimated to take 50 hours to complete. Description of PD Program Theory of Learning Learning is situated within the context in which it occurs (Greeno, 2006; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Using this theory of learning as a framework, the designers sought to develop teachers’ skills in blended and online learning through immersion in an online, technology-rich context. Phase 1: Summer Experience The oTPD was designed to occur in two phases. Phase 1 occurred online for six weeks during the summer. Phase 1 activities involved completion of project-based tasks focused on five topics of online and blended teaching and learning: Participation, Navigation, Communication, Creation, and Evaluation. Within these five topic areas, participants completed 56 quests, 20 of which were capstone projects which served as the focal point for evaluation towards earning the TOOL badge. At a minimum, participants were expected to complete four out of five topic areas. Participants were told to dedicate approximately ten hours per week to each topic area. GaVS evaluators assessed the quality of participants’ capstone submissions in awarding the TOOL badge. Throughout the TOOL activities, participants developed activities, strategies, and artifacts they could use with their specific student audience, and they posted evidence of learning on a blog portfolio of their TOOL quests. As a publicly-available MOOC, TOOL provided oTPD participants with connections to countless other educators beyond the cohort described in this paper. Anyone working on TOOL could share their progress on the TOOL Twitter feed, and they could learn from other educators’ interpretations of the project quests. To create a community and help the participants to complete the course before the
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summer ended, the oTPD facilitators created an online course inside of the school district learning management system (LMS). Within the LMS, participants were supported by discussion boards as well as the provision of resources to support participants as they progressed through the TOOL learning experiences. Using the district LMS allowed participants to learn from the perspective of an online student. From the third through fifth weeks of Phase 1, two synchronous online meetings were offered to feature tools to support collaboration and communication. At the beginning, middle, and end of Phase 1, participants used the district LMS to journal about expectations and goals related to the course, course progress, and goals they would like to implement in Phase 2 of the oTPD. To conclude Phase 1, participants engaged in an online, synchronous “Debrief and Reflect” session. In summary, the design of the Phase 1 oTPD allowed participants to learn in the international, connectivist ecosystem of TOOL alongside other teachers, but participants were also scaffolded in a private online space created within the district LMS. Phase 2: Application to Professional Practice Phase 2 activities occurred online and in practitioners’ contexts in fall and early spring. Participants had from August to early December to enact the goals they had set at the end of Phase 1. They reported on their progress with their goals in their journals in early December. In addition, Phase 2 activities included three online learning events. Each event was scheduled for a dedicated week between September and October, during which three expert online science teachers shared an asynchronous multimedia presentation on a topic related to using technology for science instruction in online and blended contexts. Working full time at this point, participants were encouraged to view these presentations and attend a follow-up synchronous discussion at the end of the week for engaging with the expert teacher and with cohort colleagues. The presentations were titled Introducing Science Students to a Digital Graphing Program and Using the Learning Management System Tools; Dynamic Differentiation: Creating a
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Differentiated Online Classroom; and Using Virtual Labs to Increase Scientific Literacy. Participants journaled reflective responses to these presentations and shared with the cohort online. To conclude Phase 2 activities and the oTPD, participants engaged in an online, synchronous Debrief and Reflect session Research Questions The following questions guided the current inquiry: 1. What did the participants achieve in each phase of the online teacher professional development program? a. What was the extent of participants’ Phase 1 TOOL badge completion? b. What goals did participants set at the end of Phase 1? 2. What aspects of the online professional development experiences did participants find valuable? 3. What aspects of the online professional development experiences were barriers to completion and implementation?
specialist. (Note: The media specialist role is recognized as a teacher role in this paper). Nine participants were situated in middle grades (i.e., grades 6-8), and three were situated at the high school level (i.e., grades 9-12). Ten participants were employed in the same school district. Of the two participants outside of the main school district, one was employed in a large urban high school, and the other was employed by a fully online virtual high school serving Georgia students. These two participants were recruited with the aid of GaVS. Table 1 provides an overview of participants. Pseudonyms have been used in place of participants’ actual names.
Method Qualitative Inquiry Qualitative methods were used to address the research questions related to the oTPD program featured in this paper (Merriam, 2009). Such methods are appropriate when researchers seek to understand the meaning of complex, naturalistic processes (Creswell, 1994). The interactions of a professional learning context over time are therefore ideally suited to this mode of inquiry (Merriam, 2009). This study was approved by the institutional review board of the facilitators’ university. Participants The PD program included 12 teacher participants, the majority of whom were recruited by the district curriculum director in late spring of 2014. Participants were invited to explore the open TOOL course prior to joining. Eleven participants were female, and one was male. Ten teachers worked in the science classroom, and one was an English Language Arts teacher who sought to move to the science classroom. The final participant was a school library media
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Table 1 Description of Participants Sex
Race
K-12 Level
Area of Educational Practice
Years of Practice
Social Codes
Felicity
Female
African - American
Middle (6-8)
English Language Arts
10
D
Victoria
Female
White
Middle (6-8)
Life Science
13
D, Ex
Caroline
Female
White
Middle (6-8)
Life Science
22
D
Suzanne
Female
White
Middle (6-8)
Life Science
26
D, S
Amy
Female
White
Middle (6-8)
Life Science
17
D, S
Kathy
Female
White
Middle (6-8)
Life Science
25
D
Hilary
Female
White
Middle (6-8)
Earth Science
5
D
Melba
Female
White
Middle (6-8)
Earth Science
26
D, S
Eleanor
Female
White
Middle (6-8)
Physical Science
10
D, S
Angie
Female
White
High (9-12)
Physical Science
6
Sue
Female
White
High (9-12)
Physics
17
Matt
Male
White
High (9-12)
Media Specialist
28
Name
D
Note: D = a participant from the same district as one or more other participants; S = a participant from the same school as one or more other participants; Ex = a participant who had a colleague from the same school drop from program.
Data Collection Procedures Throughout the oTPD, participants generated qualitative responses to their experiences in the form of online journals and synchronous online debrief sessions. Participants’ TOOL badge achievements were publicly visible on the TOOL website. The researchers copied and pasted all journals into a word processing document for analysis. Audio from live sessions was recorded using GoToMeeting, and the researchers transcribed the data into word processing documents. Sources of Data. The following sources of data were used to address the research questions in relation to Phase 1 of the oTPD: Journal 1: Expectations for oTPD; Journal 2: Phase 1 Progress & Reflection; Journal 3: Goals for Practice; TOOL Badge Completions; and Debrief & Reflect sessions (i.e., focus groups). The following sources of data were collected and used for Phase 2 analysis: Journal 5: Goal Enactment; Debrief & Reflect sessions (i.e., focus groups); and an anonymous postsurvey. Data Analysis Procedures. Most of the data collected in this study were qualitative, text-based
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data. To find meaning from these data, the first author conducted thematic analysis, a method used for iteratively organizing and reorganizing the dataset using codes. Thematic analysis is the process of reading through the dataset and tagging snippets – however long or short – of data with keywords, or codes (Saldaña, 2016). Through structural, holistic, in vivo, and values coding, the researcher created initial themes, or named patterns, that addressed the research questions (Saldaña, 2016). With structural coding, the researcher created an initial list of codes aligned to the research questions. Holistic coding allowed her to code broad extracts of data to understand broad patterns in the data. Through in vivo coding, the researcher used the words of participants to create new codes to apply to other areas of the dataset. Values codes were applied to represent participants’ views in terms of values, attitudes, and beliefs, which is integral to understanding teacher thinking and development (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010). Finally, through pattern coding, the researcher refined the codes into broader themes that expressed relationships among coded extracts (Saldaña, 2016).
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The first author coded each phase of data sources separately (see Sources of Data section above), starting with the Phase 1 data. The same codebook was used for each analysis to maintain consistency. The researchers used a computerassisted qualitative data analysis package (i.e., NVivo 11) for coding and collating. Findings & Implications RQ1. What did the participants achieve in each phase of the online teacher professional development program? a. What was the extent of participants’ Phase 1 TOOL badge completion? All participants met the expectation that they complete four out of five areas of the TOOL badge. One participant chose to not go beyond this minimum. Ten participants earned the TOOL badge. The twelfth participant completed the work for all five areas of the TOOL badge but did not seek final badge recognition from GaVS. b. What goals did participants set at the end of Phase 1? Participants’ goals included using online systems (e.g., Edmodo, Schoology, blogs) to broadcast content and expectations to classrooms, clubs and colleagues; to engage students in high-level discussions; to have twoway, 24-hour communications with students and parents; to support flipped learning strategies; and to free up classroom time. Some participants focused on screencasting to support differentiation, flipped learning, and anytime/ anyplace instruction. Tech-enhanced assessment tools, rubrics, and practices were a focus in several participants’ goals. One participant collected data through surveys to seek feedback on teaching effectiveness and to learn about students to improve motivation. Effective presentation techniques for students, increasing tools fluency through disciplined use, and gamification were other areas of goal-setting. Stakeholders impacted by goals included students, parents, and colleagues. RQ2. What aspects of the online professional development experiences did participants find valuable? Theme 1. Being an online learner was beneficial for those educators seeking to teach in blended and online settings. Phase 1 oTPD
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experiences improved participants’ understandings of both blended and online design and facilitation. It allowed them to build on existing technological and pedagogical knowledge and skills. Felicity developed proficiency in self-expression through online blogging. Amy became aware of tools and strategies she could take back to her blended learning classroom. Eleanor said, “I wasn’t sure really what went into [online course design and facilitation]. . . . it gave me some more background knowledge about how online courses can be set up.” For Suzanne, the PD course’s emphasis on synchronous collaboration tools piqued her interest in using them with her students and parents: “I love these online meetings. I participated in a couple through this [course]. . . . I think they're really cool.” For several participants, the course improved their understanding of the scope and potential of online learning. For Suzanne, the PD provided an in-depth introduction to “everything that was involved” in designing and teaching in blended and online environments. Caroline was empowered to see beyond limits of her school district's technology infrastructure: the most helpful thing was learning more the big picture. The [LMS] and all of those kind of things . . . and what else is available out there. Because you work for one county, and you're kind of tied to what's available there. But now, I understand that . . . I can set my classes in a different direction. Kathy appreciated the nuanced toolkit she gained, and she recognized the need for effective instructional design needed to provide meaningful instruction to K-12 students: “I have a lot of resources that I can use. I definitely – I have a better understanding of how difficult it must be for people who teach totally online to give and provide meaningful instructions.” Theme 1 implications. Teachers benefit from a re-introduction to tools they may have used before due to the constantly changing nature of technology. Assuming the role of online learner allowed participants to benefit from exposure to new ideas about blended learning and new tools for use in their blended and online classrooms.
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Theme 2. Teachers benefited from social, connectivist learning experiences that provide a window into other teachers’ practice. The oTPD provided participants with benefits arising from the social, connected nature of its design. Participants noted learning as a result of browsing through the work of not only their fellow cohortmates but also that of hundreds of fellow learners in the wider online TOOL MOOC. Additionally, several participants at the same school noted benefits related to future classroom-to-classroom collaborations arising from co-learning in the oTPD. Kathy enjoyed learning through seeing what other practitioners were learning. She noticed how other teachers arrived at different insights and solutions to quests: I liked how it was in the quests that you could go and see what other people had written about, and they would give examples of different things that they used that might not have been in the quest. I found a lot of stuff through that. Though it took time to do it, Sue found that the ability to look at others’ submitted work offered a window to other teachers’ practice: I felt at first like I was cheating when I would read what they submitted. And then, I felt like I was learning so much more by going through and looking at what these other teachers are doing in their classrooms, specifically, using the different tools. I went through almost every single one of those, which is why it took me so long to get through the quests. Angie discovered “there was a lot to be learned from everyone else’s work.” She explained as follows: It was helpful to read someone else’s and kind of say, ‘Oh, okay so we were sort of on the same page,’ and then often times also learn something more and something different that wasn’t a part of the class. Suzanne recognized that the social, connected aspects of the oTPD design as something she did with her own students: That’s something that we ask of our kids: to help each other and learn from each other so that they can take what they're doing to the next level as well. I mean it’s a professional learning group. . . . And in some way, we try
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to get our students to do that as well. Theme 2 implications. Teachers are better able to connect PD to practice when they can learn about how other teachers use a particular tool or skill. This finding agrees with previous research on teacher PD (Abilock et al., 2013; Caine & Caine, 2010; Schrum & Levin, 2013). Theme 3. Goal setting empowered teachers to take ownership of their work and innovate in their practice. Participants set and pursued goals in their professional contexts that they would not have otherwise pursued. The experience gave them a foundation to build on for future professional goal setting. Angie said the Phase 1 oTPD sparked “some ideas for the coming year.” Felicity was “looking forward to using [a number of technology resources] with [my] students this year.” Kathy was “excited” to return to school to try new things. Amy expressed value for the goal-setting like this: I just think that having . . . the part where we set the goal and implement it is so important because we’ve learned all of this great information about online and blended learning, and it’s easy to go back to school in a couple of weeks and kind of get caught up in everything else that needs to be done. But, the fact that we’re setting a goal now, and that we’re going to report back about the goal when we have a whole second phase to this class, I think is really important as a teacher and educator, and is going to push me to really use the tools that I learned in the class and not just kind of forget about them. Participants indicated the oTPD experience motivated them to try something new with students. Melba and Suzanne emphasized the value of being able to work with “real students” and in “real practical situations,” respectively. Matt maintained a collection of resources from the Phase 1 summer experience with the plan of introducing a few per month to his media center students: “I want to introduce them to the students, just kind of a few at a time. . . . [TOOL] helped me by revisiting things and making projects . . . not just seeing them and not using them.” It was important for Matt to try what he had learned from Phase 1 with his students. Several participants were willing to innovate even if it meant failure. Suzanne said, “I feel
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good about it. I’m excited about it. I might try [to implement my goal] and bomb, but I might not [laughter], of course.” Of her goals, Melba said, “If it doesn’t work out, that’s fine.” Eleanor said, “I was kind of motivated to make sure that I was constantly revising and trying new things, and if they didn't work, ditching them, and trying to use all the technology I learned about during the summer.” Felicity and Amy appreciated implementing new things and reflecting. Felicity explained, “You have an opportunity to try things out, and sometimes they work . . . but just having time to reflect on that and revise it, and then just hearing what works for other people . . . is always helpful.” Amy echoed this theme of try-andreflect: “I liked to set a goal and try something new, and see how it works, and reflect on it and make changes. [The oTPD] kind of got me into the routine of that.” Eleanor, Melba, and Amy indicated a longerterm pattern of goal-setting related to the goals set in the oTPD. Eleanor said, “I’m hoping that next year I’ll be in the same subject, and I’ll have everything kind of setup so that I’ll be able to focus on different aspects.” Melba plans to continue leading her grade-level team in building on what she started during the oTPD. Students will be offered more choices to demonstrate mastery of learning standards, and the in-school technology infrastructure will be used more consciously: “When I do this a second time next year, we don’t have to be rushing, because everything will be done.” The oTPD triggered a goal-setting mindset in Amy: I find myself already thinking about the second half of the school year coming up and what am I going to set as my goal, and what am I going to try, even though it won’t be formal, and I won’t have to write it up for class, but just for my professional growth. It was helping me and helping my students and the chance to reflect on what I’d done, and think about how to use it in the future. Theme 3 implications. The goal-setting component involved in Phase 2 of the oTPD program helped motivate teachers to innovate with students by implementing a new strategy or skill. This agrees with previous research showing that teachers need the opportunity to integrate
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new concepts by implementing them (Caine & Caine, 2010), and follow-up in professional learning increases implementation (Penuel et al., 2007). Time to practice is especially important for professional learning involving technology, where teachers can often flounder without the proper training, support, and follow-up (Killion, 2013; Penuel et al., 2007). Goal-setting allows for job-embedded, experiential professional learning, which research shows is especially effective (Wei, Darling-Hammond, & Adamson, 2010). Allowing teachers time to practice new skills they have learned through PD is important, especially when the new skills involve the use of technology (Killion, 2013; Penuel et al., 2007). This can also give teachers the opportunity to test technologies and experience some of the difficulties that students might run into as they use new tools. This ongoing oTPD encouraged teachers to continue implementation beyond the structured PD experience. Much of the groundwork had been laid, so they knew in the future they would only need to make changes and improvements rather than creating new activities. The oTPD also allowed teachers to try new strategies and then reflect on their success, which they found to be helpful for improving their practice. Previous research has shown reflection to be an important component of PD (Burke, 2013; Caine & Caine, 2010). Theme 4. Teachers appreciated flexible, personalized, self-paced PD. Melba found Phase 2 to be “more personal” than Phase 1, and she appreciated the flexibility of the oTPD’s workload and scheduling: “Your schedule falls apart when school starts. So, I think it was handled well. It wasn’t like you had to be there all the time, and you could kind of go back and watch” the Online Teaching Experiences. For Angie, the oTPD goal enactment was beneficial because it was “open-ended and everybody could choose the goal that related to them and that would be the most useful for them.” Hilary, Matt, and Kathy expressed their appreciation of self-paced online learning. Matt found it “convenient and personalized.” Hilary said, “I love being able to work at my own pace!” Kathy remarked, “I think self-paced online learning is a great option for professional
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development for teachers. I definitely liked having control over when I worked on assignments rather than being required to sit in a training session during my planning time.” Victoria found the oTPD experiences to be compatible with her busy schedule: There were soft deadlines. That’s what I really liked about it because, you know, with a husband and two teenagers, it’s nice to . . . have someone who will give you that flexibility because I am not the type of person that likes to start something and then not finish it. I really liked that a lot. Caroline also appreciated the flexibility, but she discerned the downside of too much flexibility. The oTPD facilitators allowed her to postpone her Phase 1 work while she took a two-week vacation. Upon her return, she had to accelerate her pace. Thus, Caroline realized she sometimes uses the efficient power of digital learning to place too heavy a load on her students. I was in Europe, so I really finished this in a short amount of time. It was difficult, there was a lot of work, and . . . it made me realize that . . . sometimes I do that to my students. I pile up things in my blended classroom and think, ‘Oh, you can get all this done!’ and now realize what I’m doing to them. I get all excited, but it’s a lot to put on them. Sue marveled at a world where educators can choose their own PD: Professional learning has really taken off much more than I realized where you don’t necessarily have to get permission from an administrator to go do it. You can choose what you want to do. To me, that’s very empowering and very exciting. I went into TOOL thinking one thing and then ended up getting a lot more out of it than I anticipated. Also . . . it was nice after all that work to be able to do something that was a little, you know, more free-form and not so stressful and work at your own pace. Theme 4 implications. Completing the TOOL course over the summer when participants had time, and then implementing a goal in the fall when they were with their students, provided the flexibility teachers needed to be successful. Participants used goal-setting to personalize the PD to their own abilities and settings. Abilock et
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al. (2013) found that personalized PD is especially effective. RQ3. What aspects of the online professional development experiences were barriers to completion and implementation? Theme 5. The design of teacher PD should be relevant, concise, and clear in terms of time commitment. Several PD design issues emerged from teacher participants’ feedback. These challenges could have been managed if the professional developers had anticipated them better. Phase 1 summer experiences centered around working through the TOOL quests with some reporting back to the group through the district LMS. Teachers’ reports indicated struggles with time management, perceptions of redundancies in the curriculum, and confusion with how to submit their work in the course. Phase 1 summer PD activities were designed to take participants six weeks with five weeks dedicated to the five major areas of the course (e.g., Participate, Navigate, Create, Evaluate, and Communicate), and one additional week to tie up any loose ends. Soon after the course began in the first week of June, participants expressed the feeling of “running behind” (Victoria) and that it was “impossible to keep up” (Matt) by dedicating only the recommended ten hours per week to the course. The facilitators addressed this by offering time management strategies. After a few weeks, Amy noted, I’m definitely getting the hang of the quests and am moving through them more quickly than I did the first week. I still have a hard time skimming over resources provided, but I am trying to stay focused on what is required in the quest. Kathy said that despite the benefits of self-paced learning, the curriculum was time-consuming, “that is if completed with the intent to learn.” Caroline wanted more time to work on the course, and she described it as a “drinking-froma-fire-host kind of a thing” with “a lot of information in a very small space of time.” Adding to feelings of not having enough time, Suzanne, Kathy, Amy, and Eleanor sometimes found the summer curriculum redundant in its coverage of concepts.
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Participants questioned the relevance of some areas of the phase 1 summer PD curriculum. For Kathy, the Evaluate module’s emphasis on analyzing school data seemed unnecessary because she already knew how to do it in her school: It was beyond what we really needed . . . I mean at our school we’ve gotten pretty good about how we collect and analyze our data. So, it wasn’t something that was new or foreign to me. Several participants questioned the Participate module with its emphasis on citizenship. Several said they nearly dropped the course because of it. Amy expressed a feeling that several in her focus group echoed: There wasn’t much in [the Participate module] that I thought, ‘I can take this back to my class, and I can do something with this.’ It was more just sort of general information, which was important, and I’m glad I have that background knowledge now. Kathy felt that, as a face-to-face teacher in a blended classroom, there were online teaching concepts in the TOOL curriculum that were not important for her to learn: “I think most of us are looking more for a blended teaching environment. There was a lot of stuff that I felt like could have been left out because like I’m never going to use that.” Theme 5 implications. To alleviate time pressures and reduce redundancy, participants may have benefited from being encouraged to only explore the resources that they felt would be especially helpful to their environment, or if instructions within the course were more clear. While it can be helpful for PD programs on online and blended learning to begin with an overview of concepts, it is also important for PD to be differentiated (Schrum & Levin, 2013; Killion, 2013). Those participants who already understand certain concepts may tune out the rest of the program because part of it is review; therefore, they may think the whole program is review and has nothing new to offer. Additionally, the facilitators could have selected a program that was less time consuming, or they could have set clearer expectations for time commitment.
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Teachers felt that some of the material was not relevant to their context, and a more personalized course or options for completion may have helped this, because PD can be enhanced by individualizing it for each teacher (Abilock et al., 2013). To increase differentiation, oTPD facilitators could add pre-tests to learning modules so that those with existing knowledge and understanding could make better use of their time within the course. Theme 6. First-order barriers challenged teachers’ attempts to implement goals. Phase 2 goal implementation challenges noted by users related to difficulty accessing, working, or appropriate technology to support goal implementation; the commitment of time often required to achieve goals; and the challenging nature of being an educator in public K-12 education. Ertmer (1999) would classify these barriers to technology integration as first-order barriers, which are obstacles external to teachers. During goal implementation, Hilary described difficulties with scheduling computer labs, of laptops that could not hold a charge, and of unreliable Wi-Fi: “It’s just kind of hodge podge trying to figure out which technologies were going to work at the time.” Victoria’s inconsistent access to technology came at the cost of wasting more time when students could access it: “Every time we use [technology] now I have to remind them of the steps of ‘All right, now you’ve got to click this and make sure that you do this, and so on.’” Melba’s 6th grade students were not developmentally ready to use technology in instructionally beneficial ways: “Our kids being so young . . . they’re only 11 years old . . . they’re just being irresponsible. . . . I try to stick with the regular desktop or laptop computer, but they’re limited.” Amy faced challenges preparing her instructional materials in accessible file formats for the variety of devices used by students: “Some of the resources that we had . . . they weren’t able to open the attachment on the Smartphone. It would be better if they had an iPad or laptop or computer or something.” Lack of time to enact goals proved to be a barrier for several participants. With Melba’s student-centered assessment goal using pretests,
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she observed, “It’s a lot of work to grade everything, but then the more they get on the pretest, the less you have to grade down the road, so, it kind of balances itself out.” Melba hoped investing time in her goal now will reap benefits in the future. Amy realized how much additional work her goal would add to her load, and she asked herself, “How am I going to keep up with that?’ and she “put that on hold,” saying, “I think it can get a bit overwhelming.” Her solution was to not grade all students every time a discussion was assigned: “It’s not a particularly large grade, and to spend hours of time assessing a discussion post might not be the best use of time and resources.” Kathy and Felicity made remarks about how increased technology use has a time cost where teachers must teach proper tool use. Kathy’s use of Edmodo took more time than anticipated, which caused a delay in her implementation: I got a lot of deer in headlights looks [from students] when I mentioned Edmodo. I kind of had to start to readjust my timeline a little bit and spend some time getting the students comfortable with using Edmodo on a daily and weekly basis.” Felicity’s students “were really slow to use Edmodo as a resource. Many of them wouldn’t go on and join the class. We had been in school a couple of weeks, and students were still asking me about the Edmodo code.” Several participants spoke of challenges related to their struggles with student motivation and socioeconomic factors: Kathy said, “I really have a problem with . . . I just can't seem to make them care. I've tried everything. Even my advanced class . . . they had a project due today, and I only got six.” Eleanor said, “It’s a challenging field these days.” She cited large classes, a transient student population, and student motivation as her biggest challenges: “The motivational piece is just so hard, so I really want to know about flipping the class. But it’s just, I can’t even like . . . it’s hard to even get them to do class work sometimes. There’s only one of me, and there’s 33 of them.” Melba, who worked at the same Title 1 school as Eleanor, explained that parents’ involvement is low at the school: Parents either can’t [check online sites] or they don’t have the technology to do it or
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they’re scared of computers. . . . They have a hard time helping their kids. . . . We have these goals and a lot of times it’s hard to reach those goals because we don’t have the foundation for it. At another school in the same district, Felicity faced similar problems with parents not using the resources to be involved with classroom learning: “I’ve had some parents email me this week about failing grades like it’s the first time . . . that they are aware that the student is failing.” Theme 6 implications. Teachers encountered difficulties while implementing their goals due to issues with technology access for students as well as students’ abilities to use technology. Many students were not prepared or able to use the new tools that teachers wanted to implement, and teachers did not anticipate the time it would take to show students how to use the new tools. American K-12 teachers spend most of their time working directly with students (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009). Therefore, time is one of their most valued assets. Knowing that contextual barriers will likely manifest during goal implementation, it is important that professional developers support teachers in being strategic in goal setting. Implementing new technologies in the classroom can often result in more work on the front-end; however, over time these strategies can reduce a teacher’s workload. Figure 1 summarizes the RQ2 and RQ3 thematic findings.
Figure 1. Summary of RQ2 and RQ3 themebased findings.
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Recommendations for Teacher Professional Developers Given the PD model described in this paper and the six themes above, what are important considerations in the design and facilitation of oTPD experiences for teachers and school-based professionals seeking to enhance blended and online design and facilitation competencies? 1. Design Opportunities for Participants to Learn through Blended and Online Learning. Professional developers should design and facilitate the environment they expect teachers to thrive in. By assuming the role of learner in a blended or fully online setting, educators develop empathy for learners in these environments. This in turn helps them to design and facilitate for the common misconceptions and issues that may arise in such environments. 2. Build Social, Connectivist Components into Online Teacher Professional Development. Just as traditional teachers benefit from observing and reflecting on one another’s teaching practice, teachers benefit from observing and reflecting on one another’s professional learning. 3. Incorporate Goal Setting into In-service Teacher Professional Development. To make goal enactment authentic for teachers, ensure that the PD is concurrent to an extent with the goal enactment. Goal setting helps motivate teachers to bridge between theory and practice by working with their own students. Structured goal setting encourages sustained implementation of new skills attained through PD. 4. Provide Educators with the Ability to Customize their Learning in Terms of Pace and Path. Like many adult learners, teachers appreciate the flexibility and individualization of self-paced PD. Professional developers can build in flexibility of pace, while understanding that allowing too much flexibility can cause PD participants to bog down and get frustrated. Individualized learning allows teachers to work at an appropriate level of challenge.
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5. Know the Needs of the PD Audience First, and Design PD Second. When designing oTPD, professional developers should first know their audience’s needs. Knowing the needs of individual teacher PD participants, and not just school- or districtlevel needs, while challenging, is worthwhile to professional developers who put in the effort. Once needs are identified, professional developers should carefully select and design instruction. If oTPD facilitators utilize an existing course for content, they should carefully consider the amount of time it will take participants to complete the course when making their selection. 6. Support Teachers in Thinking Strategically About Their Goals. Outside factors like large class sizes, access to technology, and learner motivation will affect teachers’ abilities to implement new technologies, and these potential issues should be discussed and reflected on within the PD program. In addition to setting short-term goals, teachers should be supported in developing plans for how their goals may build over time. Professional developers should build in activities for helping teachers analyze the potential first-order barriers of their contexts. Conclusion Horn and Staker (2015) assert that K-12 schools will continue to embrace blended and online learning in response to stakeholders’ desires for affordable, personalized learning that helps all students to succeed while providing an increasingly wide range of opportunities and resources. Teachers need to be fluent in the design and facilitation of blended and online learning environments to provide students with personalized, differentiated, student-centered learning experiences. It is incumbent upon preservice and in-service professional developers – positioned in schools, universities, regional service centers and beyond – to support teachers in experiencing these types of environments in their own learning. The challenge is to offer the rich, sustained, learner-centered professional development teachers need to engage productively in their work. Online teacher professional development offers a viable model
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of professional learning that affords authentic experiences to help teachers engage their students in 21st Century learning. Limitations Qualitative methods limit the generalizability of the research, although through presentation of thick description within the context of a detailed case, readers may apply findings to specific contexts (Merriam, 2009). Other limitations included teachers’ self-reporting on their goal setting and enactment. On-site observations and interviews could have strengthened data collection. Authors’ Note This paper identifies the Georgia Virtual School (GaVS) as a partner in the conception of this teacher professional development. In addition, the first version of the GaVS Teaching Open Online Learning curriculum was used in the professional development design. This explicit identification was done with written permission from GaVS. Funding Statement The professional development program described in this article was funded by the 20142015 Improving Teacher Quality Grants Program, Title II Part A, PL-1017-110, Higher Education. References Abilock, D., Harada, V. H., & Fontichiaro, K. (2013). Growing schools: Effective professional development. Teacher Librarian, 41(1), 8-13. Archambault, L. & Kennedy, K. (2014). Teacher preparation for K-12 online and blended learning. In R. E. Ferdig & K. Kennedy (Eds.), Handbook of research on K-12 online and blended learning (pp. 225-244). Pittsburgh, PA: ETC Press. Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Burke, B. M. (2013). Experiential professional development: A model for meaningful and longlasting change in classrooms. Journal of Experiential Education, 36(3), 247-263. Caine, G., & Caine, R. N. (2010). Strengthening and enriching your professional learning community: The art of learning together. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
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Clark, T., & Barbour, M. K. (2015). Online, blended, and distance education in schools: An introduction. In T. Clark & M. K. Barbour (Eds.), Online, blended, and distance education in schools: Building successful programs. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Creswell, J. W. (1994). Research design: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Darling-Hammond, L., Wei, R. C., Andree, A., Richardson, N., Orphanos, S. (2009). Professional learning in the learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the U.S. and abroad. National Staff Development Council. Retrieved from http://learningforward.org/ Dawson, K. & Dana, F. M. (2014). Professional development for K-12 online teachers. In R. E. Ferdig & K. Kennedy (Eds.), Handbook of research on K-12 online and blended learning (pp. 245-265). Pittsburgh, PA: ETC Press. Dede, C. (2006). The evolution of online teacher professional development. In C. Dede (Ed.), Online professional development for teachers: Emerging models and methods. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Ertmer, P. A. (1999). Addressing first- and second-order barriers to change: Strategies for technology integration. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47(4), 47-61. Ertmer, P. A., & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. T. (2010). Teacher technology change: How knowledge, confidence, beliefs, and culture intersect. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 42(3), 255284. The Governor's Office of Student Achievement (GOSA). (2016). School performance and report card. Retrieved from https://gosa.georgia.gov/ Greeno, J. G. (2006). Learning in activity. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 79-96). West Nyack, NY: Cambridge University Press. Horn, M. B., & Staker, H. (2015). Blended: Using disruptive innovation to improve schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructionaldesign theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory: Volume II (pp. 215-239). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Killion, J. (2013). Tapping technology’s potential. Journal of Staff Development, 34(1), 10-14. Kennedy, K. & Archambault, L. (2015). Identifying, evaluating, and fostering quality online teaching. In T. Clark & M. K. Barbour (Eds.), Online, blended, and distance education: Building successful programs in schools (pp. 13-20). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
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Merriam, S. (2009). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Parks, R. A., Oliver, W., & Carson, E. (2016). The status of middle and high school instruction: Examining professional development, social desirability, and teacher readiness for blended pedagogy in the Southeastern United States. Journal of Online Learning Research, 2(2), 79-101. Penuel, W. R., Fishman, B. J., Yamaguchi, R. & Gallagher, L. P. (2007). What makes professional development effective? Strategies that foster curriculum implementation. American Educational Research Journal, 44(4), 921-959. Saldaña, J. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (3rd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage. Staker, H., & Horn, M. B. (2012). Classifying K-12 blended learning. San Mateo, CA: Innosight Institute. Retrieved from http://innosightinstitute.org Schrum, L., & Levin, B. (2013). Teachers’ technology professional development: Lessons learned from exemplary schools. TechTrends, 57(1), 38–42. U.S. Department of Education. (2016). Future ready learning: Reimagining the role of technology in education. Retrieved from http://tech.ed.gov/files/2015/12/NETP16.pdf Wang, S. K., Hsu, H. Y., Campbell, T., Coster, D. C., & Longhurst, M. (2014). An investigation of middle school science teachers and students use of technology inside and outside of classrooms: Considering whether digital natives are more technology savvy than their teachers. Educational Technology Research and Development, 62(6), 637662. Watson, J., & Kalmon, S. (2005). Keeping pace with K12 online learning: A review of state-level policy and practice. Naperville, IL: Learning Point Associates. Retrieved from https://www. evergreenedgroup.com/ Watson, J., Pape, L., Murin, A., Vashaw, L., & Gemin, B. (2014). Keeping pace with K-12 digital and blended learning: An annual review of policy and practice. Evergreen, CO: Evergreen Education Group. Retrieved from https://www. evergreenedgroup.com/ Wei, R. C., Darling-Hammond, L., & Adamson, F. (2010). Professional development in the United States: Trends and challenges. Dallas, TX: National Staff Development Council. Wortmann, K., Cavanaugh, C., Kennedy, K., Beldarrain, Y., Letourneau, T., & Zygouris-Coe, V. (2008). Online teacher support programs: Mentoring and coaching models. Vienna, VA: International Association for K-12 Online Learning.
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About the Authors Kim C. Huett, Ed.D. Dr. Huett is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Technology and Foundations at the University of West Georgia, where she teaches inservice teachers and school library media specialists at the graduate level. Prior to teaching in higher education, Kim taught English and Spanish at the secondary level for six years in Texas and Georgia public schools. Her research interests include blended and online learning and computer science education in K-12 schools. She is the president-elect of the School Media and Technology Division of the Association of Educational Communications and Technology. Phoebe Balentyne, Ed.D. Dr. Balentyne is a full-time high school mathematics teacher and also works as an adjunct instructor in the Department of Educational Technology, Research, and Assessment at Northern Illinois University. She earned her Ed.D. in School Improvement specializing in K-12 Online Learning from the University of West Georgia. Her research interests include self-paced blended learning and professional development that helps K-12 public school teachers implement blended learning.
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The Path to a Model Curriculum in Clinical Teacher Education Sylvia Dietrich, Western Kentucky University, Chunling Niu, University of Kentucky, and Cassie Zippay, Western Kentucky University
The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) Blue Ribbon Panel report challenged teacher preparation programs to engage in critical reviews of their decades-old preparation programs and stated that they “must shift away from a norm which emphasizes academic preparation and course work loosely linked to school-based experiences. Rather, [teacher preparation] must move to programs that are fully grounded in clinical practice and interwoven with academic content and professional courses” (NCATE, 2010, p. ii). Kentucky’s Council on Post-Secondary Education responded to the NCATE call by providing funding opportunities for teacher preparation programs in the Commonwealth to undertake reformation, renovation, and restructuring. One regional institution’s response to the call created the Clinical Experiences and Practices in Teaching (CEPT) model. The Clinical Experiences and Practices in Teaching model signifies a paradigm shift from a minimally field-based model of individual secondary methods courses taught over multiple semesters to a cohesive, classroom-based clinical model that occurs in the two consecutive semesters immediately preceding the student teaching semester and that provides a cohort of teacher candidates the benefit of working within a team of education professionals. This dynamic approach to teacher preparation integrates content and pedagogy through a variety of clinical experiences (NCATE, 2010). Benefits of this model for teacher preparation include integration of social studies or English methods with courses in teaching strategies, diversity, classroom management, and content-area literacy
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instruction; more than 300 field hours over the span of the two-semester sequence of courses; and immediate application of learning, which allows for feedback in an authentic classroom environment. As we began to transform our decades-old traditional secondary education curriculum, we set out to design and implement a clinical model program for secondary English and social studies majors that would prepare our teacher candidates to be learner-ready teachers fully prepared to meet the needs of their students. We integrated five courses into outcomes to be achieved over two consecutive semesters (one academic year) prior to student teaching. Teacher candidates in this clinical model learn and work two days each week, 8:00 am to 3:00 pm, at partner high schools, during which they spend nearly twothirds of their time participating, helping, coteaching, and teaching in a high school English or social studies classroom. The other one-third of their time is spent on site at the high school in lab experiences coordinated by university faculty, high school faculty, and administrators. An overview of our clinical curriculum, with respect to the most important implementation design elements, emphasizes faculty, materials, methods, standards, assignments, critical performances, and evaluation/assessment (Collins, Joseph, & Bielzczyc, 2004). There is a teaching team comprised of university faculty from the School of Teacher Education and content professors in English and History. Teacher candidates report heavy usage of materials used in high schools in addition to methods texts, professional journals, instructional videos, and primary documents. Instructional
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rounds, table rounds, discussions, and group activities are primary methods of instruction in the CEPT classroom, while assignments include readings, actual teaching and evaluation, selfevaluation, self-reflection journals, creation of lessons, presentations, and inquiry projects. Critical or culminating performances are represented by multiple lesson plans with reflections created and taught by teacher candidates, professional growth plans, and collaboration and leadership projects. In addition to INTASC and state teacher standards, teacher candidates’ work and evaluation/assessment reflects Kentucky’s Framework for Teaching, operationalized as the Professional Growth and Evaluation System (PGES). Design experiment as theoretical framework As noted by many researchers (BannanRitland, 2003; Brown, 1992; Clements, 2007; Collins et al., 2004; van den Akker, 2010), curriculum development in education has often been overwhelmingly influenced by socio-political trends, beliefs and decisions, and rigorous research efforts characterized by ‘systematic monitoring and analysis of practices and outcomes’ which rarely contribute to shaping and guiding curriculum projects or reforms (van den Akker, 2010, p. 177). However, to promote researchbased, evidence-based curriculum development, a variety of research methodologies have emerged in the related literature since the early 1990s. As we created a curriculum for our secondary education teacher major program that embraced the principles and qualities of a clinical model rather than a field experience one, we decided that design experiments (Brown, 1992) provided a pathway that aided us in understanding, analyzing, and explaining the curricular transformation as we were undertaking it. The concept of design experiments was first developed based on the work of Brown (1992). Design experiments can be a powerful tool to address particular research needs in the study of learning and teaching such as (a) clarifying theoretical issues concerning the nature of learning in context, (b) approaching the study of learning in the real world, (c) surpassing narrow measures of learning common in conventional experimental studies, and (d) deriving research findings from
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formative evaluation (Collins et al., 2004, p. 16). Because we viewed our clinical model curriculum as an invaluable opportunity for teacher candidates to learn about theory in the context of practice in an authentic setting, we considered design experiment research to fit our needs. The essential nature of design experiments is a framework for conducting formative research “to test and refine educational designs based on theoretical principles derived from prior research” (Collins et al., 2004, p.18). This kind of formative research in education should be designed for the dual purposes of refining both practice and theory, in that not only the educational outcomes (practice) are measurably improved after the introduction of certain educational interventions under research, but also new evidences are generated during the process to add to the existing theoretical knowledge base. Although we have not considered our clinical model curriculum development an experiment or study, we have noted the characteristics of design experiments as they are clearly differentiated from conventional laboratory experiments in two main aspects. First, the lab experiments focus on controlling variables to discern clear, linear links between particular independent variables and targeted dependent variables, while design experiment researchers deal with real-world learning and teaching and often find themselves in messy situations rather than nicely controlled lab environments. Thus, it is more valuable for design experiment researchers to document and characterize the particular situation they are in rather than attempt to control any pre-defined variables in their studies. Second, lab experiments follow fixed procedures to make sure that any results from the studies can be replicated elsewhere with exactly the same procedures; design experiments value flexibility and constant revisions, as the core of any formative research. However, results from any design experiments are highly contextual and limited in their generalizability (Collins et al., 2004). The overarching guidelines for conducting design experiments are outlined in Figure 1. These characteristics and attributes helped shape our thinking and curricular redesign work, giving us a structure and format to map our own
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curricular journey. For application in curriculum research, the process starts with identifying critical elements in the new curriculum design based on the previous theoretical and empirical research (Collins et al., 2004), documenting and justifying each and every modification to the original curriculum design, collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data from both formative and summative evaluation, and identifying and measuring all emerging independent variables (i.e., setting, nature of learners, technical support, financial support,
professional development, and implementation path) and dependent variables (i.e., climate variables such as engagement, cooperation, and risk taking; learning variables such as disposition, metacognition, and learning strategies; and system variables such as ease of adoption, sustainability, and spread). Finally, the cycle ends with reporting the findings, including the goals and critical elements of the curriculum design, implementation settings, description of each phase/modification, outcomes, and lessons learned.
Figure 1. The process of creating a curriculum (from Collins et al., 2004, p. 33). Identify the critical elements of the design & how they interact
Implementing a Design
Characterize how each was addressed in the implementation
If elements are not working, modify the design
Modifying a Design
Each modification starts a new phase Characterize the critical elements for each phase Describe the reasons for making the modification Cognitive
Climate (e.g., engagement, cooperation, & risk taking) Learning (e.g., disposition, metacognitive, & learning strategies)
Measuring Dependent Variables
Resources Interpersonal
System (e.g., ease of adoption, sustainability, spread)
Analyzing the Design
Group or classroom Setting School or institution Nature of learners Measuring Independent Variables
Technical support Financial Support Professional development Implementation path
Reporting on Design Research
CEPT curriculum redesign work In order to map this curriculum reform for our secondary education clinical model program, CEPT, we chose to record this journey using design research (Brown, 1992). Design research, rather than focusing on fixed procedures, single, controlled variables, and testing of hypotheses, allows for flexibility and the development and
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Goals & elements of the design Settings where implemented Description of each phase Outcome found Lessons learned Multimedia documentation
refinement of a design that maps each phase of the curriculum implementation. As noted by Collins et al. (2004), implementation of the best designs requires continuous decision-making since no design can possibly foresee all the details that arise from implementation. The very nature of clinical models with so many variables, which include working in authentic, multiple
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classrooms and with numerous participants (e.g., high school students, high school teachers, university teacher candidates, and university faculty), is best suited to design research. Thus, in order to successfully engage in the CEPT curriculum redesign using design research elements, we emphasized key factors, including formative evaluation and constant modification and revisions. The Curricular Journey Begins Our purpose in this article is two-fold: (a) describe the curricular journey of creating a cohesive, clinical model curriculum for secondary English and social studies teacher candidates; and (b) extract some common principles that might be replicable in creating and enhancing curricula for other clinically based teacher preparation programs. At the onset of the curriculum development for the CEPT project, we turned to the Danielson Framework for Teaching (The Danielson Group, 2017) as our overarching theoretical foundation for redesigning the content and pedagogy coursework around teacher candidates’ supervised intensive clinical experiences. According to The Danielson Group, “the Framework for Teaching is a research-based set of components of instruction, aligned to the INTASC standards, and grounded in a constructivist view of learning and teaching. The complex activity of teaching is divided into 22 components (and 76 smaller elements) clustered into four domains of teaching responsibility” (i.e., Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Instruction, and Professional Responsibilities). We chose this theory to guide our curricular work because the Danielson Framework for Teaching has been well accepted in the teaching profession as a set of easily operational professional standards on teaching effectiveness, and the Commonwealth of Kentucky, in 2014, officially adopted the PGES to evaluate teacher quality. Following is a brief description of the CEPT Model, funded by the Kentucky Council of Postsecondary Education. This provides necessary background information for readers so that our explanation of the curriculum transformation process makes sense. The new
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clinical model shifted our work from a minimally field-based model of individual secondary methods courses taught over multiple semesters, to a cohesive, classroom-based clinical model that occurs in the two consecutive semesters immediately preceding the student teaching semester and that provides a cohort of teacher candidates the benefit of working within a team of education professionals. In the traditional model curriculum, teacher candidates enrolled in a total of 15 hours of professional education courses. These were five individual courses about teaching strategies, working with children of diverse backgrounds and needs, classroom management, literacy, and English or social studies content methods. Each disparate course had its own set of goals, activities, products, and field experience requirements. Teacher candidates typically completed these five courses in five semesters, which culminated in the sixth and final semester of student teaching. The journey we undertook to transform the clinical model curriculum seamlessly integrated the five individual teacher preparation courses into Clinical Semester 1 and Clinical Semester 2 and occurred in real teaching experiences in actual high school classrooms. Teacher candidates were encouraged to enroll in the two semesters in consecutive semesters followed by the student teaching semester. The model curriculum used “medical model” applications such as table rounds, instructional rounds, clinical vignettes, and case studies to form the structure of the CEPT clinical day. Teacher candidates planned, created, and taught numerous lessons for real high school students in their assigned classrooms. The CEPT model was implemented during the 2013-15 academic years at two clinical sites involving two high schools. Two sites were selected to accommodate the number of teacher candidates and to allow teacher candidates to enter the curriculum sequence either in the fall or spring semester. High School A had been working with the CEPT program from the very beginning and reflects the tradition, cultural diversity, and academic prominence of the community. In High School A, 45% of the students are eligible for free or reduced lunch and 35% are minority students. High School B
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participated in the CEPT work starting from the second semester. It is located within a 30-minute travel distance to the university campus. In High School B, 50% of the students are eligible for free or reduced lunch and 17% are minority students. Our teaching team included a university instructor team comprised of five faculty members from the School of Teacher Education and two content (English and history) professors from Potter College of Arts and Letters, 11-14 adjunct faculty/partner high school teachers (the number varied from semester to semester), and partner high school administrators. The university instructors were on site facilitating clinical experiences, providing instruction, and providing feedback when teacher candidates were at the high schools. University instructors and adjunct faculty/partner high school teachers often met with teacher candidates in triads to plan and provide feedback following a teaching experience. During the two-year period described, we worked with 15 to 36 English and social studies secondary education teacher candidates who were enrolled in the CEPT program and attended their clinical site two full days each week for two semesters. In order to describe our curriculum transformation accurately we relied on our records of the activities of the collaborative curriculum work including PD meetings, work sessions, email exchanges, and other communication within the curriculum development team over the time. The work products for the various phases of the CEPT curriculum development, such as syllabi, curriculum calendar, and curriculum framework, and the reception and reaction of the CEPT teacher candidates to the new curriculum, was reflected in their journals or other ways of communication with the faculty. Map of the Journey As we have mapped our curricular journey, we have characterized our modifications by phases – an implementation phase followed by three major phases over a two-year period. Thus, we present a detailed accounting beginning with a description of the phases, rationales for the changes, and resulting products from each phase.
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Phase 1: Implementation As we began to develop a secondary education teacher preparation clinical model curriculum, we constructed a working group of university faculty. The faculty team was composed of two instructors from the secondary education program, two instructors from the English and history departments, and four faculty members who had other responsibilities related to the clinical model. Primary goals of the implementation phase included the establishment of a cohesive clinical curriculum framework and the preparation of a curriculum calendar for the initial semester of the program. Figure 2. The process of creating a curriculum for the CEPT model.
The work process of creating a curriculum revolving around teacher candidates’ high-quality clinical experiences is detailed in Figure 2. It began with choosing a guiding theoretical framework, the Danielson Framework for Teaching, to determine a common vision of the ultimate program outcome (What kind of teacher candidates will this CEPT training produce?), and then the university faculty worked backward to examine where our existing content courses fit or didn’t fit in the framework, identifying the links and gaps from which the specific program outcomes were derived (What kind of knowledge and skills do we want our teacher candidates to be equipped with through the CEPT training?). Next, the curriculum team designed the timeline
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and structure of the kind of clinical experiences that our teacher candidates would engage in to address these program outcomes. Finally, the culmination of the initial curriculum development was realized in a curriculum calendar that organically integrates content, pedagogy, clinical experiences, and assessments. The first goal, development of a framework, resulted in a course topic matrix, which was organized into four columns: learn, do, measure, and standards addressed. We used Kentucky’s framework for teaching, operationalized as the PGES, and developed the four domains into guiding questions with each domain’s components included as “big ideas.” This original framework went through multiple iterations before the university working group settled on what became the first semester’s curriculum calendar. The calendar included columns for semester outcomes aligned with PGES domains and indicators and artifacts that demonstrated the outcomes. Additionally, the curriculum calendar had two more columns – one for class/lab activities and another for clinical experiences related to the outcomes. See Appendix A for an excerpt of the calendar. Once we began to use the initial curriculum document, we held ongoing discussions. As we analyzed the document, we uncovered several issues that caused us to modify the original document. These issues, related to implementing a second semester of curriculum for the initial cohort and beginning a second cohort at a second high school site, required changes in university teaching responsibilities with full implementation of the clinical model and revealed the need for more flexibility in the first semester curriculum. Phase 2: Preparing to Add a Second Cohort and Clinical Site As we prepared to add a second cohort and a second clinical site, we began Phase 2. Our working group composed of university faculty revised the curriculum calendar for the first semester of the model based on experiences gleaned from teaching the first cohort and reviewed the curriculum calendar for the initial second semester which had been developed during the Implementation Phase but had not yet been carried out. We also devised a teaching
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schedule for the university faculty incorporating both cohorts at the two sites. The analyses we made of experiences in Phase 2 revealed a number of important issues regarding faculty, materials, standards, assignments, critical performances, and evaluation/assessment. The university faculty assigned to teach in the clinical model expressed that they were not as effective in managing instructional time and activities at two sites. High school faculty working in the clinical model noted that they had little input into the creation of the curriculum documents and that they had different levels of understanding of their roles and responsibilities in the clinical model. Another issue our analysis revealed was that because teacher candidates were so much a part of the high school classrooms, they used English and social studies high school texts frequently in their work. High school faculty indicated various levels of expertise in using the PGES, Kentucky’s professional education evaluation framework, as a feedback and evaluation tool for the teacher candidates. The faculty working group also understood that assignment completion/due dates were problematic for the teacher candidates because they were learning and working in real time and in authentic settings. Also, to improve the quality of some assignments, teacher candidates would benefit from additional and indepth self-evaluation and reflection. We also learned that we needed to align critical performances from the traditional model to the clinical model. This meant making these culminating performance tasks more authentic, more reflective of the clinical model, and in some cases, streamlining them so that they better aligned to the outcomes of the clinical model. Finally, since the teacher candidates were delivering the lessons they created in real time and in authentic classrooms, we needed a way in which to evaluate their lesson delivery. The results of our experiences in Phase 2 led to modifications and products in the next phase. Phase 3: major revisions to the curriculum in the second year Analysis of experiences from the first year of curriculum implementation indicated the need for changes in nearly all aspects of the clinical model
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curriculum. In order to accomplish this, we planned a series of professional development and work session experiences during the summer between the academic semesters. The primary goal of the summer work was to revise the existing curriculum to enhance the creation of an effective teacher candidate. Goals that helped meet this included examining the constructivist theoretical aspects of education, investigating information and research related to creating effective teacher candidates, learning more about clinical preparation practices, discussing individual perspectives and perspectives gleaned from readings, sharing experiences, and reviewing and developing outcomes associated with clinical practices that form the core of the curriculum of the CEPT clinical teacher preparation model. A working group of 20-25 faculty from the university and two high school clinical sites met throughout the summer to achieve the goals of the curriculum revision. Nearly every high school faculty member who took part in the first year of CEPT became part of the working group. This newly-created work group for Phase 3 created several advising recommendations for academic advisors of secondary English and social studies education majors. We strongly encouraged students in these majors to take as much of their major content as possible prior to the clinical year because this benefitted them in managing the high school course content. A long-term recommendation was to revise these major degree programs to reflect the need for taking content courses prior to the clinical year. To solve the problem of inadequate flexibility of assignment completion/due dates, the summer curriculum team established a progression of creating and delivering lessons, e.g., co-teaching, co-planning, drop-in lessons, full lessons, and unit development. An additional related change involved building more holistic and flexible ways of meeting deadlines. As a result of incorporating the curriculum ideas and suggestions of the newly empowered high school faculty in Phase 3, we revised the curriculum calendar. However, managing the different levels of understanding of high school faculty roles and responsibilities as mentors and coaches of the teacher candidates caused some
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difficulties with giving feedback to and evaluating the teacher candidates. Our evaluation framework called for evaluating the teacher candidates using the observable components (i.e., classroom environment and instruction) of the PGES. The high school and the university faculty’s various levels of expertise became an issue. Two ongoing issues related to assignments and evaluation continued to cause us to seek better ways of managing these experiences. Regarding assignments, the ongoing problem was gaining as much flexibility as possible in the completion of assignments related to teacher candidates’ authentic work in the high school classrooms. Additionally, evaluating lesson delivery effectively continued to be problematic. Phase 4: Tweaking the Curriculum The issues and problems uncovered or persistent in Phase 3 provided the need for modifications and enhancements in a fourth phase of the curriculum reform. Based on the success of the professional development and work sessions from Phase 3, implementing a similar professional development and work plan enabled the CEPT faculty to further develop a common understanding of effective teaching and learning in order to mentor teacher candidates’ knowledge and practice and review the CEPT curriculum (i.e., learning outcomes, classroom work, and clinical experiences) and determine how well it prepares effective teacher candidates. The resulting document of evidence produced from this phase was the curriculum calendar utilized by the teaching teams at both clinical high school sites during the fall of 2015. Lessons Learned Based on our painstaking experience of creating and enhancing a curriculum for a clinically-based teacher preparation model over a period of two years, we learned three key lessons. First, the key to the success of any curriculum development and reform efforts that ultimately move teacher education programs away from the university-based traditional model toward a truly clinical model founded upon solid university-school partnership lies in the early involvement and collaboration of all stakeholders (university faculty and administrators, and public
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school faculty and administrators) throughout the process. At the beginning of our CEPT model implementation, the curriculum design work was exclusively carried out within the university faculty team and produced a curricular framework that we thought was “clinical” enough to be introduced directly to the authentic high school classroom settings. However, the reality was different: the high school adjunct faculty (cooperating teachers) expressed that they were confused about their roles and responsibilities in their work with the CEPT, and they were reluctant to be “told” to do “something extra” that was forced upon them by some “condescending university experts”; the CEPT teacher candidates indicated difficulties in initially adapting to the new model and mediating between the disagreeing university faculty and high school cooperating teachers. Out of practicality, many minor curriculum adaptations had to be negotiated at the last minute in order for the teacher candidates to be able to complete their assignments/tasks, an unpleasant experience for all involved. These implementation facts compelled us to make the changes that we needed to re-define and value our public school partners’ part and contributions in the curriculum work. Consequently, at the end of the first year of the clinical model implementation, we invited the adjunct faculty/high school teachers to work with us and put forward suggestions for the curricular enhancements that marked the watershed in our curriculum work. Their active involvement helped us get all the stakeholders on the same page by making the theoretical underpinnings and rationales (i.e., constructivist learning) of the CEPT model unmistakably explicit to everyone who shared the common vision about improving teacher quality. Probably nothing can better demonstrate the significant positive impact of transforming the exclusive curriculum work of the university instructors to the true collaborative work based on university-school partnership than that expressed in one of our high school partner’s words: “The first year it felt like they were doing something to us while by the end of the second year, we felt we were doing things with them.” A second key lesson concerns how to lay out the framework of work for creating a curriculum
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for clinically based teacher preparation. We admit that it can be messy to transform what has been working adequately into becoming even more clinical, and we acknowledge the constant challenges of wrestling between theory and practicality in developing and refining the clinical model curriculum, to force changes on ourselves as teacher educators, to move out of our comfort zones, and to stand ready to be corrected or selfcorrect in the face of the implementation reality. However, we believe this huge, messy, and painful undertaking can be managed if we establish a clearly understood common vision of the ultimate program outcome from the very beginning of our work, namely, the kind of teacher candidates we want to develop. Then we can proceed to establish a viable theoretical framework that encompasses all the professional standards we want our teacher candidates to embody in order to achieve this ultimate program outcome. The framework and its detailed professional standards will guide all our curriculum development work and determine whether certain decisions fit or do not fit to help us achieve program goals. We learned our final lesson in the later stages of continuous curriculum enhancement after the initial creation phase. We find it critical to formulate a working structure that allows the curriculum development team to meet regularly and discuss the previous curriculum implementation and necessary changes for the future at natural time points at the end of each academic semester or academic year. Additionally, various channels of communication among all the stakeholders throughout the school year must be kept open for making “emergency” curriculum modifications based on practicality or unforeseen circumstances. In sum, previous research found that in order to respond to the national call to reform existing teacher education and to put clinical work at the core of teacher preparation training, the critical first step is to create or redesign the teacher education curriculum to integrate clinical experiences with content and pedagogy. Several universities have made some pioneering efforts in developing a curriculum that moves teacher education further away from the university campus. Among them, the Curriculum Redesign
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Effort Advancing Teacher Education project at Cleveland State University produces a four-year teacher preparation curriculum framework that substantially increases the amount of required teacher candidates’ clinical work throughout the training and places unprecedented emphasis on their university-school partnership throughout the process. Their curriculum redesign effort centers around various content themes while the CEPT curriculum redesign is based on clearly defined professional standards (skill areas) and links the design to the teacher candidates’ professional growth. The CEPT curriculum study makes unique contributions to the literature by mapping out in clear detail the various phases of our curriculum development and enhancement work (i.e., work activities, work products, issues arising from the implementation, and solutions/changes for the next phase) for the two semesters of intensive clinical training immediately preceding teacher candidates’ student teaching. Guided by the chosen theoretical framework and professional standards, we not only transformed the structure of the content courses, but also innovated various clinical instruction methods that enabled teacher candidates to effectively bridge content, pedagogy, and their teaching practice. Any initiative should be examined through the lens of specific contexts, and teacher education is no exception. Although we believe the key lessons drawn from our implementation of developing the CEPT curriculum should be of considerable referential value to anyone who intends to replicate or build their own clinical model of teacher preparation, we recommend cautious deliberation for adopting the path of our CEPT curriculum work based on the unique situational and practical considerations of the stakeholders.
Collins, A., Joseph, D., & Bielaczyc, K. (2004). Design research: Theoretical and methodological issues. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1), 15-42. The Danielson Group. (2017). The framework. Retrieved from https://www.danielsongroup.org/framework/ NCATE. (2010). Transforming teacher education through clinical practice: A national strategy to prepare effective teachers. Retrieved from http://caepnet.org/~/media/Files/caep/accreditationresources/blue-ribbon-panel.pdf?la=en van den Akker, J. (2010). Building bridges: How research may improve curriculum policies and classroom practices. In S. M. Stoney (Ed.), Beyond Lisbon 2010: Perspectives from research and development for educational policy in Europe (pp. 175-195). SintKatelijne-Waver, Belgium: CIDRE.
References Bannan-Ritland, B. (2003). The role of design in research: The integrative learning design framework. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 21-24. Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2(2), 141-178. Clements, D. H. (2007). Curriculum research: Toward a framework for ‘research-based curricula.’ Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 38(1), 35-70.
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Appendix A The CEPT semester 1 curriculum calendar (excerpt)
Assessment
Week/Day
Learning
Doing
Assessment
T 9/17
Outcomes reflect several different types of learning and, where appropriate, represent opportunities for both coordination and integration.
Debrief
In class: Reflective Journal
What processes are involved in planning, implementing, and evaluating effective instruction?
Prepares assessments that measure student performance on each objective and help guide teaching. Uses a variety of formative assessments to determine each student’s progress and guide instruction. Promotes opportunities for students to engage in accurate self-assessment of learning. Uses technology to assess and communicate student learning. Describes, analyses, and evaluates student performance data to determine progress of individuals and identify differences in progress among student groups.
Strategies
Th 9/19
Effectively connects most content, procedures, and activities with relevant life experiences of students.
Mini-lesson: Explain various assessments using Critical Thinking text. Lab: Based on field class, design a multiple choice, constructed response, and authentic assessment items. Lab: Evaluate peer assessments Create a new assessment and teach in classes and analyze data (teach within the next week) Instructional Round: How are teachers assessing student learning?
Design Essential Questions for your unit.
Reflective journal entry
Create instructional activities on each level of the Relevance Framework. Take lessons and improve level of rigor & relevance Instructional Rounds: How do teachers implement rigorous and relevant instruction? Students as Diverse Learners
T 9/24
Teacher actively seeks knowledge of students’ levels of development and their backgrounds, cultures, skills, language proficiency, interests, and special needs from a variety of sources. This information is acquired for individual students.
Analysis Assessment data
Outcomes take into account the varying needs of individual students.
Print choice – Readability
Identifies one or more students whose learning could be enhanced by collaboration and provides an appropriate rationale. Designs a plan to enhance student learning that includes all parties in the collaborative effort. Implements planned activities that enhance student learning and engage all parties.
Differentiation – Learning Preferences Brain & reading
Blackboard Guided Reading Quiz In class: Reflective journal entry
Lab: Tour school & coordinator speak to group Field Task: Teach formative assessment Field Task: Identify a student who needs assistance and provide additional assistance Technology tips
Analyzes student learning data to evaluate the outcomes of collaboration and identify next steps.
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Students as Diverse Learners
9/26 Franklin
Teacher actively seeks knowledge of students’ levels of development and their backgrounds, cultures, skills, language proficiency, interests, and special needs from a variety of sources. This information is acquired for individual students.
Diversity Area: Special Education Table Round – Students with Special Needs Lab: Special Ed. Professor - Case Studies – Working with students
Case Study (Paper/Table Round #1) In class: Reflective journal entry
Field Task: TC teach ½ of AF lesson AF approve strategy lesson plan Students As Diverse Learners
T 10/1 Franklin
Plans represent the coordination of in-depth content knowledge, understanding of different students’ needs, and available resources (including technology), resulting in a series of learning activities designed to engage students in high-level cognitive activity. Teacher’s plans and practice reflect understanding of prerequisite relationships among topics and concepts and provide a link to necessary cognitive structures needed by students to ensure understanding. Teacher's plan for student assessment is fully aligned with the instructional outcomes and has clear criteria and standards that show evidence of student contribution to their development. Assessment methodologies have been adapted for individual students, as needed. Accurately and effectively communicates concepts, processes and/or knowledge and uses vocabulary that is clear, correct and appropriate for students. Aligns instructional strategies and activities with learning objectives for all students. Identifies misconceptions related to content and addresses them during planning and instruction.
Diversity Analysis of differences in Instructional Rounds between the two school sites
In class: Reflective journal entry
Principal discuss diversity and set up of school Special Education: Law Physical Exceptionalities Lab: Special Ed. Professor – Case Study Scenarios Instructional Rounds: What diversity do you see in the classroom? How do teachers accommodate for diverse needs?
Co-teach: Team teach AF approve lesson plan with teacher
Chunling Niu, Ed.D. Dr. Niu is Research Administrative Principal Coordinator at Training Resource Center, College of Social Work, University of Kentucky. Her research interests include school performance and improvement, teacher preparation, interdisciplinary studies involving school intervention, and child welfare.
About the Authors Sylvia Dietrich, Ed.D. Dr. Dietrich serves as the Director of the School of Teacher Education at Western Kentucky University. Early Childhood and personnel preparation, including clinical models, comprise her research interests.
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Cassie Zippay, Ed.D. Dr. Zippay is the Clinical Model Project Director for Western Kentucky University’s School of Teacher Education. Her research interests include culturally responsive instruction and teacher preparation.
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A Retrospective Look at Using Differentiated Faculty Development Practices to Promote Assessment and Continuous Improvement Leigh Funk, Kennesaw State University, and Jessica Chafin, Chalk & Wire: Higher Education Assessment Solutions
As a teacher educator, take a moment and reflect on some of the most recent professional development sessions you have attended. How many of those sessions were delivered using the conventional stand up and lecture model? If the answer is more often than not, have you ever wondered why the expectation of educators to utilize effective instructional practices with teacher candidates does not seem to apply to those who teach faculty? As teacher educators, we naturally leverage differentiated practices with our teacher candidates and encourage them to differentiate instruction for their P-12 students. So why then do we not utilize similar approaches in the design and delivery of professional learning opportunities for our teacher education faculty? The demands on faculty time appear higher and more varied than ever before. Faculty are expected to juggle multiple roles related to teaching, research, and service in order to successfully earn tenure and/or promotion. However, the continuing era of accountability necessitates that teacher education faculty are familiar with and capable of assuming additional responsibilities related to frequently changing federal and state teacher education mandates (Beavers, 2009). Furthermore, teacher educators are also expected to engage in professional development which can be used as a means to ensure that faculty stay abreast of changes in educational standards and regulations.
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The culminating demands on faculty time and increasing level of emphasis placed on student learning signifies the importance of designing professional learning opportunities for teacher education faculty in a manner that leverages research-based strategies that are more likely to result in high quality, meaningful, and impactful learning. The purpose of this article is to share our approach to this challenge and how we utilized professional learning principles, adult learning theory, and differentiated instructional practices in our design of a nine-month professional learning series to promote faculty knowledge and skills related to student learning and program assessment. Situational Context The associate dean for assessment and accreditation and the coordinator of assessment for a large educator preparation program (EPP) were responsible for designing the “Year of Assessment� professional learning series. This professional learning series incorporated four different strategies that occurred over the course of nine months, extending from August through May. The four strategies included large group meetings with working sub-groups, a faculty fellows for assessment initiative, choice sessions, and a self-paced interactive online meeting. These professional learning activities targeted multiple concepts related to student learning and program assessment and were sequentially planned to permit scaffolding of the knowledge
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and practical skills acquired in preceding sessions. Approximately 120 full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty and non-tenured lecturers took part in this professional learning series as part of the EPP’s Year of Assessment. The primary goal of the professional learning series was to provide learning spaces and structured experiences that would deepen faculty knowledge of assessment and enable faculty to “share similar experiences, brainstorm and problem solve not only [to] create solutions, but also to build a community atmosphere of trust and appreciation” (Beavers, 2009, p. 26). The authors believed that building a community of learners with trust and appreciation among faculty as part of the professional learning experience would further strengthen the EPP’s overall goal of advancing the use of best practices in assessment. Professional Learning As teacher education faculty, we could argue that we know a thing or two about good teaching. However, research-based strategies related to effective teaching are often not utilized when teaching professional educators. There are multiple terms used in relation to advancing the knowledge and skills of faculty, particularly teacher educators. Although these terms share similar characteristics, there are important differences to consider. The term faculty development is widely used when referring to university-based programs designed for faculty across an institution of higher education. Faculty development in higher education can take many forms in an effort to “help faculty members mature as teachers, scholars, and citizens . . . especially as these processes pertain to enhancing student learning outcomes” (McKee, Johnson, Ritchie, & Tew, 2013, p. 1). Conversely, the field of teacher education tends to use the terms professional development or professional learning, which are both widely accepted terms within the P-12 education community. However, professional learning has emerged as a modern term that extends the passive transfer of information through lectures or workshops into more interactive, collaborative, and jobembedded activities (Western Governors University, 2014). In this case, the intent was
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to design a series of activities that would, in fact, meet this definition of professional learning. Individuals seeking to offer professional learning activities to support the expansion of faculty knowledge and skills are likely to agree that faculty come to a professional learning event with varied levels of readiness, learning needs, and interests. This is particularly true when working with teacher educators who come to the learning experience with dual roles. Gulamhussein (2013) describes these dual roles as encompassing the teacher as technician and the teacher as intellectual. In order for professional learning to be effective for teacher educators, they must be supported in these dual roles by being 1) exposed to pedagogical strategies and the research behind them, and 2) provided the required level of support to implement the new strategies within their own teaching contexts (Gulamhussein, 2013). According to the 2009 meta-analysis by Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, and Orphanos, “the kind of high-intensity, jobembedded, collaborative learning that is most effective is not a common feature of professional development” (p. 4). So how then can one design a series of professional learning opportunities that address the diverse learning needs and dual roles of teacher educators while ensuring the activities are highly engaging, job-embedded, and collaborative? Darling-Hammond et al. (2009) summarized their meta-analysis findings by identifying several key considerations to take into account when designing effective professional learning. The professional learning should: 1. be intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice, 2. focus on student learning and address the teaching of specific curriculum content, 3. align with school improvement priorities and goals, and 4. build strong working relationships among teachers. (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009) The meta-analysis findings indicated that “sustained and intensive professional learning for teachers is related to student-achievement gains” (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009, p. 9). Although the primary purpose of this professional learning series was to deepen faculty knowledge relating
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to assessment, the impact on student learning should be kept in mind. Ideally, if this professional learning were successful, it would have at least an indirect impact on improving student learning. Although teacher educators like to think the discipline is unique in many ways, in other ways it is time to consider following the example of other professions as to how professionals are continuously prepared. “It is time for our education workforce to engage in learning the way other professionals do – continually, collaboratively, and on the job – to address common problems and crucial challenges where they work” (Darling-Hammond et al. 2009, p. 2). The guiding principles used in this project from the professional learning literature are summarized in Table 1. Table 1 Take-Aways from Professional Learning Professional learning should: Be intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice. Focus on student learning and address the teaching of specific curriculum content. Build strong working relationships among teachers. Continue over a period of time to allow for application and reinforcement of practice.
Adult Learning Principles The principles of adult learning have been thoroughly researched for decades. While effective teaching includes some fundamental principles, the principles of adult learning differ greatly from effective practices used with children. At the most basic level, androgogy refers to the teaching of adults, whereas pedagogy refers to the teaching of children. In teacher education this presents a unique challenge. As teacher educators, we should model best practices for teaching P-12 children but we are actually teaching highly diverse adult learners. So then, should we use androgogy since our teacher candidates are in fact adults? Or
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should we use pedagogy since we want to demonstrate how to teach children? To answer this question, we must review the differences between pedagogy and androgogy. When designing instruction for adults, the following four principles should guide the design: 1. tailor the course design to students’ needs, life experiences, and interests; 2. support learners to construct their own knowledge rather than simply transmit knowledge; 3. foster relationships and interactions between learners and learner-to-instructor; and 4. create authentic learning experiences where learners can apply their new knowledge in ways that are meaningful to their goals. (Allen, 2016) The above list clearly demonstrates how the principles of adrogogy place much of the responsibility on adult learners for their own learning. Conversly, the pedagogical model “assigns to the teacher full responsibility for all decision making about the learning content, method, timing, and evaluation. Learners play a submissive role in the educational dynamics” (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 1998, p. 72). The debate regarding whether to use androgogy or pedagogy in the teaching of humans was particularly heated during the 1970s among several leading learning theorists such as Malcomb Knowles, Cyril Houle, and Leon McKenzie. By 1979, Leon McKenzie concluded that “the existential differences between children and adults require a strategic differentiation of educational practice” (p. 257). In recent years, educators have experimented with applying the self-directed learning concepts from androgogy to the teaching of children with mixed success. While some of the androgical principles can be effective when used with children, adults do not appear to welcome or accept the use of pedagogical principles. Further confounding this debate is the challenge of how to most effectively increase the knowledge and skills of highly educated adults. Teachers and teacher educators are problem solvers who are very comfortable and skilled at questioning, challenging, and adapting to meet the needs of their diverse learners (Beavers,
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2009). The use of adult learning principles becomes even more important when implementing a professional learning series with faculty who are well educated and consider themselves to be experts in their disciplines. Professional learning developers must recognize that faculty and even P-12 teachers play dual roles when engaging in professional learning experiences (Gulamhussein, 2013). Teachers play a role of technician when they implement research-based strategies, and a role of an intellecutal when they examine research on learning and apply those concepts to the development of new and innovative classroom strategies (Gulamhussein, 2013). Ultimately, the principles of adult learning can be leveraged to support these dual roles and in doing so can further deepen the meaning and level of interest for faculty to actively engage in professional learning. The guiding principles applied in the design of this professional learning project with regard to the aforementioned adult learning literature are summarized in Table 2. Table 2 Take-Aways from Adult Learning Theory
their learning (Tomlinson & Strickland, 2005). Differentiated instruction is a process that leverages decades of research relating to classroom management, student engagement, student readiness, flexible grouping, and each individual student’s zone of proximal development (Huebner, 2010). The principles of differentiated instruction considered in the design of this professional learning project are summarized in Table 3. Table 3 Take-Aways from Differentiated Instruction Professional learning should: Focus on essential content only. Incorporate individual student differences. Flexibly group students by interest, topic, or ability. Integrate ongoing assessment. Adjust content, process, and product based on student needs (Huebner, 2010).
Professional learning should: Tailor the learning to faculty’s needs, life experiences, and interests. Support faculty to construct their own knowledge. Foster peer-to-peer and peer-to-instructor interactions. Incorporate opportunities for faculty to practice using their knowledge and skills in their realworld educational contexts.
Differentiated Instruction Principles Differentiated instruction “is defined as the planning and delivery of classroom instruction that considers varied levels of readiness, learning needs, and interests of each learner” (TEAL, 2010, para.1). Differentiated instruction generally adjusts three attributes: the content, the process, or the product that students produce as a result of
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Differentiated instruction is widely accepted as an effective instructional strategy for P-12 learners. However, do the principles of differentiated instruction hold up when applied to adult learners? At first glance the term differentiated instruction appears to be closely aligned with P-12 learners and their diverse learning needs. However, in comparing the principles of differentiented instruction with the principles of adult learning theory, the two practices are quite complimentary, as reflected in Figure 1. Drawing from the principles of professional learning, adult learning theory, and differentiated instructional practices, a set of guiding principles was developed to drive the design and development of the professional learning series as summarized in Table 5.
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Adult Learning
Differentiation
Self-Directed
Offers Choice
Rich life experiences
Recognition of diverse learners
Learning needs relate to social roles
Group Work and Collaboration
Problem centered and prefer immediate application of knowledge
Problem solving for real-life challenges
Internally motivated to learn
Meet students where they are
Figure 1. Alignment of Adult Learning Principles and Differentiated Instruction Principles. Adapted from Merriam (2001) and Robb (2008). Table 5 Guiding Principles for Year of Assessment Professional Learning Series Professional Learning
Guiding Principles Build a sequenced, on-going series of opportunities over a long period of time.
Adult Learning
Differentiated Instruction
√
√
√
Allow for as much choice among topics as possible. Leverage the prior knowledge and experiences of faculty across activity choices available.
√
√
Encourage faculty participation, facilitation, and relationship building.
√
√
Ensure the topics are relevant with job-embedded practice activities.
√
√
√
Provide flexible delivery formats and product options.
√
√
√
Strategies Used for Year of Assessment Professional Learning With these guiding principles in mind, the authors planned an ongoing series of professional learning activities and supports that incorporated large group meetings with working sub-groups, faculty fellows for assessment, a choice of sessions, and a virtual meeting.
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Large Group Meetings with Working SubGroups Traditional large group meetings and professional development sessions consist of a variety of speakers or experts who present information to a group. Such sessions generally provide one-way communication from the expert (aka teacher) to the learners (aka faculty). Large
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group meetings were used to kick-off and end the Year of Assessment professional learning series. However, the large group meeting was designed to establish the context, set the stage, and provide the rationale for why the learning on a particular topic was important and how this learning would directly impact faculty and their programs. As part of the large group meeting, subgroups were leveraged using flexible grouping strategies, so the faculty could elect which program groups to work in as they began to evaluate and redesign their program assessments. Each small working group created their own goals and was awarded what faculty referred to as “the gift of focused time� over the course of the year to achieve their goals. The small working groups met after each large group session to collaboratively apply the new information in ways that directly related to their teaching, learning, and assessment contexts. The final large group meeting was designed to engage faculty in the process of looking forward to the next phase of a university-wide continuous improvement initiative and to retrospectively look at how the professional learning activities connected and how they could be applied to future assessment related initiatives. This strategy addressed the guiding principles by allowing the working groups to choose their area of focus and how they would structure their work over the two semesters. Additionally, by working in these self-selected groups over an extended period of time, faculty were directly engaged in the process of assessment capacity building and were given the opportunity to explore the commonality of interests among their peers. The primary tasks that evolved from the large group topics were specifically tied to the curriculum and assessments within the academic programs in which they teach, thereby increasing faculty interest and meaning of the experience and the learning. Faculty Fellows for Assessment The Faculty Fellows for Assessment initiative began in fall 2015 but was used during the Year of Assessment as another support strategy for faculty to broaden and deepen their knowledge and skills relating to assessment. Faculty fellows serve a two-year term and are
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provided a small stipend as well as money to travel to one assessment-related conference per year. This initiative is intended to build assessment related capacity among faculty and to increase the level of support programs receive as they work to design and continuously improve their course and program assessments. During the Year of Assessment, there were four faculty fellows for assessment who had intermediate to advanced knowledge of assessment. These fellows were assigned to EPP programs and served as the primary support person for assessment questions and activities. The faculty fellows had strong working relationships with the program faculty and program coordinators because they were also faculty and had a deep understanding of the complexities of the programs to which they had been assigned. Faculty fellows were used to support the professional learning activities by serving as liaisons between the faculty and the authors to provide feedback on the topics faculty wanted and/or needed as well as for soliciting ways the professional learning could be improved between each of the sessions. The faculty fellows also contributed to the professional learning activities by leading choice session topics, creating support videos for the virtual meeting, and working directly with faculty in their assigned programs during the applied activities. The faculty fellows for assessment honored the guiding principles by encouraging faculty participation, support, and continued relationshipbuilding across an extended period of time. They were also instrumental in supporting the jobembedded activities faculty engaged in throughout the Year of Assessment. Although the faculty fellows for assessment initiative goes beyond the Year of Assessment professional learning series, it has been a great success, and their involvement in the planning, support, and implementation of the sessions greatly contributed to the overall success of the program. Choice Sessions The choice sessions were used as extensions of the large group sessions and offered faculty opportunities to deepen their knowledge and skills related to assessment topics. Choice
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sessions were typically 45-90 minutes in length and designed to be highly interactive and applicable to the teaching, learning, and/or assessment process. This strategy included choice sessions for faculty with novice as well as more advanced skills related to the large group meeting topic and were facilitated by both EPP and nonEPP faculty members. For example, following a large group meeting focused on how to review and improve program assessment rubrics, two choice sessions were offered to deepen faculty knowledge around designing high-quality rubrics. A novice session was offered on how to design quality rubrics, titled Rubric Assessment Goes to College, and a session titled Designing Assessment to Promote Deep Learning was offered for faculty with more advanced knowledge and skills. Another example was a large group session focused on a “Colleague Spotlight” where three groups of faculty presented research they were involved with relating to assessment and issues of equity, fairness, and bias. Following that large group session, three choice sessions were offered including 1) A Closer Look at Issues of Equity, Fairness, and Bias in Assessments, where faculty were asked to analyze a course assignment and rubric, 2) Designing Assessments That Promote Deep Learning for a second time upon request by the faculty, and 3) Reviewing Program Assessments for Fairness and Bias. To connect the learning from the choice sessions with the application of the new knowledge, faculty engaged in what were called “Knowledge Exchanges” which allowed faculty, grouped by department, to share what they learned from the sessions and collaboratively identify how this information would be used to improve their assessment practices. Faculty expressed how much they enjoyed the knowledge exchanges and asked that these be incorporated into future professional learning activities. Choice sessions addressed the guiding principles by allowing faculty to drive their own learning by choosing which sessions to attend, honoring prior knowledge through self-selected choices based on their learning needs, offering knowledge exchange opportunities that strengthened the social, relational, and collaborative aspects of the learning, and
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incorporating job-embedded hands-on activities that related directly to the courses the faculty taught and their work on the assessments used across their program. The guiding principle of flexible delivery was also honored by allowing faculty to determine which small groups to work with and having the latitude to identify what deliverables to produce as a result of their learning. Of all the strategies used during the Year of Assessment, these choice sessions seemed to be the most successful and meaningful to the faculty. Virtual EPP Meeting Toward the end of the spring semester, faculty time becomes more precious and schedules become even tighter. The fourth strategy addressed the time and timing issues by engaging faculty in a virtual asynchronous manner. The virtual EPP meeting was designed to be self-paced but with a bounded time parameter of two weeks. The two-week period was to encourage widespread participation among the faculty while balancing the need for faculty to complete the activities prior to the next professional learning opportunity. The virtual meeting strategy complemented the topic of validity and reliability because it allowed the authors to design differentiated activities for faculty who were more advanced in some areas, such as establishing validity, but who may need additional information and practice with other topics, such as establishing reliability. The ability for faculty to self-select from a variety of activities honored the guiding principles of choice and prior knowledge. This virtual meeting was held in late April just before faculty could begin engaging in the process of establishing inter-rater reliability for assessments administered that semester. As a result, the professional learning activities were jobembedded and offered immediate opportunities for faculty to practice what they had learned throughout this professional learning activity. Faculty commented that they particularly appreciated the opportunity to interact with the content multiple times as needed for them to be comfortable enough to apply that new knowledge. Finally, an unexpected benefit to the virtual meeting was that it could be used to orient
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new faculty members to the specific processes used within the EPP, thereby minimizing the need for additional or redundant sessions in the future. One improvement we plan to make in the future relates to the guiding principle of faculty relationship building. Faculty mentioned that after being afforded many opportunities to work collaboratively, engaging with their colleagues in the working groups, and being exposed to alternative ideas throughout the previous eight months, they really missed the opportunity to engage with their colleagues during the virtual meeting. The addition of discussion boards would allow for such collaboration and encourage faculty to share insights, questions, and ideas for future improvements as well as the types of support needed in order to advance their knowledge relating to assessment. Reflection and Conclusion Looking back on the Year of Assessment professional learning series, the guiding principles enabled the authors to produce a series of planned, sequenced, ongoing, and engaging professional learning activities that leveraged research-based strategies that resulted in high quality, meaningful, and impactful learning. While the authors believe the Year of Assessment was an overall success, in the spirit of continuous improvement, the team has identified several areas of particular focus for the next implementation of the professional learning series. 1. Planning – Although the concepts relating to professional learning, adult learning theory, and differentiation drove the project as it emerged, the entire sequence of learning opportunities was not fully developed from the beginning. Full development of the sequence would have enabled the EPP to more clearly reiterate the big picture and the intended relationships between and among the learning opportunities in a strategic and possibly more effective manner. 2. Assessment – Unfortunately, this project did not initially design an evaluation of the professional learning opportunities to systematically determine the level of
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faculty learning, sustained changes in practice, or the extent to which faculty perceptions of professional learning, adult learning, or differentiated instruction changed. This will be a definite improvement in the next implementation, when we will determine how we can measure impact of the overall project and collect input as we progress from one professional learning opportunity to inform the next opportunity. 3. Reflection – With future projects, the EPP will also examine the use of a systematic reflective inquiry model to guide the reflective process to expose our thinking and assumptions to public scrutiny. Within education, “all practitioners have four lenses through which they can view their thinking and actions, 1) the lens of students’ eyes, 2) the lens of colleagues’ perceptions, 3) the lens of theory, and 4) the lens of autobiographical experiences (Brookfield, 2015, p. 16). Utilizing a framework similar to Brookfield’s Four Lenses of Reflection on professional learning would enable the authors to generate meaningful and ongoing data with the potential to inform both immediate and long-term changes. 4. Research – When this project began, we did not envision that it could have been structured as research. However, as the authors seek to elevate the work of the assessment office by utilizing more research-based inquiry processes, we realize how strong this project could have been if implemented as a research study. Ultimately, the professional learning series developed for the Year of Assessment met the intended learning outcomes for our faculty. We received anecdotal feedback that the educator preparation faculty not only liked the different strategies used for the professional learning, but they particularly appreciated the flexibility of the scheduling, the ability to choose different sessions based on their learning preferences, and the applied nature of the experiences. As a result, these strategies did enable the EPP to build capacity among the faculty relating to student learning and program assessment.
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References Allen, S. (2016). Applying adult learning principles to online course design. Distance Learning, 13(3), 25-32. Beavers, A. (2009). Teachers as learners: Implications of adult education for professional development. Journal of College Teaching & Learning, 6(7), 2530. Brookfield, S. D. (2015). Critical reflection as doctoral education. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 2015(147), 15-23. Darling-Hammond, L., Wei, R. C., Andree, A., Richardson, N., & Orphanos, S. (2009). Professional learning in the learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the United States and abroad. National Staff Development Council. Retrieved from https://learningforward.org/docs/ pdf/nsdcstudy2009.pdf Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the teachers: Effective professional development in an era of high stakes accountability. National School Boards Association Center for Public Education. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/ system/files/2013-176_ProfessionalDevelopment.pdf Huebner, T. A. (2010). Differentiated instruction. Educational Leadership, 67(5), 79-81. Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (1998). The adult learner. Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing Company. McKee, C. W., Johnson, M. Ritchie, W. F., & Tew, W. M. (2013). Editors’ notes. New Directions in Teaching and Learning, 2013(133), 1-2. McKenzie, L. (1979). A response to Elias. Adult Education Quarterly, 29(4), 256-260. Merriam, S. B. (2001). Andragogy and self-directed learning: Pillars of adult learning theory. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 2001(89) 3-13. Robb, L. (2008). What is differentiated instruction? Excerpt from L. Robb, Differentiated reading instruction: How to teach reading to meet the needs of each student. New York, NY: Scholastic. Retrieved from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/ articles/teaching-content/what-differentiatedinstruction/ Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy (TEAL). (2010). Differentiated instruction. Retrieved from https://lincs.ed.gov/state-resources/federalinitiatives/teal/guide/differentiatedinstruction Tomlinson, C.A., & Strickland, C.A. (2005). Differentiation in practice: A resource guide for differentiating curriculum, grades 9-12. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Western Governors University. (2014). Professional development vs. professional learning for teachers. The Night Owl Blog. Retrieved from https://www. wgu.edu/blogpost/professional-development-vsprofessional-learning-teachers
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About the Authors Leigh Funk, Ph.D. Dr. Funk serves as Associate Dean for Assessment and Accreditation at Kennesaw State University’s Bagwell College of Education. As a professor of special education and technology, she utilizes technology in ways that can meet the differentiated needs of the participants, whether they are P-12 students, teacher candidates, or teacher educators. As the associate dean, she is responsible for supporting educator preparation faculty in the development and use of quality assessments and accreditation preparation. Jessica Chafin, M.Ed. Mrs. Chafin was the assessment coordinator for the Bagwell College of Education at Kennesaw State University during the Year of Assessment. Jessica supported programs and faculty as they implemented assessment for student learning and navigated state and national accreditation processes. As the administrator of the online assessment management system, Jessica sought to intentionally integrate technology into the assessment process as a means of increasing access and encouraging the use of assessment to improve student learning. Currently, Jessica is a senior consultant in partnership development for Chalk & Wire: Higher Education Assessment Solutions. In this capacity she supports higher education programs across the country as they develop and then implement their assessment plans, once again leveraging technology to improve student learning.
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Tears and Fears – Sighs and High Fives: Listening to the Words of Teacher Candidates After edTPA Submission Yvonne Hefner and Dawn Souter, Georgia Gwinnett College
The long-term expectation is that all institutions of higher education, state education boards, and professional standards boards will adopt edTPA as a mandatory requirement for teacher licensure. Teacher candidates in Georgia have been required to pass the edTPA assessment to gain initial teaching certification since 2015. This assessment was developed by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity and the American Association of College for Teacher Education (AACTE) and is required during the teacher candidate’s student teaching semester. There are separate edTPA performance assessments for the 40 teaching certification fields in Georgia (Pearson Education, 2018). Advocates for the adoption of edTPA as a national assessment propose that it assures the quality of teaching and requires candidates to actually demonstrate the knowledge and skills required to help all students learn in real classrooms. edTPA provides insight into a candidate’s ability to effectively teach their content area to diverse students. The implementation of edTPA requires teachers to evaluate their effectiveness as an instructor. Critics of standardized performance assessments point out the dangers of such an assessment to the field of teaching. Those opposed to edTPA assert that edTPA can be viewed as an onerous process for teaching candidates that impacts their ability to focus on and learn from their coursework and field placement (Meuwissen, Choppin, Shang-Butler, & Cloonan, 2015). edTPA has been deemed to
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cause a high stress level for the already overwhelmed student teaching candidates. This study does not intend to support arguments in favor of or in opposition to the assessment, but asks fundamentally what the underlying conceptions and perceptions of the teacher candidates are after completing the edTPA assessment. The edTPA assessment is completed and submitted during a teacher candidate’s student teaching semester, which is usually the last year of the student’s education preparation program. The three key tasks of edTPA are planning, instruction, and assessment. Teacher candidates must develop a three- to five-lesson sequence which they teach and film as part of the edTPA requirements. After filming, candidates reflect on the teaching of the lessons and write a commentaries about the learning segment. Candidates are required to pass edTPA in order to receive initial teaching certification in the states that have adopted it as an assessment measure. In addition to completing the edTPA performance requirement, passing a standardized test based upon the content in a student’s individual program is also a basic requirement for teacher certification in many states. The Case This study was implemented in a small public state college in Georgia. Participants were among the 66 students completing their undergraduate degree in teaching with a major in early childhood education, special education, or teacher certification in biology, English, math, political
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science, or history. All teacher candidates completed the edTPA portfolio as part of their student teaching internship during the last semester of the program. During the course of their entire education preparation program up to and including student teaching, edTPA instruction was scaffolded from semester to semester for the teacher candidates. All candidates were required to complete assignments that would help prepare them for edTPA submission throughout their education program. After students had an understanding of what each task required, attention was turned to how submissions would be scored. Teacher candidates were immersed in the scoring rubrics for each task before submission. They had opportunities to discuss and review rubrics with faculty and their peers so that they could gain a better understanding of the assessment requirements before submission. During the student teaching semester, candidates take the teacher’s full-time role in the classroom for at least five weeks. This includes developing lesson plans, instructing students, attending meetings, completing required paperwork, and a plethora of other duties and responsibilities. While connected to the actual teaching and learning requirements of the student teaching program, the extra requirement of developing, filming, and writing the edTPA is additional work to their course requirements and demands a great deal of the candidate’s time. The high stakes edTPA requirement could cause stress during student teaching beyond what would normally be expected. Prior to edTPA submission, emails, texts and face-to-face conversations between student teachers and faculty supervisors frequently consisted of discussions of the long hours, effort, and stress associated with completing both student teaching requirements and edTPA. Before this study, on some occasions, individual students requested deadline extensions and days off from the field to work on edTPA. Prior to this study, students were asked in a very informal survey how they felt during student teaching. In this survey, one student wrote, “It was very hard to enjoy student teaching, because edTPA took over!” and another said, “[Get] rid of EdTpa . . . I hated it.” One student made suggestions about time to work on
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edTPA: “Provide a dedicated day throughout the week for us to work on edTPA. It would be great if we could skip field one day out of the week, even if it wasn’t every week, to work on edTPA. I had to work and go to field and often I would have to start working on edTPA really late in the day.” In addition to comments about the stresses of completing the edTPA, some students suggested areas where college faculty can improve their instruction and provide better support of the edTPA. Several comments, for example, were about the technical aspects of editing and compressing files and analyzing video. One student wrote, “I think there should be more emphasis on edTPA, recording videos and analyzing the videos together as a group.” Comments like these and others led to further inquiry into specific perceptions of students on various elements of the edTPA process with hopes of better meeting the needs of teacher candidates throughout edTPA implementation. Thus, this case study was designed and conducted. In this case study, the perceptions of teacher candidates after edTPA submission were examined. The candidates were asked to evaluate themselves on each rubric and to answer both selected response and open-ended questions regarding their edTPA submission. For the purpose of this paper, only the responses to the open-ended questions were analyzed, and common themes among the candidates were discovered. These themes are features of participants’ accounts characterizing particular perceptions and experiences of the edTPA process. Literature Review edTPA was launched operationally in September 2013 as a performance-based assessment to measure the classroom practice of pre-service teacher candidates in order to ensure they have the knowledge and skills to teach upon hire. Currently, there is a limited amount of research on teacher candidates’ perceptions of the edTPA process. Ball and Forzani (2009) argue for making practice the core of teachers’ professional preparation. They set the argument for teaching practice against the contemporary
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backdrop of a teacher education curriculum that is often centered not on the tasks and activities of teaching but on beliefs and knowledge. edTPA is used as a summative assessment. Research studies on other forms of performance assessments, such as the Performance Assessment for California Teachers and the National Board Certification for Professional Teaching Standards, have shown that they can be used as learning tools for both preservice and experienced teachers and as a form of feedback for teacher education programs (Lin, 2015). The emerging literature suggests that there is potential value for the edTPA to be used as an opportunity for teacher candidate learning (Chung, 2008; Lin, 2015) as well as the learning within and among educator preparation programs (Peck, SingerGabella, Sloan, & Lin, 2014). In a 2014 study, researchers from the University of Rochester surveyed 109 teacher education students and among their findings were that teacher candidates found the edTPA process to be an “onerous” process, with 90% considering the process time consuming (Meuwissen et al., 2014). This is commensurate with their other findings about pre-service performance assessment, that the process of planning, constructing, and submitting a portfolio is time-consuming and poses challenges to teacher candidates, particularly in situations where educational program support is limited. Wei and Pecheone (2010) discuss that teacher candidates have a more positive edTPA implementation experience when supports provided to them align with what they must actually do. Performance assessments such as edTPA have the potential to positively guide teacher candidates toward a strong understanding of teaching and learning (Bunch, Aguirre, & Téllez, 2009). Conversely, implementation of performance assessments can reduce the work of planning, instruction, and assessment to ritual compliance of tasks rather than engagement in more ambitious teaching and learning experiences (Cochran-Smith, Piazza, & Power, 2013). Research indicates that even prior to performance assessment requirements, stress in student teaching is ubiquitous. Teacher
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candidates indicate that the student teaching semester is the most important in their educational preparation program but also report that it is demanding and stressful (Clement, 1999). As a result of faculty discussions and concerns, Clement analyzed the stressors of student teachers at a Georgia school of education different of that of this case study. The student teacher subjects reported high levels of stress and anxiety. Even without the requirement of a performance assessment such as edTPA, the faculty supervisors in Clement’s study were worried about how their students’ stress was detrimental to their teaching and learning, physical well-being, and potential burn-out. Purpose The purpose of this case study was to collect and analyze student responses to questions regarding their experiences while completing their edTPA portfolio during their student teaching experience. For the purpose of this specific article, only student responses to the two open-ended questions were analyzed, and common themes are presented. The questions asked of the students were: 1. How did the edTPA completion process impact your ability to focus on and learn from your student teaching experience? 2. How would you describe the edTPA experience to future teacher candidates? A collection of comments and perspectives of teacher candidates concerning the edTPA process captured constructive data after submission. Underlying conceptions, perceptions, and gains or losses for the teacher candidates determined common themes among the students of each program. Findings have implications for educator preparation program enhancements and effective practices provided by faculty to better support students. Methods A total of 27 teacher candidates participated in the study, representing 41% of the 66 student teachers from all programs during the semester. All 66 teacher candidates were invited to participate in this study via an email invitation sent one week prior to submission of their edTPA.
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Another email was sent shortly after submission that included a web-link to the online survey. The survey opened one week following the submission of the edTPA and a reminder email was sent five days later in an attempt to recruit as many participants as possible. There were different surveys for students in each of the program areas: early childhood, special education, and secondary English, biology, math, political science and history. While the survey items for each group were the same, the edTPA scoring rubrics were specific to each program area. Each student was provided the rubric for their program area. Students representing early childhood education, special education, and teacher certification in biology, history and math programs participated. This research examines qualitative evidence from teacher candidate surveys completed after the submission of their edTPA. A case study design was implemented to help understand the teacher candidates’ perspectives on the edTPA process. The use of the qualitative information can be used to help develop successful exemplary practices in preparing candidates for their edTPA. In addition, the findings of this case study provide accurate descriptions of student responses in order to make inferences and develop generalizations that can inform future pre-service education and successful implementation of the edTPA. Data Analysis Responses to the open-ended questions were organized by question in a spreadsheet, and an analysis of key words and themes was conducted. From the analysis of responses to the questions, the following words and themes were found to be the most often used by teacher candidates with the frequency provided in the parentheses: Took away from (14) Time (9) Lessons/Lesson Planning (10) Teaching (7) Stress/Tiring (9) Reflection (5) Focus (9) Comments and summaries of the findings of the common themes are below.
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Took Away From / Time More than half of the participants stated that the edTPA process took away from their student teaching experience. Some responses related how the time needed to complete the edTPA activities took time away from lesson design and planning. One early childhood teaching candidate wrote, “It is just simply a very, very, very time consuming and redundant task, I feel like it absolutely took away from how much thought I could put into my student teacher planning.” Similarly, another student wrote, “edTPA took time away from my ability to focus on student teaching, meaning my lessons were not as rich as I would have liked them to be.” An early childhood major wrote, “It required that we spend so much time planning for something that was catered to the desires of the scorer, rather than using our time to plan things that were catered to our students.” One poignant response was written by a history major: “Since edTPA is such a time consuming process, I felt as if I was unable to get a real sense of what it was like to be a teacher.” These are but a few of the teacher candidate responses related to how the time spent preparing their edTPA portfolio stole time they could have used attending to their teaching and planning responsibilities. Lesson Planning / Teaching Related to the time factor, students commented the time and focus on edTPA impacted their ability to create, plan, and teach the types of lessons they wanted. Students wished their lessons were more “rich,” “original,” “engaging,” and “beneficial.” A response relating the quality of lessons being impacted by edTPA completion came from a special education major who wrote, “I was unable to really enjoy teaching and creating engaging lessons because my time was spent primarily on edTPA.” Another special education teacher candidate wrote, “I was more focused on what I had to do to pass edTPA, rather than focusing on teaching to my full potential. It was very challenging to attempt to plan lessons for teaching full time, as well as completing edTPA in the amount of detail needed to pass it.”
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Focus Nine students used the exact or related term “focus” in regard to the attention needed to assume all teaching and learning responsibilities during their student teaching assignment and the distractions of the edTPA process. A special education major stated, “I was more focused on what I had to do to pass edTPA, rather than focusing on teaching to my full potential.” Another special education major wrote, “The edTPA process impacted my ability to focus on and learn from my student teaching experience tremendously.” Similarly, another special education major wrote, “Often times, I felt like I could not focus on my student teaching because I was so engrossed in edTPA.” In addition to having a desire to focus more on teaching and learning and their own development, teacher candidates also stated that working on the edTPA hampered their ability to do what regular teachers do to better meet student needs outside the class day. One history teacher candidate wrote, “Since edTPA is such a time consuming process . . . I could not focus on my students as intensely as I wanted to, such as tutoring sessions and attending events to support them outside the classroom.” This feedback indicates that teacher candidates intended to focus more on their teaching and learning responsibilities and their overall student teaching experience, but edTPA interfered with this desire. Stress Research on pre-service teacher stress indicates that the top stressors of teacher candidates are fear of not finding a job in teaching, handling classroom management and discipline issues, dealing with personal and family issues during student teaching, formal observations from college faculty, and workload (Clement 1999; Geng, Midford, & Buckworth, 2015). The students in this case study were not immune to these same stressors. What is different is that besides the typical pressures of student teaching, Georgia pre-service teachers have to successfully complete the edTPA process. In the open-ended items of the current study, six students referred to the edTPA implementation with the term “stress” and several others used terminology synonymous with stress.
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Students stated that the amount of time needed to complete the edTPA process caused undue stress. An early childhood major stated, “edTPA was a time consuming process. It made the field a bit more stressful.” Other students believed that the stress of edTPA impacted their overall student teaching experience. One special education student wrote, “It made it more stressful. Instead of being fully engaged in student teaching [I] was more concerned about edTPA at times,” and another special education major wrote, “Day in and day out I was consumed with stress about edTPA.” Another special education student wrote, “It consumed my entire experiences. The edTPA was a stressful process to go through.” In a similar vein to stress, students mentioned edTPA impacting their ability to enjoy student teaching. A special education major stated, “I was unable to really enjoy teaching and creating engaging lessons because my time was spent primarily on edTPA.” Some students related how multiple concerns provided a compound impact on their student teaching semester. This student provided a thorough and compelling response to the question of how the edTPA impacted the student teaching experience: It was time consuming and completely took away from my student teaching experience. I was more focused on what I had to do to pass edTPA, rather than focusing on teaching to my full potential. It was very challenging to attempt to plan lessons for teaching full time, as well as completing edTPA in the amount of detail needed to pass it. EdTPA completely took away from my student teaching. I really wish that I had this entire semester to just student teach, and nothing else. I did not get the full experience because of edTPA. Reflection While 15 student responses indicated that students had negative experiences stemming from the implementation of edTPA, some participants referred to the edTPA process in a positive light. The theme of ‘reflection’ was repeated over and over by several students who believed one advantageous consequence of edTPA was guidance on how to become a reflective teacher. Reflective teaching is a process whereby teachers think over their teaching practices,
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analyze how something was taught, and how the practice might be improved or changed for better learning outcomes. (Matthews, Matthews & Peechattu, 2017.) A key component of the edTPA is the writing prompts and aligned rubrics that require student teachers to look back not just on what they did while teaching the lessons, but on how they connected with learners and how the lessons impacted student learning. Reflective teaching promotes sound teaching and learning. Five students in this study specifically referred to the benefits of the reflection required to complete their edTPA. One student wrote, “I think that edTPA definitely taught me a lot about the reflection process in improving teaching and identifying the good and bad things in my planning/instruction.” Another student commented, “The process added stress, but allowed me to build well rounded lessons to test in the field. It helped me to reflect on practices that worked and ones that did not work in the classroom.” And yet another early childhood student said, “It taught me to pay more attention to the details of my lessons and reflect on what I teach.” Other students made comments which related to the edTPA tasks process and required reflection as being beneficial to the lesson-planning process. An early childhood major wrote, “I was able to focus on best practices to implement into my teaching which was very transparent in my edTPA lessons as well.” Students reported that the edTPA process helped them attend to specific elements of lesson planning, including the use of best practices, and helped them to better assess and adjust instruction for the needs of their students. Some participants noted how the edTPA implementation helped them better analyze students, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and address their specific needs. The math program candidate wrote, “The completion process, specifically task 3, allowed me to think about what the students needed and what I could do to better teach them.” A special education major commented that the edTPA process “helped me plan and assess students to help them improve their math skills.” An early childhood major discussed both positive and negative elements to the edTPA process and student teaching, commenting that
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they understood how it supported relevant planning and reflection; however, edTPA did not allow them an opportunity to be original. An especially important comment also came from an early childhood major who wrote, “I believe edTPA did cause a small negative experience in the beginning of my student teaching as the level of work did exhaust me. Altogether, once turned in, I was able to enjoy and focus on student teaching more.” On the edTPA website, it is emphasized that completing the assessment does not ask candidates to do anything that isn’t a part of most preparation programs or commonly held beliefs in best practice, “but it does ask for greater support for and demonstration of these skills that research and educators find are essential to student learning” (AACTE, n.d.). One teacher candidate who participated in the study seemed to agree with this statement and wrote, “edTPA and teaching went hand and hand. . . . just added a camera.” Conclusion Clinical practice is the basis for edTPA. It is important for educator preparation programs to know how to best support their teacher candidates through the edTPA process while they are student teaching. The perspectives of teacher candidates after they completed and submitted their edTPA portfolio were examined in order to gain an indepth look at key themes that emerged in the analysis of teacher candidate responses in the post-submission survey. edTPA portfolios require a great deal of time for teacher candidates to plan, implement, reflect, and respond, which poses a problem when the teacher candidate is at the peak of their teaching workload while student teaching. Time is big factor for the teacher candidate. Higher education institutions should consider ways that they can help provide the time needed by the teacher candidates to complete the assessment. It is also important that programs help students understand the purpose of edTPA and how it connects to good teaching. The information obtained from this study will help to describe the ways in which assessments of teacher performance for licensing and certification can assess a student’s ability to effectively teach. The information obtained from
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this qualitative case study helps to describe, in the actual words of the teacher candidates postedTPA submission, underlying conceptions and perceptions for teacher candidates after completing the edTPA process. The research may inform practice and improve support offered to future teacher candidates while completing their edTPA submission. By understanding how the teacher candidate perceives the edTPA process, educator preparation programs will be better able to support their teacher candidates in the future. This research provides higher education faculty with knowledge regarding edTPA so that they can design and implement resources to support candidates throughout this assessment process. Research results of the study may provide general knowledge of how to develop pre-service programs for new teachers and help them to prepare for the edTPA assessment. Another extension of the current study will be to provide data to the field of education as a whole and to set a standard for higher education to value the thoughts and opinions of the people taking the assessments, the teacher candidates. Higher education should take into account the teacher candidates’ opinions when designing and implementing plans to prepare teacher candidates for the edTPA assessment.
primary and secondary pre-service teachers during teaching practicum. Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability, 17(1), 35-47. Lin, S. (2015). Learning through action: Teacher candidates and performance assessments (Doctoral dissertation). Retreived from https://digital.lib. washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/ 33753/Lin_washington_0250E_14424.pdf?sequence=1 Matthews, P., Matthews, P. & Peechattu, P. (2017). Reflective practices: a means to teacher development. Asia Pacific Journal of Contemporary Education and Communication Technology, 3(1). 126-131. Meuwissen, K., Choppin, J., Shang-Butler, H., and Cloonan, K. (2015). Teaching candidates’ perceptions of and experiences with early implementation of the edTPA licensure examination in New York and Washington states. Retrieved from https://www.warner. rochester.edu/files/research/files/edTPAreport.pdf Peck, C., Singer-Gabella, M., Sloan, T., & Lin, S. (2014). Driving blind: Why we need standardized performance assessments in teacher education. Journal of Curriculum and Instruction (8)1, 8-30. Wei, R. C., & Pecheone, R. L. (2010). Assessment for Learning in Preservice Teacher Education: Performance-Based Assessments. In M. M. Kennedy (Ed.), Teacher assessment and the quest for teacher quality: A handbook (pp. 69-132). San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
References AACTE. (n.d.). About edTPA: Overview. edTPA. Retrieved from edtpa.aacte.org Ball, D., & Forzani, F. (2009). The work of teaching and the challenge for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(5), 497-511. Bunch, G., Aguirre, J., & Téllez, K. (2009). Beyond the scores: Using candidate responses on high stakes performance testing to inform teacher preparation for English learners. Issues in Teacher Education, 18(1), 103-128. Chung, R. R. (2008). Beyond assessment: Performance assessments in teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(1), 7-28. Clement, M. (1999). Reducing the stress of student teaching. Contemporary Education, 70(4), 20-25. Cochran-Smith, M., Piazza, P., & Power, C. (2013). The politics of accountability: Assessing teacher education in the United States. The Educational Forum 77(1), 627. Pearson Education. (2018). edTPA for Georgia. edTPA. Retrieved from https://www.edtpa.com/PageView. aspx?f=GEN_Georgia.html Geng, G., Midford R., & Buckworth, J. (2015). Investigating the stress levels of early childhood,
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About the Authors Yvonne Hefner, Ed.D. Dr. Hefner is an Assistant Professor of Special Education at Georgia Gwinnett College where she teaches and supervises special education teacher candidates. Her research interests include teacher preparation, the education of students with mental health disorders, and special education teacher retention. Dawn Souter, Ed.D. Dr. Souter is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Georgia Gwinnett College where she teaches and supervises special education teacher candidates. Her research interests are teacher preparation, formative assessment, and teacher feedback.
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The Georgia Association of Teacher Educators is an organization of educators from Georgia's public and private schools. Those wishing to become members or renew membership may find an application online at http://wp.westga.edu/gaate.
GATEways to Teacher Education is a refereed online journal with national representation on its editorial review board and published by the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators. The journal, published in October and April, is soliciting manuscripts concerned with teacher education, including teaching and learning, induction, in-service education, and pre-service education.
Refer to the Journal tab at http://wp.westga.edu/gaate for more details.
Manuscripts for the October issue of GATEways are due July 1st. Editor: Dr. Janet Strickland, University of West Georgia, jstrickl@westga.edu, 678-839-6061 Copy Editor: Dr. Robyn Huss, University of West Georgia, rhuss@westga.edu
Join us at the GATE 2018 Fall Conference October 10-12 at the Unicoi State Park and Lodge in Helen, GA Additional conference information is available online: http://wp.westga.edu/gaate