Teacher Preparation and Development
Box 5.5 Teaching Standards in the United States (continued)
Standard #8: Instructional Strategies. The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
Professional Responsibility Standard #9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice. The teacher engages in ongoing professional learning and uses evidence to continually evaluate his or her practice, particularly the effects of his or her choices and actions on others (learners, families, other professionals, and the community), and adapts practice to meet the needs of each learner. Standard #10: Leadership and Collaboration. The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for student learning; to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to ensure learner growth; and to advance the profession. Source: Reproduced from CCSSO 2011.
• Engage in continuous professional development. • Understand national education policy and strategies and participate in curriculum and other program development. • Establish and maintain partnerships with the local school community. For these standards to work as an effective tool of teacher management, they need to become more concrete. In addition, measurable performance indicators need to be linked to each standard in order to guide teacher evaluations and performance improvement plans. Eventually, a fair evaluation process will contribute to providing teachers the support, recognition, and guidance that they need to sustain and improve their efforts.
Accreditation of Pre-Service Training Programs In many countries the state, province, and/or nation have adopted policies to ensure that teacher education programs are of high quality and produce graduates with the competencies needed for effective instruction. International experience suggests that the most effective way to achieve this objective is through some type of formal accreditation of teacher training faculties and programs.5 International Trends in Accreditation Accreditation agencies initially assessed a wide range of criteria related to teacher education programs, such as the number of professors with advanced degrees, class sizes, existence and quality of laboratories, number and employment of graduates, and a range of other “quantitative” measures. As a result, the accreditation process became little more than filling out checklists every 5 or 10 years.
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