scholarly journals Addressing Teacher Shortages in the COVID-19 Landscape: Viewing Teacher Candidates as Assets

Author(s):  
Michael Rosenberg ◽  
Lucky Mason-Williams ◽  
Lois Kimmell ◽  
Paul Sindelar

COVID-19 continues to impose dire consequences on all sectors of our public education system. Many students, particularly those from vulnerable populations, are receiving reduced amounts of direct instruction and are experiencing significant losses in learning. At the same time, educator preparation programs (EPPs) are struggling to ensure that teacher candidates have ample opportunities to apply their newly acquired pedagogical skills in high quality clinical placements. In this article we describe and provide exemplars as to how teacher candidates can serve as assets to school districts as they complete their field placements. We also offer specific strategies and practices for EPPs and school districts to maximize the productive and efficient integration of teacher candidates in both virtual and in-person environments.


Author(s):  
Reid Richard Riggle

Many teacher candidates enter teacher preparation programs with the desire to serve or to change the lives of others. Teacher education programs are uniquely positions leverage this desire to serve through intentional service-learning field placements. Service-learning, particularly early in the preparation program, can play a critical role in building the disposition to serve. This chapter explores one way teacher preparation programs can cultivate the orientation to serve high-need schools. Candidates enrolled in the Village Project serve in high-need schools, address a real community and educational need, and are provided reflection opportunities to connect the experience to their developing knowledge of learning and motivation. Ultimately, the goal the Village Project as an early service-learning field experience is to help teacher candidates develop a professional identity that increases the personal desire to work in educational communities that have a need.



2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 47-68
Author(s):  
Eduardo Muñoz-Muñoz

Translanguaging has become a particularly relevant (and controversial) concept for the field of bilingual education, with concrete implications for teacher preparation programs serving teacher candidates (TCs) who may identify as heritage speakers of Spanish. However, the regard and understanding of translanguaging, its pedagogical potential, and the positionality to implement it are not evenly distributed among stakeholders involved in the teacher preparation process. This article explores the relationship among California public teacher preparation programs, their bilingual teacher candidates, and the districts that host their field placements that ultimately hire them. Building on the metaphorical concepts of ideological and implementational spaces (Flores & Schissel, 2014), the space between and encompassing the overlap between credentialing programs and school districts is characterized as a friction space beset by tensions between monoglossic and heteroglossic stances and the pragmatism of “entering the workforce.” The dynamics of this space are illustrated in five retratos constructed on qualitative data obtained through semistructured interviews. Based on the author's localized experiences, the article concludes by proposing approaches to navigate the friction space, reinforce the bilingual candidates' counterideological stances, and advance a much-needed productive dialogue in the teacher preparation ecology.



2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 28-33
Author(s):  
Rafael Heller

Amaya Garcia of New America talks with Kappan about grow-your-own programs, in which school districts partner with teacher preparation programs to recruit and prepare community members, often current students or school staff, to teach in local schools. A recent 50-state scan shows that there is a great deal of variety in how these programs are designed and implemented, and data on the effectiveness of these programs to address teacher shortages is still emerging. Garcia discusses some specific programs that appear especially promising.



2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Heiney-Smith

Teacher preparation programs aim to provide pedagogical skills for knowledge development and critical thinking. Yet teacher candidates themselves have views and understandings of the very nature of knowledge, or epistemology, which might inhibit or advance their development as teachers. This paper begins with an overview of Kitchener’s (1983) model for cognitive processing and later work in epistemological development, The Reflective Judgment Model (1994, 2004). Next, a presentation of research in teacher candidate epistemology in Poland is compared with a study of teacher candidate perceptions in Singapore, both grounded by Kitchener’s model of knowledge development. Finally, a comprehensive research review by Sleeter (2000) reveals the limitations of such studies in the application to historically under-served students and teachers of color in the United States.



Author(s):  
Cameron Robert ◽  
Brian Levy

The focus of this chapter is the management and governance of education at provincial level—specifically on efforts to introduce performance management into education by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), and their impact. Post-1994 the WCED inherited a bureaucracy that was well placed to manage the province’s large public education system. Subsequently, irrespective of which political party has been in power, the WCED consistently has sought to implement performance management. This chapter explores to what extent determined, top-down efforts, led by the public sector, can improve dismal educational performance. It concludes that the WCED is a relatively well-run public bureaucracy. However, efforts to strengthen the operation of the WCED’s bureaucracy have not translated into systematic improvements in schools in poorer areas. One possible implication is that efforts to strengthen hierarchy might usefully be complemented with additional effort to support more horizontal, peer-to-peer governance at the school level.



2021 ◽  
pp. 105678792110036
Author(s):  
Tonya Johnson ◽  
Edward Lehner

New York State, in all of its regions, has a growing number of diverse public-school students, including many immigrant groups, accounting for a significant change in the ethnic and racial demographics of the state’s student population. Despite the rapidly changing student population, the teaching force nonetheless remains disproportionately White and populated primarily by women. A growing body of research suggests that the ranks of paraprofessionals, many of whom are already working in schools, may be the ideal population from which to develop a more fully diversified teaching candidate pool. Informed by a theoretical lens of social reproduction and drawing from an expansive data set, this research surveys the unique barriers that paraprofessionals face in accessing information about licensure and navigating local and state requirements. Specifically, the current work examines the needs of candidates at an urban community college and presents findings from a pilot support program designed to increase paraprofessional credentialing leading to teaching licensure. The findings of this work highlight not only the need for teacher and paraprofessional preparation programs to alter recruiting and skill-acquisition practices but also the need for continued research to better understand how to support multiethnic, multilingual, and multiracial teacher candidates.



2006 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROD PAIGE

In this essay, former secretary of education Rod Paige depicts the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) as the culmination of more than half a century of urgent but largely unheeded calls for reform of the nation's public education system. He explains the rationale for the design of NCLB and responds to several criticisms of the legislation, including the notion that it is a one-size-fits-all mandate and that its improvement targets are unrealistic. He further argues that the nation's public schools must become more responsive to the needs of students and their families in order to remain viable. Finally, he contends that subsequent reauthorizations should stay true to NCLB's original goal of holding school systems accountable for equipping all students with the academic skills on which America's future depends.



2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 728-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Brady ◽  
Katie Miller ◽  
Jazarae McCormick ◽  
Lawrence A. Heiser

Educators struggle with “value-added” teacher evaluation models based on high-stakes student assessments. Despite validity and reliability threats, these models evaluate university-based teacher preparation programs (TPPs), and play a role in state and professional accreditation. This study reports a more rational value-added evaluation model linking student performance to teacher candidates’ lessons during Practicum and Student Teaching. Results indicate that K-12 students showed learning gains on these lessons, with mixed findings on comparisons of part-time to full-time internships, academic and functional lessons, and candidates’ grade point averages (GPAs). Results indicated that teacher candidates’ lessons are a viable value-added model (VAM) alternative for TPPs.



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