Teacher Training and Online Teaching

The WL profession currently does not have a framework to guide pre-service education programs related to online and/or remote instruction. While the ACTFL/CAEP standards affirm that teachers should be able to use technology and adapt and create instructional materials for use in communication, there is an underlying assumption that the technology will be integrated to supplement rather than supplant instruction. The focus, then, remains on in-class, on-campus experiences for learners and educators. This chapter provides a rationale for including online pedagogy in teacher preparation programs, explores current frameworks for online teaching (TPACK, Community of Inquiry, Pyramid Model, ADDIE), and proposes six considerations for integrating online language teaching as a foundational component of preservice preparation.

The Costs of Emergency Certification: A Solution or Dilemma for School Leaders?

When there are teacher shortages, emergency certification allows individuals with a bachelor’s degree to enter the profession without having undergone formal education training or preservice preparation. Despite its widespread use in the United States, emergency certification is a poorly understood human resource process. Little is known about how principals perceive and assign meaning to the credential, how they engage with emergency credentialed teachers during the hiring phase, and, in turn, how they incorporate these teachers into the school environment after hire. This study draws on credential theory and uses qualitative methods to investigate school leaders’ perceptions of emergency-certified teachers in Oklahoma. Findings from this study shed new light on the use of emergency credentialing by highlighting school leaders’ mixed feelings about the policy and the challenges and limitations of providing necessary support systems for emergency-certified teachers. By illuminating the costs of emergency certification, findings offer implications for policy and practice.

The Relationship Between Measures of Preservice Principal Practice and Future Principal Job Performance

Principals are the second-largest school-based contributor to student achievement. Interventions focused early in the “pipeline” for identifying and developing effective principals might be a promising strategy for promoting principal effectiveness, yet no prior research has examined measures of principal performance during preservice preparation. We analyze 31 measures of principal practices developed by New Leaders and integrate into their year-long, preservice Aspiring Principals program. We link these measures to administrative data in nine districts to understand how they predict student and principal outcomes after candidate placement. We find associations with gains in student achievement on standardized tests, gains in student attendance, and higher rates of principal retention. We compare our results with studies of measures from licensure exams and evaluation systems.

Three Different Measures of Graduates’ Instructional Readiness and the Features of Preservice Preparation That Predict Them

This article extends prior research seeking to identify preparation features related to better workforce outcomes. To our knowledge, it is the first to link many dimensions of preparation to graduates’ first-year observation ratings. It follows 305 preservice teachers (PSTs) who student taught in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in 2014–2015 and were subsequently hired in CPS in 2015–2016. PSTs received stronger observation ratings when their CTs had stronger observation ratings themselves, their CTs reported providing stronger coaching in specific areas, they gained employment in their field placement schools, and they student taught in self-contained elementary classrooms. Finally, we tested whether these same preparation features were associated with two other outcomes—(a) how well prepared PSTs felt after student-teaching and (b) how well prepared their CTs felt their PSTs were—and found they were not. We discuss implications for using workforce and survey-based outcomes to identify promising forms of preparation.

“Anything Is Better than Nothing!” Inservice Teacher Preparation for Teaching Students with Disabilities

The purpose of this instrumental case study was to examine three elementary music teacher’s perceptions of preparation to work with students with disabilities. Research questions included the following: How do elementary general music teachers define preparedness for working with students with disabilities? What challenges do elementary general music teachers face in their work with students with disabilities? What resources do general music teachers identify as helpful? Based on major themes that emerged from the analysis, I concluded general music teachers need more preservice preparation and ongoing professional development focused on students with disabilities, more time to collaborate with special education professionals, more consistent communications and recommendations about how to work with students who have disabilities, and access to assistive technologies.

A Tale of Three Cities: Defining Urban Schools Within the Context of Varied Geographic Areas

What constitutes an urban school? This question has confounded social researchers and educators who often limit definitions to population data. H. Richard Milner suggested a framework for defining urban schools that includes population data as well as the racial and social context of schools. This article applied Milner’s model to school districts in New York, Nebraska, and New Mexico which exemplified Milner’s categories of urban schools: urban intensive, urban emergent, and urban characteristic. Application of the framework to the districts presents a model for teacher educators to deliver two important components of preservice preparation. First, the model can assist preservice teachers to challenge their existing perceptions of urban schools. Second, establishing a framework provides teacher educators the opportunity to guide preservice teachers to view urban schools through a Critical Race Theory lens. Through this lens, preservice teachers can begin to realize the impact of systemic racism within education.

Employing cultural and indigenous sources of knowledge in the context of semiruralschools

The study was conducted to gain insight into the pegagogical approaches and practices of physical science teachers who used cultural and indigenous knowledge in some way in semirural schools. All the schools were situated in environments with a low socioeconomic index and none of the schools had a science laboratory or equipment available for teaching physical science. The theoretical frame emanates from constructs as described in cultural border-crossing and culturally relevant pedagogy. Four cases were identified and the narrative data analysed, using the Banks Topology which describes four levels of indigenous knowledge integration. The implication of the four categorised cases is that they may be critically unpacked during the professional development and preservice preparation of teachers who have to teach physical science to multicultural learners.