Evidence, Efficacy, and Effectiveness

Abstract

Almost 2 years ago the editors of Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) announced a special themed issue of the journal on evidence, efficacy, and effectiveness in teacher education. Our goal was to gather a set of manuscripts about some of the current efforts in our field to generate empirical evidence about teacher education programs and pathways and/or to assess the efficacy and effectiveness of teacher candidates and graduates. This double issue of JTE (January/February 2006 and March/April 2006)--the final issues of the journal under the editorship of the Boston College group--includes ten articles on this topic. One way to think about these is in terms of four loose groupings: (1) empirical studies of the impact of differing teacher preparation programs and pathways, drawing on large-scale databases; (2) institutional or cross-institutional efforts to use performance and other outcomes data to assess and improve local practice; (3) analyses that take stock of the state of teacher education regarding the collection and use of evidence; and (4) articles that theorize research in and on teacher education's effectiveness and recommend new directions for the field. The first group--empirical investigations of the impact of programs or pathways--includes three articles. Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb, and Michelli describe the New York City Pathways study, which uses the New York City teacher workforce database as well as survey and interview data to examine how the features of different pathways lead to different outcomes, including performance, retention, and student achievement. Lasley, Siedentop, and Yinger discuss the Ohio Teacher Quality Partnership, which is based on the efforts of Ohio's 50 colleges and universities, state education authorities, and private corporations. Five studies examine the impact of teacher preparation on student achievement as well as how teachers add value and foster learning within the classroom. Noell and Burns report on data from the pilot study of the Louisiana Teacher Quality Initiative. This project assesses the value teacher preparation adds to pupils' achievement based on a massive multivariate longitudinal database, which is part of the statewide teacher preparation redesign effort. The second group of articles includes descriptions of systematic institutional or cross-institutional efforts to make evidence collection an internal teacher education activity that drives local practice and policy. Pecheone and Chung describe results from California's 2-year, statewide implementation of the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT); they discuss how this can be used to support teacher candidates' learning and improve teacher preparation within and across institutions. Castle, Fox, and Souder compare the efficacy and performance of teachers prepared in professional development schools (PDSs) and non-PDS teacher preparation programs at the same university, based on analysis of student teaching evaluations and portfolio presentations. Darling-Hammond reports on the collection and analysis of a number of different forms of evidence gathered at one institution; she describes how these multiple assessment strategies are used to evaluate and improve the teacher preparation program and critiques the possibilities and limits of each. Articles in the third group take stock of the state of the teacher education profession regarding the collection and use of credible and persuasive evidence. Wineburg reports the results of a survey by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) to find out what kinds of data were being collected by teacher education institutions to meet the current demand for evidence; she calls for professional frameworks to guide the collection of teacher education evidence nationally. Fallon argues that there is too little research on teacher education that uses pupil learning growth as the measure of effectiveness. …