Responding to the Challenge of New Standards

Abstract

In the past decade, most states have made substantial changes in the expectations they have for K-12 student learning. While the political debates around the have led to some modifications in what states initially adopted, it remains the case that most state standards have shifted toward something like the Common Core State Standards (CCSS; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010) for mathematics and for English Language Arts, toward the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for science (NGSS Lead States, 2013), and toward the C3 Framework for Social Studies Standards (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013) for social studies. As editors of the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE), we called for papers that would speak to how teacher educators should respond to these changes in K-12 content standards. Five of the articles in this issue were submitted specifically in response to this call. We have included two additional articles that, though not directly addressed to the call, are focused on issues that align with changes needed as a result of the adoption of these standards. We see two broad themes in this group of articles. First, teacher educators must look carefully at the new standards, with a critical eye on changes that must be made, not simply in professional development opportunities they provide to but in course- and field-oriented work within their own teacher preparation programs. Second, to enact effective instructional changes, will also need support from other stakeholders, most notably parents and school leaders. The differences between the newer standards and their predecessors are not simply the addition or deletion of topics. These new standards reflect a trend of several decades and highlight a push for deeper student understanding of key concepts and of the foundations of disciplinary knowledge. For example, K-12 students are expected to be able to defend statements they make, using reasons that are appropriate for the subject area and grade level; science students are asked to make claims based on evidence they have collected; mathematics students must explain how they arrived at the solution to a problem; and students discussing a short story should be able to say what they think a passage of dialogue reveals about a character's personality and how the structure and nuance of the text supports their conjecture. Helping prepare for new content standards should not be simply about changing the topics in the disciplinary courses take to align with the list of topics in a state curriculum. Teachers also need to learn how to organize their classroom instruction so that students are called on to explain their reasoning, to challenge the arguments made by their peers, and even to press the teacher for a stronger rationale. Fortunately, recent research on teaching and learning provides approaches that can be incorporated into teacher preparation programs to prepare educators to meet these expectations. Because of the emphasis on justification and evidence in the new standards, it is increasingly important for to learn about methods of inquiry in the subjects they teach. Scholars have long been pressing teacher educators to be sure that teachers' knowledge of subject matter includes knowledge of the ways claims are justified as well as a deep understanding of the facts, concepts, and theories. For example, in Shulman's (1986) classic essay that launched work on pedagogical content knowledge, he said, teachers must not only be capable of defining for students the accepted truths of a domain. They must also be able to explain why a particular proposition is deemed warranted ... (p. 9). Although teacher educators often build material on methods of inquiry into their programs, studies such as the one included here on history often show that much work still needs to be done. …