University-based Teacher Education Programs Research Articles

The Long and Winding Road: Mapping the College and Employment Pathways to Teacher Education Program Completion in Washington State

Nationally, more than 75% of individuals who are credentialed to teach are prepared in traditional college- or university-based teacher education programs (TEPs). But the college and employment pathways that prospective teachers take to TEP enrollment and completion have not been comprehensively examined. A better understanding of how credentialed individuals find their way into TEPs helps us understand the sources of new teacher supply early in the prospective teacher pipeline. With that in mind, we analyze pathways into and through TEPs using historical postsecondary and unemployment insurance data from Washington State. We find that the pathways are quite varied, with around 40% of bachelor’s-level TEP completers spending at least some time in community colleges and fewer than 40% enrolling and finishing at the same university directly after high school. Pathways to master’s TEP completion are even more varied, with almost half of the completers having prior employment experience. For researchers, this varied landscape raises important questions about the relationship between pathways, candidate persistence, and eventual job performance. For policymakers, the results suggest that efforts to recruit the next generation of teachers need to look beyond the pool of students already enrolled at a 4-year university to include students at 2-year colleges or in the labor force who might be interested in entering a TEP.

Development and Application of a Domain-Specific TPACK Questionnaire—Findings from a Longitudinal Study on Teaching Human Biology Using Digital Tools

AbstractThere are several specific digital tools now that have transformed the way science is taught. Correspondingly, teacher education programs have changed, and now they increasingly address the development of technology-related professional content knowledge (TPACK). Owing to the use of technology in specific domains of science teaching, there is an emergent need for domain-specific TPACK questionnaires. The present study investigates the development and application of a domain-specific TPACK questionnaire for teaching human biology using digital tools in a university-based teacher education program. A quasi-experimental between-subject design was applied for 13 weeks in the four study groups (n = 155). The intervention groups worked with digital tools in human biology, while the control groups participated without specific consideration of digital tools throughout the program. We succeeded in developing a questionnaire comprising seven reliable scales. The questionnaire development procedure described herein may be applicable to other science education disciplines. By the means of linear mixed modeling, we found that all students gained professional knowledge; however, treatment × time interactions revealed that belonging to the intervention group was the main driver of TPACK progression. Comparing the treatments, we found that at post-test, the intervention group reported higher levels of TPCK, TPK, and TCK, but not CK, PK, TK, and PCK. Sequential analyses of the longitudinal data highlighted that working with digital tools on a regular basis constitutes a TPACK boost effect. This study contributes to the literature on technology integration from the perspective of biology education, where specific tools that can be assessed using a domain-specific questionnaire are used.

Experimental Evidence on the Robustness of Coaching Supports in Teacher Education

Many novice teachers learn to teach “on the job,” leading to burnout and attrition among teachers and negative outcomes for students in the long term. Preservice teacher education is tasked with optimizing teacher readiness, but there is a lack of causal evidence regarding effective ways to prepare new teachers. In this paper, we use a mixed-reality simulation platform to evaluate the causal effects and robustness of an individualized, brief, and highly directive coaching model for candidates enrolled in a university-based teacher education program as well as for undergraduates considering teaching as a profession. Across five conceptual replication studies, we find that short, targeted, and directive coaching significantly improves candidates’ instructional performance during simulated classroom sessions and that coaching effects are robust across different teaching tasks, study timing, and modes of delivery. However, coaching effects are smaller for a subpopulation of participants not formally enrolled in a teacher preparation program. These participants differed in terms of prior experiences learning about instructional methods, suggesting that coaching in isolation is not as effective without corresponding coursework on targeted practices. Taken together, our five studies provide encouraging evidence that teacher preparation can be an important time for rapid skill development when candidates are given targeted practice opportunities and corresponding support. Although we often think that practice has to happen in real classrooms with real students, we provide robust evidence that “the work of teaching” can be incorporated into teacher education coursework. We highlight implications for research and practice.

Exploring the Validity of a Single-Item Instrument for Assessing Pre-Service Primary School Teachers’ Sense of Belonging to Science

Abstract It can be suggested that pre-service primary school teachers’ sense of belonging to science may be influential to their professionalization within university-based teacher education programs, which intend to prepare them for teaching natural sciences in primary school. Nevertheless, because only few studies have examined teachers’ sense of belonging to science so far, further research in this regard seems both reasonable and necessary. To this end, there is a need for instruments enabling a valid assessment of pre-service primary school teachers’ sense of belonging to science. However, existing sense-of-belonging-to-science instruments require a comparatively long time on task due to their significant number of items. Consequently, the applicability of these instruments within research is limited because surveys in educational contexts must often be brief and economical. The research we present in this article aims to tackle this issue by examining on an exploratory level whether and to what extent pre-service primary school teachers’ sense of belonging to science can be validly assessed using a single-item instrument. In doing so we report qualitative, as well as quantitative, findings that provide evidence regarding the validity of our instrument. Implications of the present study for future research are outlined at the end of this article.

Portraying Teacher Education for Inclusion: An Analysis of the Institutional Discourse of Dual Certification Programs

Dual certification programs are proliferating as the principal means of preparing teachers for inclusive practice. Drawing on the 1,408 university-based teacher education programs on the 2019 Title II database, we examined the institutional website discourse for every program offering prospective teachers the opportunity to earn a general and special education license. One-quarter of these websites reflected discourse conveying inclusion as a reform, transformational, and equity strategy for teaching; three-quarters limited discourse to the practical benefit of earning two licenses, absent any elaboration regarding inclusive teaching. This raises questions regarding whether these programs serve a robust reform function in orienting prospective teachers to inclusive practice or instead a transactional function that maintains the traditional binary relationship between general and special education.

Exploring student teachers’ perceptions of assessment ethics across university-based teacher education programs in Iran

It is acknowledged that assessment ethics is an integral part of teacher education. Unlike sizable published research on students' perceptions of assessment in higher education, very little is reported on student teachers' perceptions of assessment ethics across university-based teacher education programs. This study aimed to explore Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) student teachers’ perceptions of assessment ethics in the classroom. Qualitative (phone interview) data from 15 TEFL teacher candidates were collected and analyzed using thematic content analysis. Based on the informants' responses, three overarching issues in assessment ethics emerged and are namely related to (a) assessment development (i.e., content underrepresentation, one-dimensional assessment, surprise items), (b) assessment administration(i.e., time, noise, and inconsistency in educators' behaviors), and (c) assessment scoring and communication (i.e., lack of transparency in feedback provision' 'misalignment of grading practice,' and 'breaching confidentiality in grade communication'). Furthermore, it was revealed that assessment is, for a great part, teacher-initiated and summative-oriented. In light of these findings, this study can inform professional development programs on assessment in teacher education.

Secondary Teacher Candidates’ Mathematical Modeling Task Design and Revision

The purpose of this study is to investigate secondary teacher candidates’ experience of mathematical modeling task design. In the study, 54 teacher candidates in a university-based teacher education program created modeling tasks and scoring rubrics. Next, the participants pilot-tested the tasks with students and had the opportunity to revise the original tasks and rubrics based on student responses. The data included participants’ statements, in which they described and reflected on the design and revision process of modeling tasks. The study describes six didactic revision strategies in revising modeling tasks and identifies five emerging pedagogical ideas from revising tasks and rubrics. The study also discusses the way modeling task design activities have the potential to support teacher candidates’ learning through a bottom-up modeling curriculum in teacher education.

Analysis before action: A framework for examining communities as texts

In recent decades, diverse field experiences have proliferated in university-based teacher education programs in the United States. In particular, community-based experiences where teacher candidat...

White Supremacy and Teacher Education: Balancing Pedagogical Tensions When Teaching about Race

Context University-based teacher education programs are increasingly committed to teaching about race and racism, but programs continue to face challenges in preparing justice-oriented educators. Critical scholarship on teaching about race and racism has identified some core concepts that teachers should learn, including an understanding of systemic racism. A deeper understanding of the structure and function of White supremacy as a system, specifically as it operates within teacher education as a social institution, can provide insight about the challenges faced by teacher educators (TEs) who teach about race and racism. Drawing from articulations of the characteristics of White supremacy, the author identifies operant mechanisms of White supremacy in teacher education. Purpose This article offers a framework for the logic of White supremacy as consisting of three core concepts: (1) the logic of racialized distribution of power; (2) the logic of intentional White ignorance and historical erasure; and (3) the logic of dehumanization of people of color through violence and White cultural hegemony. The study examined the tensions that emerge for teacher educators who aim to teach teachers to disrupt White supremacy but are working from within White supremacist institutions. Research Design The theoretical framework was used to examine emerging tensions experienced by TEs in a cross-institutional qualitative study that used phenomenological methods. Data were collected from teacher educators across multiple institutions and included interviews, classroom artifacts, and focus groups. Findings Findings aligned to the White supremacy framework. Tensions related to the racial distribution of power focused on differentiated support for teacher candidates (TCs) of color and navigating moments of racial tension. Tensions related to White ignorance and erasure centered on responding to White students’ resistance decentering Whiteness. Finally, tensions related to dehumanization of people of color focused on challenging deficit ideologies. Recommendations The findings suggest that being open to and conscious of these tensions through critical reflection can be productive for teacher educators. More research is needed that considers the distinct needs of TCs of color and White TCs when learning about race and racism. In addition, further research can apply the logic of White supremacy in cross-institutional studies and continue to engage TEs as participants to explore linkages between interpersonal and institutional effects of White supremacy in other contexts.

Irreconcilable Differences: Black Teachers’ Lives and K-12 Schools

University-based teacher education programs struggle with recruitment and retention of Black teachers. While the enrollment of children of color in K-12 public schools has held steady for over a decade, Black teachers continue to represent only a small percentage of classroom teachers and leave the classroom at higher rates than their White counterparts. In this article, drawing from an in-depth interview sequence (Seidman in Interviewing as qualitative research: a guide for researchers in education and the social sciences, Teachers College Press, New York, 2013), we theorize one Black teacher’s racialized lived experience with colleagues and institutions to explore the factors that contributed to her early exit from the profession. With a Subject-Object Theory analytic framework (Kegan and Lahey, in: Lyons (ed) Handbook of reflection and reflective inquiry: mapping a way of knowing for professional reflective inquiry, Springer, Boston, 2010), our analysis underscores how a series of racially hostile encounters undermined her motivation and ability to enact change at the institutional level. Findings suggest that focusing primarily on consciousness and awareness raising in teacher education programs may fall short for Black educators.

Thinking and Acting Across Ponds: Glocalized Intersections of Trepidation, Neoliberalism, and Possibilities for 21st Century Teacher Education

This article draws upon the cross-continental experiences of teacher educators in Australia, Germany, and the United States to contextualize and connect localized experiences in each country in the education and training of teachers as glocal phenomena. Through a glocal lens, the paper suggests that the dynamics working against the successful education and training of teachers are multifaceted, locally significant, and globally consistent. Two relevant areas are considered, resonating in both the local contexts of the authors and in their global reach, connectivity, and consistency: 1) internal university resistance and fighting over funding, status, and role and 2) over-reliance on market economies that depend on cheap labor fueled by nationalism, neoliberalism, and xenophobia. The authors address issues related to enrollment, reduction, and accreditation within university-based teacher education and training programs as particular areas of common complexity before yielding to discussion of the effects of those concerns situated within neoliberalism and neo-nationalism. The glocalized analysis and critical approach taken by the authors serve as foils to combat the negative scenario that encapsulates the education and training of teachers. Finally, questions are framed to help readers join in the broader discussion in their particularcontexts, extending the capacity for democratic dialogue.

Becoming coaches: A study of two novices’ journey

This paper examines the practice of two novice teacher educators working as instructional coaches in a university-based teacher education program. Previous research suggests that the knowledge and skills required to be an effective teacher are distinct from those required to be an effective teacher educator. Yet novice teacher educators often receive minimal preparation. This qualitative study identifies dilemmas that novice coaches encounter during observation debrief conversations in order to inform coach training. The findings suggest that the process used by the researchers to surface dilemmas may also be a useful intervention in shaping the identity and practice of novice teacher educators.

Preservice teachers learning to teach and developing teacher identity in a teacher residency

ABSTRACT This article reported how five preservice teachers constructed and developed their teacher identity in a year-long teacher residency partnered between a university-based teacher education program and schools in Louisiana, United States. Drawing on a sociocultural approach to identity development and the ‘third space’ theory, qualitative data were collected from individual interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis. Findings suggested that participants experienced an ongoing teacher identity construction while learning to teach in the hybrid, in-between ‘third space’ residency. Key elements of the residency, including the mentored co-teaching experiences and learning opportunities situated in authentic school contexts, facilitated the participants’ learning about teaching and teacher identity negotiation. Implications for teacher education practice, policy, and research were discussed.

Transition From Teacher To Teacher Educator – Teacher Educator´s Perceptions

The aim of the paper is to increase our knowledge of the transition from being a classroom teacher to becoming a Teacher Educator in a university-based Teacher Education program. The data collectio ...

Beyond Damage-Centered Teacher Education: Humanizing Pedagogy for Teacher Educators and Preservice Teachers

Background/Context In our best efforts to increase preservice teachers’ critical consciousness regarding the historical and contemporary inequities in the P–12 educational system and equip them to embody pedagogies and practices that counter those inequities, teacher educators often provide curricular and field experiences that reinforce the deficit mindsets that students bring to the teacher education classroom. For many social justice-oriented teacher educators, our best intentions to create humanizing experiences for future teachers can have harmful results that negatively impact preservice teachers’ ability to successfully teach culturally diverse students in a multitude of learning contexts. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study In this article, we propose a humanizing pedagogy for teacher education that is informed by our experiences as K–12 teachers and teacher educators in a university-based teacher preparation program. We focus on the general questions, How can university-based teacher preparation programs embody and enact a humanizing pedagogy? and What role can curriculum play in advancing a humanizing pedagogy in university-based teacher preparation programs? Research Design In this conceptual article, we theorize a humanizing pedagogy for teacher education and propose a process of becoming asset-, equity-, and social justice-oriented teachers. This humanizing pedagogy represents a strengths-based approach to teaching and learning in the teacher preparation classroom. Conclusions/Recommendations We propose core tenets of a humanizing pedagogy for teacher education that represent an individual and collective effort toward critical consciousness for preservice teachers and also for teacher educators. If university-based teacher education programs are committed to cultivating the development of asset-, equity-, and social justice-oriented preservice teachers, the commitments to critical self-reflection, resisting binaries, and enacting ontological and epistemological plurality need to be foundational to program structure, curricula alignment, and instructional practice.

Structuring Disruption within University-Based Teacher Education Programs1: Possibilities and Challenges of Race-Based Caucuses

BackgroundTeacher education candidates are in different places in terms of developing their identities and relationships to equity and social justice. Various approaches have been taken within university-based teacher education programs to engage with candidates, wherever they are in this development. One such approach has been engaging or drawing on teachers’ own lenses, especially through challenging and understanding their racialized selves.PurposeThis conceptual article examines how race-based caucuses (RBCs) in one teacher education program attempted to shift candidates’ understandings of their racialized selves as related to their teacher identities.ContextRBCs were instituted in one elementary teacher education program to help White teacher candidates and candidates of Color construct critical teacher identities. Candidates were asked to participate in caucuses according to the ways they had been racialized within schools. Facilitators who demonstrated a willingness to sit with the work of engaging race and racialization led the caucuses.ObservancesFor the candidates of Color, the “overwhelming presence of Whiteness” in the teacher education program and in the schools required the RBCs to focus on reframing deficit narratives of teachers of Color to an asset-based view of their value and contribution to the teaching profession. The RBC provided space for White teacher candidates to explore the consequences of Whiteness for their future identities as teachers and for the kinds of communities that they could and wanted to cultivate with students. Messiness and challenges abounded in both RBCs.Discussion and ReflectionsEmotions—and especially emotion labor—were central to RBCs. For teacher candidates of Color, facing one's own oppression was painful but also presented opportunities for them to articulate emotions and experiences in relatively safe spaces. In a different way, the RBCs resulted in significant emotional upheaval for White teacher candidates that shifted into deeper self-reflection and sense of awareness and allyship (for some)— although in a few cases, RBCs led to even deeper resistance.ConclusionsRace-based caucusing is a messy and challenging practice that can provide opportunities to reflect constructively on emotions and produce emotional upheaval for teacher candidates. Teacher educators and programs must approach RBCs with an orientation toward hyperreflexivity.

Mentor teacher professional identity development in a year-long teacher residency

ABSTRACTIn this article I examined the professional identity development of five mentor teachers in a year-long, clinically rich teacher residency partnered between a university-based teacher education program and schools in a southern state of the United States. Qualitative data were collected through classroom observation and individual semi-structured interviews with a focus on participants’ mentoring activities and the ways they enacted and described their identities. Participants came to new mentoring beliefs and practices as they navigated the residency and developed a multifaceted identity to mediate their learning to become mentors and teacher educators. Implications for mentor teacher professional support, teacher preparation, and future research were discussed.

Creative Character Education in Mathematics for Prospective Teachers

This study examines preservice teachers’ perspectives of creativity and character education in mathematics through a university-based teacher education program. We developed a curricular unit on creative character education in a mathematics methods course and investigated participants’ (n = 56) emerging perspectives of teaching creativity and character by the integration of content and process in mathematics. Data were collected through pre- and post-questionnaires and transcribed course discussion and presentation sessions. A quantitative analysis of the questionnaires through a t-test confirmed key changes in participants’ perspectives, while the qualitative context of data illustrates the participants’ emergent views on creative character education in mathematics. Overall, findings suggest that a mathematics teacher education curriculum integrating mathematical creativity and character education has the potential to prepare future educators to implement pedagogy that bridges between process and content in school mathematics for the next generation of learners.

Speaking educación in Spanish: linguistic and professional development in a bilingual teacher education program in the US-Mexico Borderlands

ABSTRACTThis case study examines the pedagogical measures taken for Spanish development for a group of bilingual preservice teachers in a university-based teacher education program in Texas. Classroom language policies were developed collaboratively and deliberately throughout the semester, which included discussion and negotiation between instructor and students about the language demands and expectations. Following the language development of four bilingual pre-service teachers in their quest to speak educación using discourse analysis, complexity and accuracy analysis, and critical narrative analysis, this study aims to highlight explicit experiences integrating content mastery and language development in a translanguaging university classroom. Implications include the need for horizontal language policies that foster effective cross-linguistic and pedagogical choices.

Strange bedfellows in science teacher preparation: conflicting perspectives on social justice presented in a Teach For America—university partnership

Teach For America (TFA), a widespread and well-known route into the teaching profession, frequently partners with university-based education programs to prepare and certify its corps members. However, university-based teacher education programs frequently emphasize very different understandings of socially just education and priorities for training teachers from those of TFA. Accordingly, science teachers trained through TFA-university partnerships encounter conflicting understandings of science education, justice, and urban communities as they are introduced to teaching practice. In this ethnographic case study we explored the experiences and reactions of a cohort of TFA corps members in a science methods course as they engaged with TFA’s perspective focused primarily on enhancing students’ social mobility and the methods course emphasizing democratic equality through scientific engagement. The study considers intersections between TFA’s approach to teacher preparation and sociocultural perspectives on equitable science teaching. The study also lends insight into the contradictions and challenges through which TFA science teachers develop understandings about their role as science teachers, purposes and goals of science education, and identities of the students and communities they serve.