Does Practice Make Perfect? The Curricular Give and Take of One Teacher Education Program’s Re-design

ABSTRACT

As teacher preparation programs across the country evolve in response to criticism, declining enrollment, and increasing competition, research is needed to guide and inform their evolution. In response, faculty at one teacher preparation program embarked upon a two-year journey to transform a program to make it more conceptually coherent as well as convenient and affordable. Upon completion, the researchers employed a mixed methods design involving valid and reliable performance assessments, surveys, and interviews to investigate the impact of the re-design on teacher candidate performance and perceptions of their preparation. Results suggested that the changes led to some improvements in candidate performance, but that these improvements may have come at the expense of other knowledge and skills. Despite prioritizing a practice-based teacher education, results indicated that the re-designed program did not provide completers with adequate opportunity to practice skills across the entire program, and as a result, left completers of the re-designed program less confident in their degree of preparation than their peers who completed the original program. The study shares a number of lessons learned that other teacher preparation programs should consider before embarking upon programmatic re-design.

KEYWORDS:

• Program re-design
• practice-based teacher education
• performance
• perceptions of preparation
• mixed methodology

Acknowledgments

The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the university, and no official endorsement should be inferred.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A priori analyses revealed that teachers’ full-time teaching status was not significantly associated with the variables of interest in this study except for CRTSE scale. Full-time teachers reported being less culturally-responsive teaching self-efficacious compared to their counterparts [t(38)=2.823, p <.05]. Therefore, we determined being full-time teachers did not confound results of the analyses.

Additional information

Funding

Support for this research was provided by a University of North Carolina at Charlotte Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant.

Notes on contributors

Scott Kissau

Dr. Scott Kissau is a Professor and Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Kissau was the 2016 recipient of the Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education granted by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. His primary research interests relate to foreign language teacher preparation, and his work has been published inForeign Language Annals, Journal of Teacher Education, and Teaching and Teacher Education.

Hilary Dack

Dr. Hilary Dack is an assistant professor of middle grades education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a former middle school teacher.  Her current research focuses on how teacher education programs prepare preservice and early career teachers to respond effectively to academic diversity.  Her scholarship has been published inTeaching and Teacher Education, The Elementary School Journal, and Theory & Research in Social Education.  In recent years, Dr. Dack has received the Cato College of Education’s Award for Excellence in Research and the American Educational Research Association’s Social Studies Research SIG Outstanding Paper Award.

Paul Fitchett

Dr. Paul Fitchett is a professor and Assistant Dean of Teaching and Innovation at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Fitchett's research focuses on the intersections of teacher working conditions, student learning outcomes, and education policy. HIs research has been published inTeachers College Record, Teaching and Teacher Education, and  The Teacher Educator.