A Study in Contrasts: Multiple-Case Perspectives on Teacher Preparation at New Graduate Schools of Education

ABSTRACT

This article takes a multi-case perspective on teacher preparation at new graduate schools of education (nGSEs) across four sites. The article argues that teacher preparation at nGSEs is a study in contrasts. On one hand, nGSE leaders frame teacher preparation at their institutions in terms of the marked contrasts they perceive between their programs and teacher preparation programs at universities, which is one of their principal justifications for the relocation of teacher preparation to new non-university organizations. On the other hand, there are stark contrasts within and across nGSE sites in how teacher preparation is conceptualized and enacted, depending primarily upon the interplay of underlying assumptions and values and the larger professional and political purposes to which particular nGSEs are attached.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The Rhode Island School for Progressive Education (RISPE), which will offer teacher preparation and is approved by the state of Rhode Island as an institution of higher education offering master’s degrees, will open in 2021.

² We use the term, High Tech High/GSE to emphasize that at the time data were collected for the case study, teacher education occurred across High Tech High and High Tech High GSE.

³ On July 9, 2020, the Higher Education Licensing Commission (Washington, DC) approved a “name change” – to Moreland University – for the TEACH-NOW Graduate School of Education. TEACH-NOW will continue to exist under the Moreland University umbrella. Given its evolution from a graduate school of education to an online university, TEACH-NOW no longer fits with our definition of nGSEs. However all of the data about TEACH-NOW in this and other articles in this issue were obtained while it was an nGSE.

⁴ For more general information about the characteristics of nGSEs, see Cochran-Smith et al. (2020). For information and analysis of each site, see: Carney (2019, 2020), Keefe and Miller (2020), Miller (2017), Olivo and Jewett Smith (2020), and, Sánchez (2019, 2020).

⁵ This was the language used by Sposato GSE when we collected data at this site in 2016–2017. Since that time, Sposato has shifted to the language of preparing “unusually effective novice teachers” for “high-performing, high poverty” urban charter and “turnaround” schools (Keefe & Miller, 2020).

⁶ The Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Model Standards for Beginning Teachers Licensing and Development, which include ten standards for new teachers, are widely used by teacher education accreditors, programs, and states.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spencer Foundation [5105021].