Improving Teacher Education Practice Through Self-study


Book Description

Self-study in teacher education is a growing field and a natural progression from the concept of reflective practice for pre-service teachers. This book is designed to introduce teacher educators to the theory and practice of self-study, in order to explore, understand and improve their teaching about teaching. With studies from an international range of contributors, this book illustrates a variety of approaches to self-study. It describes the issues that teacher educators have chosen to study, how they carried out their research and what the learning outcomes were. Throughout, the emphasis is on placing teacher educators' knowledge and practice at the centre of their academic work. This book will be of interest to all teacher educators wishing to improve their knowledge and practice.




Improving Teacher Development and Evaluation


Book Description

"Throughout history education systems have strived to help teachers be as effective as possible in order to help students learn as much as possible. However, these teacher evaluation efforts have long been unhelpful in the pursuit of teacher development. Reflecting on, Observing, and Coaching Teaching presents a case for the necessity of effective teacher evaluation in the name of strong teacher development. Authors Robert J. Marzano, Cameron L. Rains, and Philip B. Warrick provide in-depth background research on the history of teacher evaluation, strong cases for the necessity of an intertwined evaluation and development system, as well as specific suggestions for improvement in both fields. Teachers should not be interchangeable parts. They should be vital cogs in an educational machine who each fill their niche as effectively as possible, and this book serves that end"--




Score to Soar


Book Description

Discover how to guide and enhance the job performance of teachers in your school or district. The authors share highly practical strategies for providing teachers meaningful feedback and encouraging their improvement. You’ll discover how to evaluate teacher effectiveness, use multiple forms of data for evaluation, and communicate evaluation findings to teachers in a way that fosters their professional growth.




Preparing Teachers


Book Description

Teachers make a difference. The success of any plan for improving educational outcomes depends on the teachers who carry it out and thus on the abilities of those attracted to the field and their preparation. Yet there are many questions about how teachers are being prepared and how they ought to be prepared. Yet, teacher preparation is often treated as an afterthought in discussions of improving the public education system. Preparing Teachers addresses the issue of teacher preparation with specific attention to reading, mathematics, and science. The book evaluates the characteristics of the candidates who enter teacher preparation programs, the sorts of instruction and experiences teacher candidates receive in preparation programs, and the extent that the required instruction and experiences are consistent with converging scientific evidence. Preparing Teachers also identifies a need for a data collection model to provide valid and reliable information about the content knowledge, pedagogical competence, and effectiveness of graduates from the various kinds of teacher preparation programs. Federal and state policy makers need reliable, outcomes-based information to make sound decisions, and teacher educators need to know how best to contribute to the development of effective teachers. Clearer understanding of the content and character of effective teacher preparation is critical to improving it and to ensuring that the same critiques and questions are not being repeated 10 years from now.




Being a Teacher Educator


Book Description

This collection offers a timely and wide-ranging contribution to the research-informed improvement of the work of teacher educators. Drawing on original research studies conducted across a range of European countries, Canada, and Israel, contributors offer insight into not only questions of curriculum and programme development, research, and professional development, but also their day-to-day experience as teacher educators, student teachers, and mentors in schools. Themes explored include teaching and working with students, teacher educators as researchers, the partnership work of teacher educators, the professional development needs of teacher educators, professional development approaches for improving teacher education, and teacher educator empowerment. Arising from the international community of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE), and drawing together theory and practice, this book offers a unique survey of the contributions of teacher educators and charts a path for future directions of the field.




Culturally Responsive Education in the Classroom


Book Description

This exciting book helps educators translate the concept of equity into the context of pedagogy in the K-12 classroom. Providing a practice-oriented framework for understanding what equity entails for both teachers and learners, this book clarifies the theoretical context for equity and shares rich teaching strategies across a range of content areas and age groups. Unpacking six themes to understand Culturally Responsive Education (CRE), this powerful book helps teachers incorporate equity into behaviors, environments, and meaningful learning opportunities. Culturally Responsive Education in the Classroom provides specific, practice-based examples to help readers develop a culturally responsive pedagogical mindset for closing equity gaps in student achievement.




Outcomes of High-Quality Clinical Practice in Teacher Education


Book Description

For decades teacher education researchers, organizations, and policy makers have called for improving teacher education by creating clinically based preparation programs (e.g. CAEP, 2013; Goodlad, 1990; Holmes, 1986, 1995; National Association for Professional Development Schools, 2008; National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Educators, 2001, 2010; Zeichner, 1990). According to the NCATE Blue Ribbon Report (2010), this approach requires extensive opportunities for prospective teachers to connect and apply what they learn from school and university based teacher educators. Similar to preparing medical professionals, clinical practice in teacher education requires the complex and time intensive work of supporting teacher candidate ability to link theory, research, and practice as well as on-going inquiry into best pedagogical practices. Therefore, clinically intensive programs expect prospective teachers to blend practitioner and academic knowledge throughout their programs as "they learn by doing" (NCATE, 2010, p.ii). However, most of the literature to date on clinical practice has been conceptual and often relies on describing program design. The purpose of this book is move past description to study and understand what teacher education programs are learning from research about innovative clinical models of teacher education. Each book chapter highlights research about how programs are studying a variety of outcomes of clinical practice. After an introductory chapter that helps to define and situate clinical practice in teacher education, the book is organized into four sections: (1) Outcomes of New Roles, (2) Outcomes of New Practices, (3) Outcomes of New Coursework/Fieldwork Configurations, and (4) Outcomes of New Program Configurations. The book wraps up with a discussion that looks across the chapters to find common themes, share implications for teacher educators, and set the course for future research.




Clinically Based Teacher Education in Action


Book Description

Teacher education in the United States is changing to meet new policy demands for centering clinical practice and developing robust school-university partnerships to better prepare high-quality teachers for tomorrow’s schools. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SCHOOLS (PDSs) have recently been cited in national reports as exemplars of high-quality school-university partnerships in the clinical preparation of teachers. According to the National Association for Professional Development Schools, PDSs have Nine Essentials that distinguish them from other school-university collaborations. But even with that guidance, working across the boundaries of schools and universities remains messy, complex, and, quite frankly, hard. That’s why, perhaps, there is such diversity in school-university partnerships. For the last thirty years, educators have been fascinated yet puzzled with how to build PDSs. Clinically Based Teacher Education in Action: Cases from PDSs addresses that perplexity by providing images of the possible in school-university collaboration. Each chapter closely examines one of the NAPDS Nine Essentials and then provides three cases from PDSs that target that particular essential. In this way, readers can see how different PDSs from across the globe are innovating to actualize that essential in PDS development. The editors provide commentary, addressing themes across the three cases. Each chapter ends with questions to start collaborative conversations and a field-based activity meant to propel your PDS work forward.




Teaching Practices and Equitable Learning in Children's Language Education


Book Description

Educating children and leading them towards the path of bilingualism is a valuable and challenging task for any educator. Effective language teaching can contribute to young learners’ cognitive growth, develop their problem-solving skills, enhance their comprehension abilities, and provide children with the satisfaction of succeeding in the challenge of learning a foreign language. All these issues must be taken under consideration when researching children and their teachers. The current literature indicates that further material is needed to provide professionals with different classroom situations and enhance the art of teaching children. Teaching Practices and Equitable Learning in Children's Language Education focuses on various perspectives of efficient practices, approaches, and ideas for professional development in the field of young language learners. The chapters in this book link the theoretical understanding and practical experience of teaching children languages by concentrating on teaching practices, material design, classroom management, reading, speaking, writing, and more. This book is designed for inservice and preservice teachers, administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the field of early language learning and applied linguistics at large.




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