Admission Boards: The Contribution of Professional Judgment to the Admission Process

Abstract

Benner, George, and Cagle present the concept of teacher education admission boards, particularly as defined by and established at the University of Ten nessee. The boards, comprised of prac titioners in the field, content area special ists, advanced students, and program area faculty interview students, review data available on the students and make final admission decisions. Further, once a student is admitted, he or she is as signed to a mentoring team that pro vides ongoing evaluation throughout the program. While the subjectivity and deficiencies of the board process are ob vious, the concept of admission boards is offered to the profession as an alterna tive to relying on quantitative measures alone.

Evaluating The Use Of Group Interviews To Select Students Into Teacher-Education Programs

“…More recently, there has been considerable interest in using individual interviews to select students into teacher-education programs. Although several researchers have presented evidence that ratings on individual interviews can be good predictors of future teaching success (Coleman, 1987;Haberman, 1987;Malvern, 1991), these interviews require a tremendous time commitment, with only a few students eliminated from the applicant pool (Benner, George, & Cagle, 1987).…”

The Philosophical Conundrum of Teacher Education in Special Education

“…A common strategy for improving admission standards has been to raise test score requirements (Benner, George, & Cagle, 1987). An illustration of this approach is found in the recommendation by Rude and Lee (1990) that &dquo;teacher education programs should consider raising GPA requirements to 3.0 on a 4-point scale&dquo; and &dquo;requiring all enrolling students to complete either the ACT or the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) as a precondition of acceptance&dquo; (p. 180).…”

Proposed New Linkages/Relationships to Improve Teacher Education: Old Wine in New Bottles?

“…Each of the 20 boards (paralleling the different teacher education majors) is composed of various representatives-including arts and sciences faculty. (Benner, George, & Cagle, 1987). Other examples of arts and sciences faculty showing increased interest in improving teaching in K-12 schools have been documented by Maeroff (1984) who reports the following: a) Summer school classes for teachers in science and mathematics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with followup meetings throughout the year b) An interdisciplinary program training secondary and elementary teachers in the humanities at Dartmouth's New England Studies Institute c) Yale-New Haven Teacher Institute enabling 80 secondary teachers per year to study on campus with senior professors d) University of Michigan writing program focusing on helping teachers in all subjects train their students to be better writers e) University of California, BerkeleyBay Area Writing Project focusing on training teachers to be better writers and thus help their coworkers and students be better writers While the Holmes and Carnegie Reports both call for the elimination of the undergraduate degree in education, this does not mean that a collaborative effort cannot be made at the undergraduate level to fashion (1) a thoroughly integrated, much improved general education program, (2) cross disciplinary study in specialized areas, (3) some exposure to and analysis of different teaching styles, and (4) contact with schools and children.…”