Teacher Preparation Research

Abstract

The authors were asked by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement and the U.S. Department of Education to conduct a review of high-quality research on five questions concerning teacher preparation. As part of that assignment, they were asked to develop a set of defensible criteria for including research in the review. In this article, they summarize what the research says about the five questions posed by their funders, and they discuss the development of the review criteria. The questions included attention to the subject matter and pedagogical preparation of prospective teachers, to the content and character of high-quality field experiences and alternative routes, and to research on the effects of policies on the enhancement of teacher preparation.

The Impact of Preservice Preparation and Early Career Support on Novice Teachers’ Career Intentions and Decisions

“…Assessment processes can be seen as a way to address needs for information to report on quality concerns, but have greater potential in the opportunity to better understand the significant within institutional variance in new teacher preparation for the purpose of examining strengths and limits of current programs with an aim toward enhancing learning and subsequent outcomes. Relying on teacher self-reports alone is inadequate for fully understanding differences across programs (Wilson et al, 2002), but in the context of program improvement can provide meaningful practical insights for advancing program quality. The process described here to collect self-reported perceptions of graduates in combination with retention data provides an example of how assessment data has the potential to be used for both reporting and program improvement efforts.…”

Sustaining Physics Teacher Education Coalition programs in physics teacher education

“…Literature on teacher preparation programs identifies five broad domains of important program features: (i) program purpose, (ii) requirements for subject-matter knowledge, (iii) requirements for pedagogical and other professional knowledge, (iv) field and clinical experiences, and (v) faculty and staff qualifications [6][7][8][9][10]. PhysTEC focuses on the components of a teacher preparation program that are in the domain of a disciplinary department, and emphasizes strong collaboration with schools of education to address other components.…”

“…Regarding the other domains (requirements for pedagogical and professional knowledge, field and clinical experiences, and faculty and staff qualifications), there is a widely acknowledged lack of evidence for recommending specific program features [6,[9][10][11][12][13]. Instead, there is a call for documented experimentation in teacher education programs: for example, the National Research Council requests a "much clearer and more detailed picture of … how teacher preparation is delivered, as well as a means of tracking changes in this picture over time," and particularly seeks "descriptive information about programs and pathways" for teacher education [9].…”

“…Instead, there is a call for documented experimentation in teacher education programs: for example, the National Research Council requests a "much clearer and more detailed picture of … how teacher preparation is delivered, as well as a means of tracking changes in this picture over time," and particularly seeks "descriptive information about programs and pathways" for teacher education [9]. Another source recommends that "school districts, states, and the federal government should continue to experiment with various approaches to teacher recruitment, while collecting data that can be used to improve approaches that are promising and end those that are not" [6]. The purpose of the research represented here is to document sites' successful approaches and discern the features that make them successful.…”

Emirati General Education Pre-service Teachers’ Preparedness for Diversity in Inclusive Classrooms

“…Although available research demonstrates that field experience provides pre-service teachers a supervised opportunity to apply their learning to a practical work experience and also 'learn the profession' and reduces the anxiety of beginning teachers (Rice, 2003), little research is available in regards to the contribution of teaching practice and the contribution of coursework on the development of pre-service teachers' knowledge and skills (Rice, 2003;Wilson, Floden, & Ferrini-Mundy, 2001). ISSN 1948-5476 2016 Therefore, the major intent of the study is to investigate the preparedness of the pre-service Emirati teachers to respond to the challenge of diversity in inclusive classrooms during their student teaching or internship in public schools.…”