Understanding Teacher Education Reform

Transforming Special Education Teacher Education: A Reaction to the Report Transforming Teacher Education through Clinical Practice: A National Strategy to Prepare Effective Teachers

“…Although general education teacher preparation programs face mismatches of their own between institutional curricula and the various curricula used by school districts ( cf. Wang et al, 2010), special education is further set apart from other programs within the field of teacher education, given the difficulty in clearly and consistently specifying what special education is and looks like in multiple settings (Brownell et al, 2011;.…”

“…However, the accreditation process is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to instituting effective teacher preparation practices that can be correlated with student performance in the classroom (Hollins, 2011;Stronge, Ward, & Grant, 2011 ). Given increasing public demands for highly effective teachers and little definitive research available about the appropriateness of various teacher preparation approaches, stakeholders ( e.g., state and federal policy makers, school professionals, field researchers, and professional organizations) have taken note (Boyd et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2010). Although widely disseminated attention is typically given to the struggles of teacher preparation as a generic whole ( cf.…”

“…The conclusion of our analysis and discussion will yield recommendations for policy makers, teacher educators, and other stakeholders with respect to reshaping teacher preparation in the field of special education. This discussion is particularly relevant given the ongoing discourse in the literature related to whether or not teaching is a profession with the same respected standing and standards as medicine, law, and engineering (Wang et al, 2010).…”

“…The first recommendation by the NCATE panel is to increase accountability for institutions of higher education (IHEs) by tying the academic performance of P-L 2 students to past graduates of teacher preparation. Although this type of accountability measurement is difficult to define, stemming from the diverse and complicated barriers related to the structures of IHEs and school districts (Boyd et al, 2009;Sykes et al, 20 IO;Wang et al, 2010) as well as the imprecise nature of measurement in schools (National Research Council,20 I 0), the panelists call for new paradigms and methods to reduce these barriers. According to the report, in order for accountability to be tightly linked between teacher preparation programs and P-12 student learning, school districts and teacher preparation programs must forge tighter relationships.…”

“…Darling-Hammond, 2010;Wang et al , 2010), the structural, pedagogical, and practical implications for teacher preparation programs and school districts may provide a stumbling block for long-term implementation and sustainability. Half of these design principles are likely beyond the immediate control of most teacher education faculty members or school officials (i.e., principles 2, 6, 7, 9 and 10).…”