TEI Aacte Curriculum
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This document discusses the challenges of designing teacher education programs focused on teaching practice. It identifies five main problems: 1) specifying teaching's core tasks, 2) choosing essential beginning practices, 3) articulating practices at an effective level, 4) managing general and subject-specific practices, and 5) addressing context. It provides the University of Michigan's effort to identify "high-leverage" practices as an example and discusses remaining steps like choosing content and assessing novice performance.
TEI Aacte Curriculum
- 1. Design Problems in Prac0ce‐Focused Teacher Educa0on Francesca Forzani and Deborah Loewenberg Ball AACTE Annual Mee;ng Atlanta, GA • February 20, 2010 1
- 2. Acknowledgements Bob Bain Vicki Haviland Hyman Bass Pat Herbst Tim Boerst Joe Krajcik Tabbye Chavous Pamela Moss Betsy Davis Annemarie Palincsar Donald Freeman Cathy Reischl Lauren McArthur Harris Lesley Rex Teresa McMahon Laurie Sleep 2
- 3. The problem • Calls for teacher educa;on to be more focused on prac;ce an increasingly common refrain • Some work underway to iden;fy focal prac;ces for teacher educa;on, in general and in specific subject‐areas, and to design TE around them • But to date, we have not created a common language for talking about the core elements of the work of teaching or focused TE on that work in detail • LiTle knowledge exists about what the challenges of this kind of design work would be 3
- 4. Our goal for today: To iden;fy what is involved in trying to design a teacher educa;on curriculum centered on the prac;ce of teaching 4
- 5. Overview 1. A short exercise: What is challenging about trying to iden;fy focal prac;ces for teacher educa;on? 2. Five problems inherent in making prac;ce the centerpiece of teacher educa;on 3. An example: Iden;fying “high‐leverage” prac;ces at the University of Michigan 4. Addi;onal problems 5
- 6. Consider some of the foci of pilot training: • Conduc;ng a preflight inspec;on • Glassy‐water approach and landing • Normal and cross‐wind approach and landing • Straight turns and climbing turns • Effec;ve visual scanning • Runway incursion avoidance • Crossed control stalls • S‐turns across a road 6
- 7. . . . or of medical training e.g., Conduct a chest examina;on: • Observe respiratory efforts and note presence/ absence of respiratory distress • Confirm midline tracheal posi;on with gentle palpa;on anteriorally • Percuss the chest on lef and right • Ascultate the chest using using the diaphragm of the stethoscope on both right and lef sides 7
- 8. . . . or of training for the clergy • Presiding at life‐cycle events (bat and bar mitzvah, funerals, christenings) • Counseling parishioners • Homile;cs (developing and delivering a sermon) • Reading for preaching 8
- 9. No equivalent in teaching • Objec;ves for coursework and for student teaching and other clinical experiences lack similarly precise professionally‐determined and agreed‐upon learning objec;ves • Performance expecta;ons for graduates of teacher educa;on underspecified and weakly assessed 9
- 10. What teaching prac;ces are the most essen;al for beginning teachers to be able to perform competently? What would you say? 10
- 11. The challenge Professionals working toward prac3ce‐focused teacher educa3on would need to manage at least five inherent problems: 1. Specify and develop consensus around the core tasks and ac;vi;es of teaching 2. Choose the elements of prac;ce most necessary for entrants to the profession 3. Ar;culate those elements at an effec;ve grain‐size 4. Manage the general and subject‐specific aspects of teaching prac;ce 5. Manage the context‐specific nature of prac;ce 11
- 12. 1. Specifying and developing consensus around core tasks and ac0vi0es of teaching • Absence of robust professional knowledge base • Link between par;cular teaching prac;ces and student achievement not always clear • Weak common language for describing and studying teaching 12
- 13. 2. Choosing elements most important for competent beginning prac0ce • Given vast scope of teaching prac;ce and brevity of professional training, what is most important? • Are some aspects of prac;ce fundamental to more advanced elements? • Are there elements of prac;ce that are best or only learned through formal training (rather than experience)? • What makes a “safe” beginner? 13
- 14. 3. Ar0cula0ng core prac0ces at an effec0ve grain‐size • How to decompose the intricate prac;ce of teaching into parts that are small enough to be learnable but are s;ll meaningful? • Does it maTer if core prac;ces are of different “grain‐sizes”? • What to do about prac;ces that cut across mul;ple elements of instruc;onal work? 14
- 15. 4. Managing the general and the subject‐ specific aspects of teaching • How does the work of teaching differ from one subject to the next? • Are there prac;ces that all elementary teachers, all secondary teachers, or all K‐12 teachers need to be able to do, independent of their field? • What are the subject‐specific prac;ces that are most important for beginners? • How can we manage with the lack of a common K‐12 curriculum in the U.S.? 15
- 16. 5. Managing the context‐specific nature of instruc0onal prac0ce • How does context interact with a given teaching prac;ce? • How can we account for that interac;on in teacher educa;on, par;cularly given the diversity of instruc;onal contexts in the United States? 16
- 17. An example: Iden0fying high‐leverage prac0ces at the University of Michigan At UM, we have tried to manage the first three of these problems by: • Enlis;ng the experience and imagina;on of a broad range of prac;;oners and researchers to create a comprehensive “map” of the work of teaching • Specifying and using criteria for iden;fying those aspects of the work that are the most “high‐leverage” for beginners • Deliberately choosing tasks and ac;vi;es at grain sizes useful for a curriculum of learning to teach 17
- 18. “High‐leverage” prac0ces • Have significant power in teaching because they: • Are central to the daily work of teaching • Make much more likely that teaching will be effec;ve for students’ learning • Essen;al; if teachers cannot discharge them well, they will face significant problems • Fundamental to the development of more complex prac;ce 18
- 19. Considera0ons for iden0fying “high‐leverage” prac0ces • Drew on research on teaching • Drew on recent design work in teacher educa;on, most of it in specific school subject‐ areas (Ball, Sleep, Boerst, & Bass, 2009; Franke & Chan, 2009; Hatch & Grossman, 2009) • Created and veTed our own list 19
- 20. Examples of considera0ons Considera3ons central to the prac3ce of teaching: • High probability of making a difference in teaching quality and effec;veness • Effec;ve in using and managing differences among pupils • Useful broadly across contexts and content Considera3ons central to teacher educa3on: • Can be assessed • Can be taught to beginners 20
- 21. Iden0fying high‐leverage prac0ces • Used considera;ons to iden;fy list of 88 poten;al HLPs • Bundled or further decomposed items to achieve a shorter list that highlights a range of crucial features of the work of teaching 21
- 22. Examples of high‐leverage prac0ces • Explaining ideas and processes • Choosing and using representa;ons, examples, and models of core content • Sepng up and managing small‐group work • Recognizing and iden;fying common paTerns of student thinking in a content domain • Selec;ng and using specific methods to assess students’ learning on an on‐going basis • Conduc;ng a mee;ng with a parent or caregiver 22
- 23. Next steps • Choose content for learning the HLPs, given that the U.S. has no common curriculum • Incorporate aTen;on to cross‐cupng issues such as equity, language, and learning • Determine the specific kinds of instruc;onal ac;vi;es and clinical sepngs will help novices learn the HLPs? • Designing assessments of novices’ ability to perform the HLPs • Valida;ng the HLPs (and assessments) against students’ learning gains 23
- 24. Thank you! dball@umich.edu fforzani@umich.edu www.soe.umich.edu/tei 24