Securing Faculty Engagement: Opportunities for Learning and Program Development

Securing Faculty Engagement:

Opportunities for Learning and

Program Development

Chet Laine, University of Cincinnati

introductions

•Who is with us today?

Goals• Participants will:

• Meet with colleagues who are involved in the piloting of the Teacher Performance Assessment

• Explore ways that we can engage our colleagues and candidates in the opportunities that the Teacher Performance Assessment provides

Questions & Concerns• This session is designed to be interactive.• I will share what I have discovered from

others and what I have learned from our three-year pilot experience.

• We will stop from time to time to exchange ideas.

• Stop me at anytime.• Share what most concerns you at your

institution.

Our institution• Research-Intensive University• Urban Mission• Tenure-line, field service & adjunct faculty• Licensure Programs:

• Early Childhood Education• Middle Childhood Education• Secondary Education• Special Education• Art Education• Music Education

top down & bottom up

• Work from the top down & the bottom up

• Involve key individuals• University administrators• Tenure-line faculty• Adjunct and field service faculty• Cooperating teachers• School administrators

Framing• Frame the TPA in terms of inquiry,

program improvement & moving practice forward

not• In terms of fulfilling a mandate;

fulfilling a mandate implies compliance and “getting it done”

communication• Initiate frequent and sustained

communication• Involve as many colleagues as possible• Is it difficult to engage tenure-line faculty

in the work of teacher education?• Don’t leave it up to the university-based

supervisors

communication• During faculty meetings and retreats,

place the TPA within the context of conversations about• Curriculum• Practice• Field placements• Course requirements • Signature assignments, assessments &

rubrics• Program structure

learning about ourselves

• How can you use the TPA to learn about your programs?• Are we willing to critically examine the

competence of our candidates?• Are we willing to be transparent, to uncover

areas that may need improvement?• How can we use the TPA to help us gather

and use evidence of teaching performance?• How can we use the TPA to improve our

teacher preparation programs?

Culture of Evidence• How can you create a culture of

evidence?• Work with the TPA data.• Data may challenge widely held

assumptions about what candidates are learning and can apply from their course work and field experiences.

• “Here’s my syllabus. Here are my assignments. We prepare them for that!”

Data Emersion• Hold Retreats:

• Examine pilot data. What do the data reveal?• Look at areas where the candidates struggle

(e.g., assessment, academic language) • Examine tasks and rubrics • Hold mock scoring sessions• Examine individual cases of candidates’ work• Examine a broad range, including the

exemplary cases • Engage faculty in the analysis and

interpretation of data

An Investment • We are inventing in an assessment that is of

high quality:• A robust, complex, and multifaceted

assessment of teaching candidates in action• A reliable & valid assessment• An assessment that measures our teaching

candidates’ readiness for teaching • An assessment that promotes evidence-based

practice, critical thinking, and reflection • An assessment that reveals our candidates’

impact on student achievement

An Investment • The TPA is:

• Subject-area specific• Performance-based • Centered on student learning • Highlights pedagogical content knowledge• Focuses on instruction that inspires,

engages, and sustains students as learners• Enriches both the student teaching

experience and the quality of instruction for preK-12 students

Not reinventing the wheel

• Help faculty members see that they are not reinventing the wheel• Are you already doing much of what the

TPA asks of us and our candidates?• Are your programs using tools such as the

teacher work sample or the analysis of student work protocol?

• Is systematic reflection embedded in your program?

• Do you expect your candidates to tie objectives to assessments, provide a rationale for their lessons, differentiate instruction, analyze student work?

Program integrity• Attend to maintaining individual

program identity• How do the things that you value in your

program align with the TPA?• Be responsive to concerns• Send feedback to Stanford TPAC team

Break down silos

• Hold broad and collegial conversations across programs.

• How can the faculty who teach critical courses support candidates as they apply knowledge and those skills in the TPA?• Technology• Assessment • Foundations of education• Human development• Special education

Signature Assessments• Do you have stand alone courses that

are marginalized?• Other faculty members may know very

little about these courses.• Are there signature assessments that

can be developed?

candidates who completed the TPA

• Have candidates who piloted & submitted TPA portfolios speak to faculty and new candidates• In pilots our candidates

systematically collected an extensive array of outcome data

• They were positive about the experience and felt that they learned important skills

• Some mentioned their enhanced ability to field interview questions

Interview questions• “How will you individualize instruction?”• “Can you justify forcing your students to

learn?”• “How do you support students who struggle or

who are different than you in race, culture, and ability.”

• How are your assessments related to your objectives?”

• “What have done, not what you will do?

Closing thoughts• Creating “Cultures of Evidence” in

Teacher Education: Context, Policy and Practice in Three High Data Use Programs.

• Cap Peck & Morva McDonald, University of Washington

• 2010