Beverly Falk

Documentation and Democratic Education.

This article discusses how documentation practices in education can contribute to the realization of democracy. Grounded in the notion that democracy requires citizens who are able to engage with and benefit from an exchange of multiple perspectives, the authors focus on how documentary practices support teachers to understand and to teach a broad range of students well. Additionally, they describe how documentary practices help students to understand themselves and each other, both as learners and as members of a collective community. They outline and provide examples of four ways that documentation supports the kind of education a healthy democracy requires: how it fosters an inquiry approach to teaching; how it informs teaching and enhances professional learning; how it extends and deepens the learning that learners acquire from their work; and how it offers assessment alternatives to educators, students, families, and the public that provide critical information about learning.

A Conversation with Lee Shulman--Signature Pedagogies for Teacher Education: Defining Our Practices and Rethinking Our Preparation.

Lee S. Shulman is the President of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, a foundation whose mission is “to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of teaching.” Prior to assuming his role at Carnegie, Shulman was the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University and Professor of Educational Psychology and Medical Education at Michigan State University, where he was also the founding Co-Director of the Institute for Research on Teaching (IRT). He is a past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and a former president of the National Academy of Education. He is also the recipient of AERA’s career award for Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research and the E.L. Thorndike Award for Distinguished Psychological Contributions to Education from the American Psychological Association’s Division of Educational Psychology. He is a Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lee Shulman’s research and writings have dealt with the study of teaching and teacher education; the growth of knowledge among those learning to teach; the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK); the assessment of teaching; medical education; the psychology of instruction in science, mathematics, and medicine; the logic of educational research; and the quality of teaching in higher education. In his work at the Carnegie Foundation, he has emphasized the importance of “teaching as community property” and the central role of a “scholarship of teaching” in supporting needed changes in the cultures of higher education. One of the Carnegie Foundation’s current projects is “The Quest Project For Signature Pedagogies In Teacher Education.” Supported with funds from The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund as well as Carnegie’s own resources, it is an initiative to explore and design “signature pedagogies” for the education of teachers. It works with teachers and teacher education faculty to identify effective practices and produce detailed, layered representations of these through video, teaching materials, student work, and reflective commentary by both teacher educators, teacher learners, and their students. Beverly Falk, The New Educator‘s Editor, is a Fellow of The Quest Project and one of the teacher educators involved. She recorded Lee Shulman’s comments below about the doctorate and the professionalization of teaching, in a conversation at a 2005 retreat dedicated to this work.

Research and teacher self-inquiry reawaken learning:

This article reports on a study of teachers who have engaged in systematic research about their practice. It describes the inquiries of two urban teachers into challenges and dilemmas common to many who work with diverse groups of students. The accounts presented reveal how teachers are able to construct new knowledge about teaching when they engage as inquirers about their work; they invent new solutions to nagging problems, identify new challenges that need to be addressed, and respond to the unique contexts and needs of the children and families of the communities in which they teach.

Ending the Revolving Door of Teachers Entering and Leaving the Teaching Profession

Nearly 50% of teachers leave the profession within their first five years of teaching, with many high-need districts and schools experiencing as much as a 40% turnover each year. This problem of teacher attrition is critical. In addition to being costly, it leaves the students who have the greatest needs with a constantly changing brigade of inexperienced teachers (Dill & Stafford, 2008; Huling-Austin, 1990; Ingersoll, 2002; Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). While it is now widely recognized that strong teacher preparation is a critical component of ending the revolving door of those who enter and leave the teaching profession, there are other areas that need to be addressed to help keep teachers in the field. These areas include teacher induction support, mentoring, administrative efforts to create a positive school culture that provides opportunities for teachers to engage in collegial collaboration focused on instruction, and working conditions that provide teachers with the resources they need to effectively teach (Darling-Hammond, 2003; Little, 1982, 1999). This issue of The New Educator discusses these different supports that have been demonstrated to increase teacher retention rates. New teachers often experience a steep learning curve in their early years of teaching (Berliner, 1994; Feiman-Nemser, 1983, 2001). To support this learning curve, to enhance teacher effectiveness, and to increase the likelihood of their retention, teachers need well-designed induction programs. Some of the components of such programs include informationrich hiring procedures; reduced — or at least reasonable — teaching assignments; rich curricula and resources; summer orientation to school policies and procedures; “educative” mentoring from experienced colleagues;

Leveraging Accountability in Educator Preparation Toward Learning and Improvement: Lessons from the Field

As awareness has developed about the critical impact of teacher quality on students’ learning, challenging new accountability measures are becoming part of the university teacher preparation landscape. National accrediting organizations are creating more rigorous, outcomes-based accountability measures for teacher preparation programs, while states across the country are ramping up the difficulty level of teacher certification exams. In addition to more rigorous paper and pencil tests, many states and local institutions are implementing a teacher performance assessment for graduation and/or certification. Although there is controversy about the value and impact of these developments, many have taken the challenge of meeting increasingly rigorous expectations as an educative opportunity for faculty and teacher candidates. In this issue of The New Educator we share efforts of teacher educators, from a variety of states and institutions, who have negotiated accountability demands in ways that support their candidates’ learning as well as contribute to program improvement. To launch the discussion, Patricia J. Norman and Sara A. S. Sherwood describe how they and their colleagues used the process of preparing to meet national program accreditation requirements to create a program-wide process for continuous improvement. In their article “Using Internal and External Evaluation to Shape Teacher Preparation Curriculum: A Model for Continuous Program Improvement,” they describe the systems that they put into place to strengthen their work. The rest of the articles in this issue focus on how teacher educators have negotiated the challenges of new teacher certification requirements in

Supporting the Education and Care of Young Children: Putting into Practice What We Know

This chapter discusses understandings brought to light in recent years about how young children learn and about what practices best support their development. The present state of early childhood education is reviewed, with examples of how the high-stakes accountability climate currently dominating in U.S. schools impacts the learning of young children. Arguing that our nation’s educational policies and practices do not reflect existing knowledge about how people learn, recommendations are offered for how to support children in accordance with their developmental needs, how to teach them in the ways that they learn, and how children and their families can negotiate the changing educational demands of the 21st century to realize possibilities for their futures.

Early Career Supports for Teacher Learning

During the initial years of teaching, novice teachers grapple with multiple challenges: integrating into their school’s culture, learning to teach to the needs of their students, incorporating standards and testing requirements into the curriculum, and crafting a professional identity (Feiman-Nemser, 2003). Yet, despite several decades of research and change efforts focused on these issues (Huling-Austin, 1990; Johnson&The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, 2004; National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 2003) retaining new teachers and sustaining their commitments continue to be a persistent challenge. This issue of The New Educator revisits this dilemma and offers readersmore thoughts about how to address the need to end teachers’ revolving door into and out of our profession. Some of the factors contributing to teacher retention that are explored in this issue are school climate, school policies, and district/state tests. Specifically, the first three articles examine teacher collaboration, the overrepresentation of first-year teachers who are assigned to the most challenging classes, and the pressures teachers experience to achieve high student performance on externally administered standardized tests. Building on the research-based notion that collaborative, vibrant learning environments are attractive and supportive places to be (DuFour & DuFour, 2011; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006), “The Elusive Search for Teacher Collaboration” by authors Jocelyn A. Glazier, Ashley Boyd, Kristen Bell Hughes, Harriet Able, and Ritsa Mallous focuses on the challenges of building a collaborative school culture. This article is followed by “Patterns in the Initial Teaching Assignments of Secondary English Teachers: Implications for Teacher Agency and Retention.” In it author Deborah Bieler and colleagues address another barrier to teacher retention, which is that the least experienced teachers are often placed in the most challenging classrooms (Darling-Hammond, 2003; Levin & Quinn, 2003). After examining the teaching assignments of 175 English teachers teaching 246 classes in 13 mid-Atlantic high schools across five states, they conclude that policies affecting the working conditions, rhetoric, and culture around new teachers are in need of attention and change. Adding to the list of problems that new teachers face, the next article of this issue —“‛I’ve Tried and I’ve Died This Year’: First-Year Teachers Reflect on Literacy Reform”—shines a light on the challenges associated with outcomes-based education reform as experienced by two novice elementary teachers. Here, authors Amy D. Broemmel and Elizabeth A. Swaggerty analyze interviews they conducted with new teachers. Their report provides insights into the tensions teachers perceive between their teaching beliefs and the pressures to which they are subject to both focus on standardized measures of student achievement and to conform to the social norms of the schools. The authors conclude that support for addressing these tensions should be provided during the first year of teaching. The rest of the journal presents articles that offer suggestions for how to help novice teachers navigate their new terrain. In “Mentoring ‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’ the Action of Teaching: A Professional Framework forMentoring,”WendyGardiner investigatesmentored induction—a THE NEW EDUCATOR 2017, VOL. 13, NO. 1, 1–2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1547688X.2017.1264185

Mentoring and Inquiring in Educator Preparation

Consensus on the need for clinically rich teacher-preparation is consistent and strong (Burn & Mutton, 2015; Darling-Hammond & Baratz-Snowden, 2007; Goodwin, Roegman, & Reagan, 2015; Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009; Howey & Zimpher, 2010; Shulman, 2005). Would we want doctors and nurses to whom we entrust our lives who did not experience lots of practice and reflection about their work guided by experienced physicians prior to beginning their independent work? Or would we allow others whose jobs affect our lives—pilots flying our planes, electricians responsible for the safety of our homes, architects who design our homes, engineers who oversee the construction of our bridges, even barbers and hair dressers who cut our hair—to do these jobs without spending many hours inquiring about and practicing their work under the tutelage of accomplished mentors? This issue of The New Educator shares studies conducted by teacher educators about the clinically rich practices of their preparation programs. Together, they shed light on how mentoring, inquiry, and reflection about teaching prepare new educators for their roles. In “Understanding Teacher Candidates’ Engagement with Inquiry-Based Professional Development: A Continuum of Responses and Needs,” authors Audra Parker, Amanda Bush, and Diane Yendol-Hoppey explore teacher candidates’ engagement with inquiry as a method for supporting professional learning. Their study provides examples of how teacher candidates at a variety of developmental levels engage in inquiry about their own learning. Findings suggest the importance of providing differentiated support through structured, sequenced experiences to help teacher candidates transform knowledge into practice. The article that follows by Emily J. Klein, Monica Taylor, Cynthia Onore, Kathryn Strom, and Linda Abrams underscores the critical role that inquiry and reflective practices play in learning. In “Exploring Inquiry in the Third Space: Case Studies of a Year in an Urban Teacher-Residency Program,” the authors describe what happens when preservice teachers learn to teach in an urban teacher-residency program that focuses on inquiry. The cases they present demonstrate how such a program can realign traditional power relationships and create an alternate arena where the roles of the university, school, teacher candidate, and community can be reimagined. Referring to this phenomenon as a “third space,” the authors explain how it prepares preservice teachers to engage in the kind of inquiry they want their teacher candidates to nurture in the students they will teach. “Looking at Learning as Preparation for Teaching” by Fiona J. Hughes-McDonnell describes how inquiry can be used in teacher education even prior to the studentteaching experience. In this article, Hughes-McDonnell reports on a study of her foundations-level education course in which she uses field assignments at various course junctures to engage prospective teachers as researchers about their own learning as well as about the learning of others. She argues that this pedagogical approach of inquiring THE NEW EDUCATOR 2016, VOL. 12, NO. 3, 219–220 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1547688X.2016.1194156

Reflections on Teaching for Social Justice and Equity: Voices from the Field

This issue of The New Educator explores the reflections of educators about their practice of preparing teachers to be responsive to the many challenges faced by the racially diverse and low-income students who are so prevalent in today’s schools. Never have the challenges for educators in the United States been so great. Nearly one in four American children live below the poverty line and a growing number are homeless (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). Many do not have regular access to food or healthcare, and are stressed by violence and drug abuse around them (Grant, Gracy, Goldsmith, Shapiro, & Redlener, 2013). Poor students tend to lag in most measures of academic achievement. They score lower on standardized tests than their wealthier peers, are more likely to drop out of school, and are less likely to go to college (Rani, 2015). Teachers who work with students from these backgrounds must try to close skill gaps and promote learning while also spending a great deal of time trying to help these students and their families manage the challenges of poverty that affect learning (Carter & Welner, 2013). The issues are complex and the solutions must extend far beyond strategies for improving teaching. Policies need to be crafted to lessen societal inequities that undermine learning. These include (Darling-Hammond, 2014):

Teacher Leadership for Educational Quality and Equity: Learning Across Singapore, Canada, Finland, and the United States

Thanks to an increasingly global society, information about countries around the world is readily available, enabling us to easily share knowledge, to learn from each other, and to assess ourselves in relation to common goals. This issue of The New Educator shares knowledge pertaining to teacher education and teacher development internationally. Specifically, we highlight work taking place in Singapore, Ontario Canada, Finland, and across the United States. Common to the success of the work reported here is an approach that perceives teaching as a profession and that treats teachers as knowledgeable, respected professionals. This stands in contrast to the deprofessionalization of teaching and the demonization of teachers currently rampant in the United States. And, not surprisingly, reports from the authors of this issue confirm that, where teachers are supported to engage in ongoing learning and are treated as valued assets in the educational process, greater teacher retention and increased academic achievement occur. The first article featured, “Developing Teacher Leadership in Singapore: Multiple Pathways for Differentiated Journeys,” describes the educational system of Singapore, one of the highest performing countries in the world on international assessments of student outcomes. Through detailed explanations, authors A. Lin Goodwin, Ee Ling Low, and Pak Tee Ng demonstrate how putting support for teachers at the center of the educational process is attaining the goals that seem to be eluding the United States. Authors Ann Lieberman, Carol Campbell, and Anna Yashkina pick up on a similar theme in their article “Teachers at the Center: Learning and Leading.” They report on a study of the Teacher Learning and Leadership