Fran Arbaugh

The Transition from Experienced Teacher to Mathematics Coach: Establishing a New Identity.

This study draws on the theoretical underpinnings of the research literature in identity and investigates the transition from experienced teacher to novice mathematics coach. The 4 components of a math coachs identity (coach as supporter of teachers, coach as supporter of students, coach as learner, and coach as supporter of the school-at-large) that this study highlights were enacted by the beginning coaches on their school stage and negotiated with their audience (i.e., teachers, principals) as they attempted to fulfill these roles within the school environment. By examining the roles, expectations, and interactions of first-year mathematics coaches, we deepen our understanding of the demands placed on novice mathematics coaches as they assume new roles and identities.

Orientations to Science Teacher Professional Development: An Exploratory Study

Just as individual teachers have orientations to teaching and learning science that influence their practice, we assert that professional development (PD) projects also have an orientation that guides the design and implementation of the entire project; a construct we term “PD Project Orientation”. The purpose of this study was to validate the existence of this new construct. Using various data sources from nine PD projects we generated and characterized five PD project orientations. We illustrate the characteristics of each orientation with descriptions from specific projects and show the frequency of the orientations and how these orientations were emphasized within each PD project. This study has implications for those designing and implementing PD for science teachers, as well as PD evaluators.

Recruiting Future Science and Mathematics Teachers into Alternative Certification Programs: Strategies Tried and Lessons Learned.

SMAR2T: Science and Mathematics Academy for the Recruitment and Retention of Teachers is an NSF-funded project for the alternative certification of science and mathematics teachers. Since 2003, we have recruited 4 cohorts of students for 2 different routes to postbaccalaureate teacher certification for teaching grades 5–12. Because we did not meet our target numbers for the recruitment of the 1st cohort, we examined our recruitment strategies and their effects. In this paper, we discuss strategies used to recruit for the 1st SMAR2T cohort and the outcomes of those strategies. We present ongoing recruitment efforts and data on inquiries and applicants for the 2nd cohort. Finally, we highlight the intentional and unintentional gatekeepers of our program and present implications for others engaged in designing and implementing alternative pathways certification.

Deans’ Corner Views on the State of Teacher Education in 2015

This article presents responses from four College of Education deans to a series of questions posed by the Penn State University Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) editorial team.

Taking Stock in 2015

In this issue, Marilyn Cochran-Smith provides the first of two Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) articles based on her chapter in the upcoming fifth edition of the Handbook of Research on Teaching (Cochran-Smith, Villegas, Abrams, Chavez Moreno, Mills, & Stern, in press). Her handbook chapter presents the findings from the review of 1,500 teacher education research studies published between 2000 and 2012. JTE is publishing the review in two parts. The first part, the lead article in this issue, describes the procedures and theoretical/analytical framework used in the literature review and outlines three major trends that have influenced the nature of research programs in teacher education: increased attention to teacher quality and accountability, changes in our conceptions of teacher and student learning, and changing demographics. Part 1 also presents the findings from the first of three major research programs in teacher education identified through the search--teacher preparation accountability, effectiveness, and policies. Part 2, to be published in the next issue of JTE, discusses the findings from the remaining two research programs. The first research program includes studies on alternative certification and pathways, analyses of policy trends and discourses, assessment of preservice teachers (PSTs) and/or teacher preparation programs (TPPs), and program evaluation studies. Cochran-Smiths reference in the article to her JTE editorial 10 years prior (Taking Stock in 2005; Cochran-Smith, 2005) prompted us to reflect on the contributions of JTE to advances in teacher education research in the areas identified in the first program described in the study. We comment briefly on research and issues associated with accountability, effectiveness, and policies in relation to the Cochran-Smith article and previous JTE articles published during our tenure as editors. Advances in Research on Teacher Preparation Accountability The theme of accountability has been widespread and persistent over the past 5 years, and JTE has published theme issues and articles related to the use of value-added models to determine the effectiveness of TPPs (Volume 63:5) and to examine the role of performance assessments in accountability (Volume 65:5). The articles on value-added modeling (VAM) for TPPs in the theme issue provide some support for the potential of the approach to provide feedback to policymakers and educators on the achievement of students taught by teachers in different TPPs (Gansle, Noell, & Burns, 2012; Plecki, Elfers, & Nakamura, 2012). However, the potential of using VAM for teacher preparation is diminished by the complexity and limitations of the choice of variables selected for the VAM models; the nature of the accountability criteria; the unidimensional focus on student standardized tests; decisions made about selection, estimation, and reporting; and the unintended consequences of the approach (see Floden, 2012; Goldhaber & Cowan, 2014; Henry, Kershaw, Zulli, & Smith, 2012; Lincove, Osborne, Dillon, & Mills, 2014.) The pitfalls associated with VAM make it less acceptable to educators as a high-stakes accountability measure and appear to outweigh the potential. On the other hand, performance assessment of teacher candidates (TPA) has been suggested as an alternative or addition to VAM to determine TPP effectiveness (Knight et al., 2014) and was the theme of the previous issue of JTE (Volume 65:5). While performance assessments appear to receive more support from educators as they can be used for program improvement as well as evidence for certification and licensure, problems with validity and reliability as well as questions about conceptualization of teaching and accompanying value assumptions have emerged (see Caughlan & Jiang, 2014; Duckor, Castellano, Tellez, Wihardini, & Wilson, 2014; Sato, 2014). More research is needed to address the concerns of both accountability approaches and to determine the feasibility of using a combination of VAM and TPA for high-stakes TPP accountability. …

Cases as a Vehicle for Developing Knowledge Needed for Teaching

In this chapter, we describe a practice-based curriculum for the professional education of preservice and practicing secondary mathematics teachers that (1) focuses on reasoning-and-proving, (2) has narrative cases as an integrated component, and (3) supports the development of knowledge of mathematics needed for teaching. We first provide an argument for the importance of reasoning-and-proving in the secondary curriculum and the unique role that cases can serve in providing opportunities to develop teachers’ knowledge of mathematics, students learning, and teaching practices. We then provide an overview of the practice-based curriculum and discuss the overarching questions that have guided its design and development. We conclude with a discussion of what teachers appeared to learn from their experiences with the curriculum, with a particular emphasis on what the narrative cases appear to have contributed to their learning.

Supporting university content specialists in providing effective professional development: the educative role of evaluation

Evaluation of professional development (PD) has traditionally been composed of summative and formative feedback, and has focused on assessing the extent to which the PD impacts participating teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and practices. This study establishes an additional purpose for PD evaluation – as educative opportunities for professional developers, particularly for PD providers who are university-level content specialists (e.g. scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, engineers). Through analysis of data collected as state-wide evaluators for one US Midwest state’s Improving Teacher Quality Grant PD programs, and utilizing an analysis methodology which we term ‘recommendation traces,’ we examine formative evaluation recommendations that we made to four different PD projects over three years. Findings from this study shed light on how content specialists who work in PD projects can learn about effective PD through project evaluation efforts.

Teachers' Motivation to Learn: Implications for Supporting Professional Growth.

Abstract In this study, we investigated teachers’ motivation to learn following in the footsteps of emergent research efforts in the field. This qualitative study was grounded in the intersection of four research fields: policy, educational psychology, andragogy and professional development (PD). Findings indicate that teachers’ dissatisfactions with their teaching and students’ learning motivated them to learn professionally. Specifically, they internalized images of ‘perfect’ teaching/teachers and constantly compared themselves with those images – their (perceived) images of less-than-optimal teaching motivated teachers to continue pursuing PD to become ‘better’ teachers. Findings also indicate that current PD requirements, which place too much focus on quantity rather than quality of teachers’ learning, discourage teachers to pursue high-quality PD. Moreover, lack of stipends/resources, not generally available to teachers to pursue PD outside their contract hours, demotivated teachers’ learning and left them feeling skeptical about their district’s genuine investment in/appreciation of teachers’ learning. Implications from this study include offering specific PD suggestions, as well as critical avenues for further examining teachers’ motivation to learn as a research topic and theoretical construct.

Five-Year Retrospective

We have just completed 5 years as editors of Journal of Teacher Education (JTE), having published four full volumes (63-66) and part of one (62), and will hand over the privilege and responsibility to a new team from Michigan State University in the next issue. In one of our first editorials (Knight et al., 2012), we reflected on how views of teacher education research from both within and outside the profession influenced our vision for the journal. At that time, we saw our challenge as building on the emerging traditions of diversity and excellence established by previous teams of capable editors with the ultimate goal of further advancing research to establish teacher education as a distinct field with knowledge, histories, research methodologies, and practices that are recognized and recognizable. Furthering the goal would require us to bring together the three dimensions of teacher education--practice, policy, and research--in challenging and productive ways so that considerations of issues or challenges in teacher education would be enriched by careful attention from these multiple frames of reference. We recognized a number of obstacles: the reputation of research in teacher education as lacking rigor and relevance and, relatedly, an incomplete knowledge base that prevents us from connecting findings in meaningful ways to inform practice and policy (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; Feuer, Towne, & Shavelson, 2002; Kaestle, 1993; Moss et al., 2006; National Research Council, 2002; Wilson, Floden, & Ferrini-Mundy, 2001); a lack of a sense of professional identity among teacher educators (Labaree, 2008); and publication of teacher education research in specialized content journals with limited audiences rather than in broader teacher education research journals. In reflecting on our tenure as JTE editors, we see that putting our rhetoric into reality was challenging. The sheer number of manuscripts--more than 700 per year--was overwhelming even for a relatively large editorial team with diverse expertise and interests. We made concerted efforts to address our goal of improving quality; we devoted editorials (e.g., Knight et al., 2012) to the topic of quality and led interactive sessions at the annual meetings of our sponsoring organization, the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE), to discuss what constitutes rigor in teacher education research. To address our goal of improving relevance, we sponsored major forums at AACTE meetings on current topics and solicited recommendations from teacher educators for theme issues focusing on emerging areas of interest. Teacher Education Research Quality Based on our review of manuscripts from the first year of our editorship (Volume 63), we identified four areas that authors could target to improve the quality of their research (Knight et al., 2013). The first area that we identified, appropriateness for JTE, involves an explicit connection to an important topic or issue related to research and scholarship in teacher education. We initially rejected a large number of articles prior to external review for two primary reasons: They focused on teachers, teaching, or K-12 students without a clear connection to teacher education or they used teacher education students or faculty as their sample but did not connect to relevant theory and previous methodological and empirical work in teacher education. The second and third areas involve intertwined issues related to the nature of the research design and the samples used in the studies. We received a large number of manuscripts describing studies where the researchers were also the teacher educators or program developers and implementers and the samples were their own students. Whereas this relationship is not problematic in and of itself, the genre of many of the manuscripts often appeared to be program evaluation with program improvement or validation as the primary purpose. …