Susan M. Benner

Preparing General Education Teachers for Inclusive Settings: A Constructivist Teacher Education Program

Current efforts to reform special education are contingent upon preparing general education teachers at the preservice level for inclusive classroom settings. In this article, we describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of innovative preservice teacher education program in elementary education in the Inclusive Early Childhood Education Unit at The University of Tennessee. This program possesses several distinctive features: a three-phase training model; alternative approaches to instructional delivery, curricula, and assessment; local school mentoring; and extensive field-based experiences. Program outcomes from mentoring teachers, school administrators, and students were collected to assess the impact of the program.

Admission Boards: The Contribution of Professional Judgment to the Admission Process.

Benner, George, and Cagle present the concept of teacher education admission boards, particularly as defined by and established at the University of Ten nessee. The boards, comprised of prac titioners in the field, content area special ists, advanced students, and program area faculty interview students, review data available on the students and make final admission decisions. Further, once a student is admitted, he or she is as signed to a mentoring team that pro vides ongoing evaluation throughout the program. While the subjectivity and deficiencies of the board process are ob vious, the concept of admission boards is offered to the profession as an alterna tive to relying on quantitative measures alone.

The Mentoring Team Approach: A New Concept in Undergraduate Teacher Education

Mentoring as an approach to undergraduate teacher education has been implemented at the University of Tennessee. Mentoring teams have been created based on both the mentor-professor concept (Prehm & Isaacson, 1985) and the peer coaching team concept (Joyce & Showers, 1983). The general rationale for team organization and function was derived from faculty concern over sporadic, fragmented advising and incomplete knowledge of candidate competency. The objectives, mechanics, and anticipated benefits of the approach are described.

Using effective teaching practices in the special education classroom

Abstract Research on effective schooling has led to conclusions regarding classroom practices. This research has implications for special educators, who need to become familiar with it. The implications which are discussed in this article are related to the need for planning, high expectations of student performance, monitoring student progress and providing feedback, establishing classrom routines, grouping, academic learning time, personal relationships and the use of incentives and rewards. These conclusions regarding effective teaching can be used diagnostically by teachers to evaluate and improve their own performance in the classroom. In this article some conclusions based on a review of effective teaching research will be outlined and implications for the special education classroom will be discussed.

A Talent Development Approach to Assessing Pre-Service Performance in Early Childhood Teacher Education.

Abstract A team of early childhood teacher education faculty developed the 3‐D talent development model of teacher education, blending theory and research from many sources. These sources include research on talent development, nonuniversal development, and roles of teachers and their professional growth. The faculty integrated constructs from these sources into a program rooted in principles of social constructivism. Using the 3‐D model, the faculty team identified their task as taking students of teaching through the phases of discovery, discipline, and divergence. Assessments that we developed needed to correspond to this conceptual framework, moving us away from traditional types of student assessment. In this article we offer a synopsis of the talent development model; review five of the approaches to student assessment we use, including alternative assessment activities, “Employmee” feedback forms, electronic portfolios, state teacher evaluation frameworks, and action research projects; and articulate the linkages between our approach to assessment and the talent development model of teacher education.

From the Editors: Documenting the Efficacy of Early Childhood Teacher Education

The current wave of reform in education is producing new protocols and procedures for evaluating teachers. The demand for direct connections between the performance of students and the evaluation, pay, and retention of their teachers can be heard in state legislatures across the country. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) based in Washington DC aspires to help states generate meaningful and accurate data as DQC helps guide states in establishing reliable and valid Teacher Student Data Links (TSDL) as quickly as possible. The capacity to connect teachers to the performance of their students on achievement tests is already in place in several states and has become a key tool in the evaluation of teachers in these locations. TSDL as a part of teacher evaluation is a key component of Race to the Top guidelines and expectations. These same TSDLs are also being used to evaluate the programs where teachers completed their teacher preparation. If it is not already happening in your state, you can bet that it is on its way. One of the greatest challenges facing DQC and states already implementing TSDL-based models of teacher and teacher education evaluation is the significant number of teachers whose students do not take tests that can be used to calculate value-added scores or create TSDLs. For example, a secondary math teacher might be teaching calculus and advanced trigonometry, while typically, only algebra I and II achievement test performance is included in the value-added assessment models used in the TSDL system. All the fine arts fall out of the realm of tested subjects, as do the vast majority of social science courses, all Advanced Placement courses, and many more. Because standardized achievement tests are usually not given in the early grades, early childhood educators are among the many groups of teachers for whom there are no student assessments upon which to build TSDLs. As the reform wave continues, education policy makers anticipate resolving the challenge of evaluating teachers assigned to untested areas by creating suitable assessments of their students. Thus, the protective umbrella that has enabled young children and their teachers to avoid standardized tests and value-added models of teacher performance reviews may be in danger of collapsing. Reformers will not neglect or ignore such a key component of the educational system as early childhood education in their drive to make data-driven accountability pervasive throughout the system. As the preparers of early childhood educators, we carry the responsibility of championing new accountability measures for ourselves and our students that can reduce the risk that testing of young children will become the expected standard for us as the reform wave moves forward. As teacher education programs come to be evaluated by the performance of the children in the classrooms of our program completers, early childhood teacher educators must articulate where we stand. While there is an array of cautions and concerns for the small portion of teacher preparation programs whose program completers actually teach students who produce achievement test scores, the trend is fraught with danger for early childhood teacher preparation. The children of our program completers have been somewhat spared the zealous testing prevalent in the third grade and above. If the need to evaluate teachers and the programs from which they came based on student outcomes drives accountability testing down into the lower grades, it is far more likely to produce negative results for the

From the Editors: New Board Members and Renewed Efforts

In our last editorial we celebrated the longstanding contributions of six individuals who were rotating off the JECTE Editorial Board in December 2010. We also took time during our November 2010 Ed...