Educating Teachers for California's Future

Examines California's teacher workforce needs, including teacher education and supply-and-demand issues, and makes recommendations to the state of California for strategies to sustain high quality teacher preparation

Transition to Teaching: An Alternative Certification Program through Partnership Between a Public School District and a Public University

The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act has had a significant impact on licenses for teachers working in school programs. The act refers to highly qualified teachers in both Title I and Title ll. This paper defines alternative certification programs. This paper then describes a partnership, funded by the US. Department of Education, between a school district and a university to establish an alternative licensure program to train highly qualified secondary mathematics teachers.The goal of this partnership is to provide an infrastructure that supports the recruitment. preparation, placement, induction, and retention of highly qualified teachers through a new alternative route to teacher licensure. In addition, this paper discusses processes and procedures used in the project in light of the literature. lt discusses how candidates were selected for the project, strategies used to meet the competencies for licensure, and assessment of candidates

Educational Policies for Integrating College Competencies and Workforce Needs

Explores the challenges of workforce development for a global economy in Brazil, Mongolia, Ukraine, and the United States, with a focus on basic skills development, internships, and the role of stakeholders. Recommends policy and curriculum changes

Learning Assistantships in College Mathematics: Value for Preservice Teacher Development

Increasing the participation and achievement of students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) from early grades to college coursework continues to be at the forefront of educational transformations and research. Faculty members at Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) plan, implement, and investigate how program structures might aid in the development, retention, and overall success of undergraduate students in STEM. Active learning classrooms, especially in mathematics, are one way IHE are reforming student learning experiences, and these environments also provide a unique opportunity to engage undergraduate learning assistants with faculty to support near - peer students and deepen their own learning. Identifying aspects of undergraduate learning assistants’ experiences that they find most valuable and interrogating how those are linked to their development can help IHE faculty better understand and plan for how to support undergraduate students in particular fields, such as STEM and STEM teaching. In particular, this paper examines scholarship participants serving as learning assistants in active learning college mathematics classrooms to see where and how they find value in their experience. Implications of this research can inform faculty and university programs on how they might prioritize and transform learning opportunities for students to impact their current and future development in STEM and beyond

An Unfinished Canvas: Teacher Preparation, Instructional Delivery, and Professional Development in the Arts

Based on surveys, interviews, and secondary data analyses, identifies deficiencies in teacher preparation, instruction, and development in the arts in California, and recommends minimum training requirements and support for professional development

Beyond Traditional Teacher Preparation: Value-add Experiences for Preservice Secondary Mathematics Teachers

The current pool of highly qualified secondary mathematics teachers is woefully inadequate to address the needs of schools across the United States and other countries internationally. In STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) areas, providing quality instruction in a changing world requires continuous change and innovation as programs prepare and train teachers. University teacher preparation programs wrestle with ways to provide wider professional experiences (WPE) within social learning environments called communities of practice (CoP). This qualitative study examines a university-led undergraduate scholarship program, aimed at recruiting, training, and retaining highly qualified secondary preservice mathematics teacher candidates. With increased exposure to mathematics content, mathematical teaching pedagogy, and community outreach beyond traditional preparation requirements, the goal of the study is to determine the immediate and potential value participants, undergraduate students, found engaging in a unique, CoP-based program. Findings reveal that participants concurrently reported both immediate and potential value in teaching experiences and ideas even when engaging in more mathematics or indirect teaching environments. Further, while mentoring is a key feature of the program, participants rarely identified mentoring or faculty support as an immediate or potential value although mentors were often the conduit for participants’ engagement in WPE