Study Abroad in Teacher Education

Introduction to Special Themed Issue: Study Abroad in Teacher Educatio

Opportunity to Teach: Push-In and Pull-Out Models of English Learner Instruction

As the number of US English Language Learners (ELLs) increases, elementary educators struggle to make decisions related to curriculum and instruction. This research fills an important gap in the research on program models for ELLs by presenting a two-part investigation of push-in and pull-out English Language Development (ELD) instruction from the vantage point of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers. The first part of the investigation uses nationally administered surveys to capture the practices, beliefs, and challenges of ESL professionals working in these models. The second part highlights the concerns raised by those ESL teachers regarding the extent to which a cohort of 175 ELL students received their ELD instruction. We explore the implications for the academic achievement of ELLs in the primary grades when their access to consistent ELD instruction is curtailed. We illuminate the problematic aspects of both models and call for greater attention to the implementation and monitoring of services for young ELLs

Advancing Supervision in Clinically-Based Teacher Education

For this special issue, Advancing Supervision in Clinically-Based Teacher Education, we invited conceptual papers, empirical research studies, descriptive narratives, and evaluations of supervision from faculty, emerging scholars, professionals, and practitioners situated in teacher preparation contexts. The papers included illuminate how supervision in clinical teacher education is being improved, studied, or developed

Leveraging the Demands of edTPA to Foster Language Instruction for English Learners in Content Classrooms

This article provides insight into how a required, clinically based national teacher performance assessment for candidates becoming English-as-a-second-language specialists in many U.S. states, the Education Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA), engenders a focus on language instruction in the content-based classroom. This assessment’s focus on language within the content areas provides a positive washback opportunity to strengthen teacher candidates\u27 language instruction in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) preparation programs connected to partner schools in which classrooms often provide sheltered content with minimal language instruction. We share how, in our large Masters of Arts program in TESOL, we have purposefully integrated the edTPA into supervised student teaching with positive results for teacher candidates as well as host classrooms

University-Based Teacher Supervisors: Their Voices, Their Dilemmas

Despite university supervisors’ critical role in the success of PK-12 teacher candidates, research is limited on how to best prepare supervisors to mentor their supervisees and interact with cooperating teachers and school administrators. By using two surveys and a focus group meeting, this qualitative study explores supervisors’ experiences to surface dilemmas of supervisory practice. Results indicate supervisors suffer overwhelming workloads, feel marginalized by their institutions, lack ongoing training, and are often unclear as to what their role is. The success of the cadres of clinical supervisors ultimately depends on training, but more crucially on full engagement by their home institutions

Supervisor Use of Video as a Tool in Teacher Reflection

Supervisors play a critical role in fostering teacher candidates’ reflective thinking on their practice, yet too often it is the supervisor, rather than the teacher, doing most of the observation work. Video-­‐based supervision offers a promising alternative, as teachers have an opportunity to examine their own lesson and thus engage with the supervisor in a more collaborative conference. In this paper, we explore the ways supervisors approach video in their conferencing with teachers as a vehicle for teacher reflective practice at one TESOL master’s program in the USA. We examine what supervisors find salient in video observations, how they approach teachers when reviewing a lesson using video as a means to ground observation in evidence, and the struggles they encounter when trying to foster teacher reflection. We conclude with suggestions for implementing video-­‐based supervision

Complexity in coaching: A self-study of roles and relationships

Teacher development, whether in pre-service teacher education or in in-service coaching, is a complex and context-dependent enterprise. As schools recognise the need to provide embedded and extended professional learning opportunities for novice and veteran teachers, the role of coaches has expanded. This study explores how coaching differs depending on the role of the feedback-giver, as well as what holds consistent across roles. The context is a large urban middle school in which the same coach supported teacher development in the area of English as a second language instruction through varied roles. Following Meyer-Mork (2010), we employed self-study as a methodology uniquely suited to offer insights into the interactions that took place in coaching conversations carried out by Marcus (Author 1). Laura (Author 2), supported Marcus by serving as a critical friend and offering commentary on the self-study in an effort to examine Marcus’s coaching from different perspectives. We were able to reflect on the various ways these roles are designed to support novice teachers. Our findings indicate that the role of the coach subtly shifts based on the relationship with the teacher being coached, and more understanding is needed within the coaching literature to better parse the overlaps and differences based on role relationships

The Online Supplemental Workshop: Course Enrichment to Support Novice Teachers\u27 Analysis of Classroom Video

As online learning and video technology become more consistent components of teacher education, the opportunities to blend the affordances of both was piloted in a specially designed online workshop. This workshop was designed to help teacher candidates become more sophisticated in their ability to recognize and describe specific teaching behaviors in videoed lessons. Using QuickTime Pro, iMovie, and Blackboard, a self-paced, asynchronous workshop to introduce techniques for observing and analyzing teachers and classes on video was created. Through a series of video tutorials and activities, teacher candidates were guided through the process of viewing the same video clip through different lenses--they were asked to reflect on student response opportunities, teacher use of praise, and teacher feedback to student error. Results of its administration to a pilot group of 47 teacher candidates indicated that completing the training module increased their comfort level with video analysis, and that video-based activities may be uniquely suited to self-paced, online tutorials

Collecting & Infusing Locally Relevant Video to Support Teacher Learning

Context: Although online teaching videos are easy to find, few demonstrate locally relevant models for our aspiring teachers. Lehman College School of Education began a project in Fall 2014 to collect locally relevant video of teaching and student learning to demonstrate key practices in the field. We identified classrooms of highly competent program graduates as well as Professional Development Network Schools (PDS) teachers working in classrooms with co-teaching models and/or work with English Language Learners. 6 teachers and 2 literacy coaches from our Bronx public school PDS classrooms welcomed us to videotape teaching and student learning. Teachers and Lehman College faculty liaisons collected student consent forms, organized lesson plans, collected student work and allowed a Lehman College video team (Bronx Net funded by MATH-UP) into classrooms for 1 – 3 lessons in a unit. We’ve collected approximately 55 hours of video footage