Search results

Fundamental aspects of educational leadership preparation programs regarding social justice are embodied in program design elements, yet the scholarly community did not adequately address these issues. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The essay suggests that organizational theories dealing with person-environment fit can shed light on the models, possibilities, and limitations of various preparation programs.

The essay proposes a meta-conceptual framework that builds on Schneider’s attraction-selection-attrition theory and on the socialization literature to classify leadership preparation programs by design. In addition, the paper reflects on the implications of program design in relation to the power and the responsibility of the faculty.

The essay argues that design decisions made by the faculty a priori enable and constrain its power and responsibility. The conclusion is that design decisions should be made by faculty with awareness of these issues.

Recent educational initiatives by the Obama Administration have highlighted the need for more racial and ethnic diversity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields (The White House, 2011). While African Americans are underrepresented in faculty positions nationally, accounting for only 5.2% of all academic faculty across all disciplines (Harvey, W. B., & Anderson, E. L. (2005). Minorities in higher education: Twenty-first annual status report. Washington, DC: American Council on Education), the underrepresentation of African Americans in STEM fields such as computing science is even more severe. According to a recent Computing Research Association (CRA) Taulbee Survey, African Americans represent just 1.3% of all computing sciences faculty (CRA, 2006).

This paper examines the benefits of one program that specifically seeks to fulfill the Obama Administration’s initiatives by addressing this disparity in higher education.

The program helps prepare doctoral students for the academic job search process in an effort to increase the ranks of African American faculty in computing sciences.

Character is at the core of leadership. Leaders with virtuous character provide benefit to their schools and communities. Whereas, leaders with character flaws create harm for themselves as well as their community. The ethical lapses among teachers, principals, and superintendents create an even larger issue when one considers the fiduciary trust placed in educators by the public. Character development requires behavioral change as well as knowledge acquisition. Incorporating behavioral change into university administrator preparation programs requires faculty to consider recent findings in neuroscience on how the brain learns and the incorporation of these findings into program design and instruction.

Although many universities require courses in management information systems for their business majors, little information exists as to what objectives should be included in the course, and the course topics vary greatly across institutions. Differences in course objectives even exist within schools if multiple sections of the course are taught by different faculty. Typically, a significant portion of the class is devoted to database concepts. In many cases, the course requirements include developing a database for a small business. This database project can consume faculty time and resources, especially if student teams choose their own projects and no guidelines exist for faculty reference. In this paper, guidelines for developing a standardized database project that challenges students while freeing up faculty resources are presented. Experiences in dealing with these projects in both face‐to‐face and online classes at one university are detailed.

For preservice teacher candidates (PSTs), receiving feedback on core practices is an important component in supporting the development of their practice. However, coaches are often underprepared to support PSTs on core practices, and feedback can be infrequent or low quality (Anderson and Stillman, 2013; Clarke et al., 2014). Understanding such variation in the content and process for providing feedback to PSTs is important in evaluating and improving feedback effectiveness for amplifying their learning.

The authors studied feedback provided by coaches in response to a video of a sample PST’s lesson. The authors examined the extent to which coaches’ feedback targeted the core practice of eliciting student thinking and whether this was associated with their assigned PSTs’ instructional practices during student teaching. The authors also questioned whether this aspect of coach feedback could be changed in response to professional development.

The results provide preliminary evidence that coaches vary in the extent to which they focus feedback on a particular practice, even when directed to do so. Moreover, when coaches provide focused feedback on a core practice, the PSTs that they coach use the core practice during student teaching. Further, coaches’ feedback can be improved through professional development.

This study contributes to a limited evidence base examining the association between feedback and PSTs’ observed practice. It also establishes that coach feedback can be improved with professional development. The authors discuss these results in the context of documenting and improving teacher preparation.

Cast in the form of a theatrical script, offers commentary on the forces supposedly contributing to the rise and fall of T‐Groups as part of the professional preparation of OD faculty and practitioners.

Accountability requirements established by state and national mandates have positioned accreditation bodies as overseers of institutional compliance and quality control of teacher preparation programs. These bodies then dictate the procedures and criteria for how preparation programs will prove their competence in the preparation of teachers who are deemed highly qualified. This process of mandated accreditation, by its very nature, is imposed as a top-down structure even when it is couched in bottom-up processes. Nearly all of the institutions indicated that they had some type of bottom-up procedures for meeting the top-down requirements of accreditation. Strategic involvement of faculty from the beginning of the process made “it personal, create[d] faculty ‘buy in’, produce[d] commitment, and thus more investment” (Ackerman and Hoover, St. Cloud State University). As Pierce and Simmerman (Utah Valley University) pointed out that both requiring and allowing faculty participation in the decision making process and development of common goals, this bottom-up tactic helped to establish joint ownership of their faculty in the process. Hutchison, Buss, Ellsworth, and Persichitte (University of Wyoming) also indicated that successful accreditation processes require faculty support and input on both the process and the decisions that are made. Indeed, they acknowledged that their decision to include all college faculty involved with teacher preparation was stressful, but central in yielding positive dividends in the process. Utilizing a bottom-up task within a top-down structure positions stakeholders as worker bees to accomplish a project that may or may not be seen to them as having personal or professional benefit – thus tensions are fostered.

Purpose: To describe the importance of exemplary literacy teacher preparation today, the changing landscape of teacher preparation accreditation and the recently revised and launched International Literacy Association (ILA) National Recognition programs.

Design: In this chapter, the authors examine the current context of literacy teacher preparation in the United States, including the changing landscape of national accreditation, national recognition, and certification requirements. Next, the authors provide a brief overview of the ILA Standards for the Preparation of Literacy Professionals 2017 (Standards 2017) (International Literacy Association (ILA), 2018) and consider how Standards 2017 may inform literacy teacher preparation programs, state standards, and certification. Then, the authors discuss how the role of reading/literacy specialist in Standards 2017 is being applied in the ILA National Recognition program. To close the chapter, the authors share guiding questions and two case studies from exemplary literacy preparation programs – West Virginia University and the University of Texas at San Antonio – in an effort to provide practical examples of program innovation and improvement in these challenging times in literacy teacher preparation.

Findings: The authors discuss the current context of teacher preparation today, the ILA Standards 2017 with specific attention to the reading/literacy specialist role and standards.

Practical Implications: ILA National Recognition program involve reflection, self-study, on-site visits by peers to support and inspire ongoing literacy teacher preparation program quality and improvement.

The purpose of this legacy paper is to review leadership preparation over time in the United States and addresses challenges ahead. It is hoped that the US developments will be instructive to an international audience interested in strengthening the preparation of school leaders.

The paper synthesizes research and commentary on leadership preparation programs in the US as a basis for identifying five challenges ahead.

Meaningful change should be informed by the past but not bound by tradition. It is imperative to be open to different viewpoints, to take reasonable – and at times bold – risks, and to question deeply held values and assumptions. Broad recognition of the significant role school leaders play in facilitating student learning suggests that the political climate is right to effect meaningful reforms in leadership preparation in the US. Those involved in preparing school leaders are urged to address the challenges identified in this paper.

Encouraging work is underway, but many more people need to be involved in efforts to rigorously assess and improve leadership preparation.

We do not have all the answers but cannot be paralyzed by what we do not know. We are ethically responsible to act on what we do know, such as incorporating the compelling research on learning theory into the leadership preparation curriculum.

The traditional complacency in the educational leadership professoriate cannot continue if university preparation programs are to meet the needs of the next generation of school leaders. The time is short, and the stakes are high for all involved especially for PK-12 students.