The Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Teacher Educators

A State Unit of the Association of Teacher Educators
and The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education

 

SUMMARY
PAC-TE Survey of College/University
Teacher Education Programs Reviewed

Presented at 2004 TEA

Only half (11 of 22) of the reviewed programs responded to this survey. No survey was conducted of the new programs reviewed, because the list of those programs was not available.

The survey results for 2002-3 are similar to those presented in previous years. The greatest remaining problems with the review process focus on two things:

  • clarity of expectations, especially the rubrics for evaluating specific guidelines;

  • preparation of the reviewers, both in terms of their understanding of the areas they are reviewing and their understanding of the review process itself.

A new area of concern appears this year, which is that the connection between the Pa. K-12 Academic Standards and the teacher education programs being reviewed seems less clear and effective than in earlier surveys.

There continue to be concerns about the amount of evidence required for a given guideline or set of guidelines, and there is additional concern that some reviewers demand a lot and others demand almost nothing.

The same concern as with earlier surveys occurred regarding the application of the guidelines to graduate certification programs and the preparation of teams to respond to such programs.

Suggestions for alleviating these concerns remain the same:

  • We need to re-institute the training of team chairs and members.

  • We need to be sure that all members of a team are prepared and that teams are complete, rather than asking a single team member to review several different programs.

  • We need to undertake some discussions, which would likely be led by PDE staff, to clarify the expectations for various standards and guidelines. During this process, a clearer understanding of the evidence required by teams, and thus demanded of programs, could be developed. In addition, these discussions could clarify the problems with graduate certificate programs and work to alleviate them, as well. The result of such discussion might well involve revisions to the Team Chair and Team Member handbooks, or clearly worded information regarding specific standards or guidelines.

 

psl 1/2005