Project RITE: Rethinking Initial Teacher Education

• In Event: Reinventing (University) Teacher Education: Connections, Contexts, and Consequences

Abstract

Contexts: Objectives and Significance to the Field

This paper focuses on Project RITE, an ambitious new program of research and practice in teacher education in New Zealand, spear-headed by researchers at the University of Auckland and Boston College, but with potentially broader reach. The program is based on three assumptions: (1) enhancing students’ learning should be the ultimate goal of initial teacher education; (2) to do so, prospective teachers should learn key teaching practices with strong empirical links to students’ learning; and (3) to enhance teachers’ learning of key practices, programs should employ key teacher education practices with strong empirical links to teachers’ learning.

None of these assumptions is new in the history of research on teacher education (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2005; Zeichner, 1998). However, when they are “reinvented” in light of rapidly shifting academic and social expectations for teacher education (Darling-Hammond, 2007; OECD, 2005) and a changed labor market for teaching (Grossman & Loeb, 2008) and when they are melded in new ways, they lay the groundwork for an initial teacher education markedly different from the norm.

Connections: Perspectives and Analyses

Phase One of Project RITE addresses the first and second assumptions above with the objectives of (a) defining students’ learning as the goal of teacher education, and (b) identifying the empirical and conceptual research base for key teaching practices linked to learning. The first objective is a conceptual and normative task, based on shared views about the purposes of education and the nature of teachers’ work. The second is a synthetic and evaluative task, based on critical analysis of existing reviews of research. Phase Two addresses the third assumption above by generating new knowledge about the teacher education practices that yield the teaching practices that enhance students’ learning. This is an empirical task, based on a program of new studies examining relationships among teacher educators’ practices, teachers’ practices, and student outcomes. This paper focuses on Phase One.

Findings and Implications

Project RITE constructs students’ learning as the goal of teacher education. However, unlike approaches that equate learning with test scores (e.g., Crowe, 2010), we identified classifications of learning outcomes more broadly: academic learning, problem-solving and innovation (Silva, 2008), social and emotional learning (Cohen, 2006), and citizenship/democratic learning (Gutman, 1999).

To identify key teaching practices, we analyzed major syntheses of empirical research examining relationships between teaching and students’ learning (e.g., Hattie, 2009; Haystead & Marzano, 2009 ) as well as widely-used observation tools, such as the CLASS protocol (Pianta & Hamre, 2009) and Danielson’s (1996) framework, which are research-based. However, we also included syntheses of research on students’ social and emotional learning (e.g., Jennings & Greenberg, 2009) and non-academic outcomes, such as values and multicultural education (e.g., Ladwig, 2010). Using a systematic procedure of nomination and verification, we identified key teaching practices across the syntheses, focusing on underlying causal mechanisms, such as building on students’ cutural and linguistic resources, rather than singular techniques, such as providing immediate correctives to student responses.

Authors

• Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College

• Lexie Barbara Grudnoff, The University of Auckland

• Fiona Ruth Ell, University of Auckland

• Graeme Aitken, The University of Auckland

• Larry H. Ludlow, Boston College