Driving and Guiding Program Change: Teachers for a New Era at the University of Washington

• In Event: Redesigning Teacher Education: Learning From the Past

Abstract

A core design principle of the “Teachers for a New Era” (TNE) project was to use student assessment data from graduates’ classrooms to evaluate and transform teacher preparation programs. Specifically, the TNE architects at the Carnegie Corporation promoted value-added models (VAM) as the vehicle to drive and guide programmatic change. This paper examines how these ideas played out at one TNE site: The University of Washington (UW). It argues that value-added models are not as effective in driving and directing programmatic change as are data and processes that capitalize on faculty’s commitment to their students’ learning.

The work at UW was informed by Hill and Celio’s (1998) theory of action, which focuses attention on the specific conditions and resources needed for a particular change. Among the critical conditions the TNE leadership identified was amassing a body of evidence about teachers’ learning and performance in and after the program that faculty found sufficiently valid and compelling to motivate and inform change.

Leaving aside the technical problems with value-added data (Glazerman, et. al, 2010), project leaders had three primary concerns about the usefulness of VAM in evaluating the quality of teachers’ preparation. First, to determine value added requires data from two points in time. Because we lack valid measures of what preservice teachers know and can do when they enter preparation programs, we cannot determine how much value a given program adds. Second, this fundamental weakness undermines faculty members’ faith in value-added data to measure program effectiveness. Finally, the time lag between making program changes and determining the effects of the changes is considerable: Given that first-year teachers are in survival mode, faculty may have to wait two or three years for credible data.

For these reasons, the faculty at UW pursued other program-effects research. This included a series of follow-along studies beginning when students entered the program and continuing after graduation; an adaptation of the Performance Assessment of California Teachers that measured student “uptake” and use of practices advocated in the program; and seminars that focused on “problems of practice” that recent graduates presented to their peers. The resulting array of data did, in fact, engage faculty – including the original project skeptics – in rethinking and redesigning their program. Important changes included different timing and formats for field experiences, deeper engagement with partner schools in methods courses, a recasting of foundations courses, and the incorporation of “problems of practice” seminars during the first year of teaching as part of the degree program.

As important as specific evidence has been at UW, equally important has been a shift to a “culture of evidence” in the program. Most programs have collected various data on graduates over the years as required by accreditation. Typically, however, the data are used for incremental changes in courses and rarely drive major program changes. The opposite was true at UW, which suggests that building a culture of evidence is a crucial factor in teacher education reform and that the nature and quality of the evidence are key.

Author

• Bill McDiarmid, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill