NSF #0514620

1. The Alternative Certification of Science Teachers: Findings From the NSF-FundedSTEM ACT ConferenceMorton M. SternheimUniversity of Massachusetts Amherstmort@umassk12.net413-545-1908 NSF #0514620

2. STEM ACT Conference Science, Technology, Engineering and Math - Alternative Certification for Teachers Funded by NSF - Teacher Professional Continuum Program May 5th-7th, 2006, Arlington, VA Participants represented three communities: • academic researchers and administrators • policy makers in states and large cities • alternative certification providers and teachers who have gone through these programs

3. Conference Organizers • Principal Investigators (all UMass) • Morton M. Sternheim, STEM Education Institute, Physics • Allan Feldman, Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies • Joseph Berger, Educational Policy Research and Administration • Staff Assistant • Yijie Zhao • Advisory Board

4. Outline • Introduction • Conference Goals • Conference Format • Key point and question • Dissemination • Research Report Highlights • Policy Report Highlights • Practice Report Highlights • Summary of Recommendations

5. Conference Goals • In-depth look at some existing programs and models, including NSF funded alternative certification programs, plus district-based programs (e.g., Teach New York) and national programs (e.g., Teach For America). • Identify an agenda for future research questions on alternative certification to guide development and implementation of new programs.

6. Conference Goals (cont.) • Provide an overview of the existing policy on alternative certification of secondary science teachers in the US, including key assumptions and questions. • Begin a synthesis of existing research on needs, methods, and outcomes of alternative certification for science teachers. Areas include • science learning • nature of science • context of schools • diversity and gender issues • teacher supply and demand • initial teacher education and development.

7. Conference Format • Every attendee was a participant – a presenter and/or a responder to a paper read in advance • Friday night keynote (Ken Zeichner) • Saturday plenaries, parallel sessions, posters • Sunday morning, working sessions to define key points • Sunday afternoon, 3 writing committees plan the research, policy, practice white papers

8. Key Point: Ken Zeichner, keynote speaker • Teaching and teacher education are inherently complex and are not reducible to simple prescriptions for practice. • Much of what is believed to be associated with program excellence with regard to particular goals cannot currently be supported with empirical evidence

9. Key Question: What is alternative certification? • Programs to put “career changers” in classrooms quickly? • Anything other than 4 year undergrad program? • Antoinette Mitchell (NCATE): Programs range from 5th year programs for students without education backgrounds, to programs designed for career-switchers, to programs designed for specific sectors of the community such as military personnel and para-professionals.

10. Key Question: What is alternative certification? Conclusion: We need a continuum of teacher preparation and support programs to support varied needs.

11. Dissemination Plan • Produce 3 “white papers” plus overall summary • Conference presentations • Association for Teacher Education (ASTE) • National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) • American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) • This meeting • Paper • Massachusetts Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Perspectives (September ’07) • Web site www.stemtec.org/act

12. STEM Alternative Certification Issues for Researchers

13. Abdulkadir Demir, University of Missouri, Columbia Allan Feldman, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Chair Jodie Galosy, Michigan State University, Co-Chair Richard Iuli, SUNY Empire State College Carole Mitchener, University of Illinois at Chicago, Co-Chair HsingChi Wang, University of Calgary Bruce Herbert, Texas A&M University Research White Paper Writing Committee

14. Guiding question of STEM ACT conference: "What do we know and what more do we need to learn about how to incorporate the results of more than 30 years of research on science teaching and learning into alternative certification programs?"

15. Research on Alternative Certification • Mostly policy documents • Need for, production, retention of teachers • Generic, not subject or level specific • Other main body of literature is evaluation of specific AC programs • Third type of studies are comparative between “traditional” and “alternative”

16. Research on Alternative Certification • Focus on structural, rather than educational, differences • Pays little attention to teacher/student learning as an outcome • Does not take science subject matter into account • Draws little from research on science teaching and learning

17. Research on Alternative Certification Comparative studies that lump AC and traditional programs into two undifferentiated groups are not productive: • Alternative certification is ill-defined. • There is at least as much variation within programs as between the two types (Wechsler, Humphey & Hough, 2006; Abell et al., 2006; Galosy, 2006; Lee, Olson & Scribner, 2006)

18. Unhelpful Divides • Dividing teacher preparation into alternative and traditional is an example of unproductive divides that hamstring research on teacher education as a field: • Science ed/general ed • Preservice/inservice • Licensing/education

19. Rephrasing of guiding question for researchers "What do we know and what more do we need to learn about science teacher education that takes into account the results of more than 30 years of research on science teaching and learning?”

20. Reform Vision of good science teaching (NSES, AAAS, etc.) Science classrooms are active and exciting places in which: • The science taught and learned is relevant and interesting to students’ lives; • Students’ curiosity for their world beyond their own experience is awakened; • Students are engaged in inquiry; and • Students develop a commitment to responsible citizenship.

21. The big question for practitioners What, and how, do science teachers need to learn to enact reform-based science teaching in theirclassrooms?

22. What teacher beliefs, knowledge and skills support the Reform Vision? • Science teachers need to know their subject. • Science teachers need to have science subject specific pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) • Science teachers need to have knowledge about science curriculum/instructional approaches • Science teachers need to have practical knowledge of running a lab, lab safety, etc. • Science teachers need to have knowledge of the students they teach and how students learn science

23. What do science teachers need to know and be able to do to construct Reform Vision classrooms?

24. Science teacher content knowledge: • Britton (2006): Science teaching is domain specific to the particular science discipline and to to the work of teaching that discipline. • Abell et al. (2006): Content knowledge for teaching science may be qualitatively different from academic science. • Wang (2006): College-level science courses may be major contributors to science teachers’ “fragmented and shallow” knowledge structures. • Nature of science – Knowledge of the discipline (McDonald, 2006)

25. Science teacher pedagogical content knowledge • Understanding specific content within disciplinary and curricular contexts • Multiple ways of representing content • How to design appropriate instructional tasks • Ways of identifying students’ prior knowledge and drawing on students’ experience/ideas • Anticipating/identifying student errors and addressing student misconceptions • Assessing student understanding (Abell et al., 2006; Britton, 2006; Greenwood et al., 2006; Kern et al., 2006)

26. What pedagogies and pedagogical tools would help teachers develop reform-based teaching in classrooms?

27. Pedagogies: Induction and mentoring • Importance of the second year for action research (Mitchener, 2006). • Science specific district- or school-based mentoring (Galosy, 2006). • Both school-based and university-based mentors have important roles (Greenwood et al., 2006). • The novice teacher’s and mentor’s prior experience and knowledge should be taken into account in establishing mentoring relationships (Koballa et al., 2006).

28. Mentoring Effective programs have • Trained mentors • Provided mentors with time and resources • Plan lessons and share curricula with mentees • Demonstrate lessons to mentees; and • Provide feedback from classroom observations. (Humphrey, Wechsler, & Hough, 2006).

29. Pedagogies • Ongoing, sustained interactions • Collaborative work • Practitioner inquiry - action research, lesson study • Field experiences • Scientific research partnerships

30. Recommendation - Research Agenda Conceptual Student learning Teacher learning Content and pedagogies of teacher education Empirical Methodological

31. Research questions • What science and in what form do science teachers need to know? • How do we bridge traditional separations of preservice and inservice teacher education to create a professional continuum of science teacher education that includes the induction phase?

32. Research questions • How do diverse teachers acquire beliefs, knowledge and skills across a variety of educational settings and opportunities? • What coursework and field experiences lead to the development of knowledge and skills that help teachers, at various points in their professional development, bring reform visions into science classrooms (action research, institutional partnerships)? • What roles can teacher collaboratives—groups of science teachers learning together—play in the continued education and production of professional knowledge? (e.g. mentoring, communities of practice) • What are the implication of what teachers learn for their students?

33. Research questions • Who are the science teacher candidates? How do the following influence candidates’ development as science teachers? • Age, race, ethnicity, gender • Prior experience • Science knowledge • Context and societal influences

34. STEM Alternative Certification Issues for Practitioners

35. Barbara Austin, Northern Arizona University Wendy Frazier, George Mason University Anita Greenwood, UMass Lowell Judith Hayes, Wichita State University Charmaine Hickey, UMass Lowell Kathy Shea, UMass Lowell Morton Sternheim, UMass Amherst Yijie Zhao, UMass Amherst Report Authors

36. What is alternative certification? • Antoinette Mitchell (NCATE): These programs range from 5th year programs for students without education backgrounds, to programs especially designed for career-switchers, to programs designed for specific sectors of the community such as military personnel and para-professionals.

37. What is alternative certification? Program differences include • Target recruitment audience • Goals • Structure • Field-placement and field-placement support • Mentoring support for interns

38. What is alternative certification? Alternative certification teacher candidate differences include: • Prior classroom experience • Career experience • Life experience • Education coursework experience Because of these differences, “alternative certification” forms a continuum of teacher preparation to support varied needs of teacher candidates and schools or school districts

39. National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) holds alternative certification programs to the same standards required of all programs in NCATE-accredited institutions as a way of making institutions accountable for the quality of their programs and for the quality of the educators they prepare. Program Standards

40. Alternative Certification Candidates Judith Hayes, Wichita: There’s been a dramatic shift in the profile of people studying to be teachers through alternative routes. • A greater percentage of older, life-experienced people wanting to enter the teacher profession when compared with traditional preparation models. • More of these mid-career switchers are male and/or are minorities interested in teaching in high-demand areas, in positions generally not sought by young, white females coming out of traditional schools of education.

41. Partnerships Research indicates that teacher candidates working in alternative licensure programs with strong district – university partnerships perform better and stay in the profession longer.

42. Partners • Primary partners • Hiring school districts, state licensing authority, higher ed institution • Other partners – funding/recruiting • Corporations, e.g., Raytheon Teaching Fellows Program • Federal agencies: NSF (Noyce Scholars), DOE, … • Troops to Teachers, Teach for America, …

43. Recruiting and Selecting Candidates • Depend on nature of the program • Selecting and recruiting the right candidates for admission to a particular program is important for the program’s success, because “investing resources in candidates unlikely to succeed is a lose-lose situation.”

44. Selection • Usually require at least bachelor’s degree • Screening process – tests, interviews, evidence of content mastery, short demonstration lesson • Often highly selective • Some programs are committed to serving all provisionally certified teachers in an area • Humphrey et al: most alternative certification programs bet on education background, work experience, previous classroom experience, or some combination of the three

45. Recruiting • Many approaches, reflecting the programs • Texas A&M: scholarships, job fairs, recruiting in grad programs • UT: All students in the College of Natural Sciences are recruited. They receive a letter about it upon admission, hear about it during orientation, receive mailings each year. Student group presentations, media reports …

46. Recruiting • Teach for America: Representatives visit many campuses, focus on selective colleges, accept only a small fraction of applicants • NYC Teaching Fellows program targets mid-career professionals as well as recent college graduates • Troops to Teachers program provides information and support to retiring military personnel, with offices in 32 states

47. Candidates • Four groups of candidates • Undergrads where there in no traditional certification option • Recent grads who opt to teach • Career switchers or retired military • Teachers who need courses to become “highly qualified” in another subject • These groups have different needs • Must match candidates and structure of the program

48. Need: Practical Teaching Knowledge • All need practical knowledge about navigating the current school environment: information about legal and ethical responsibilities, teaching to diverse populations, inclusion issues, and classroom management • Less important for group 4, those already teaching

49. Need: Pedagogical Content Knowledge • Teachers not only need to understand science but teach in a manner that is consistent with what is known about how people learn science and reflects significant insights from recent educational research • Discipline-specific pedagogy issues – how to teach difficult concepts in a particular subject • Laboratory safety knowledge – chemicals, biomaterials, etc. – is critical for teachers to do hands-on science

50. Need: Content Knowledge • Federal law mandates that teachers must have sufficient content knowledge as the major provision of being “highly qualified” • Mainly a need for group 4, teachers who need courses to become highly qualified