Annual Initial Licensure Program Assessment Report

(Insert Program Area)

Due June 15th

Date of Meeting: April 30, 2012

Participants/Role: Amy Palmeri (Program Director)

Dale Farran

Leona Schauble

Jeanne Peter

Marcy Singer-Gabella

Program Progression

  1. How many undergraduate candidates applied for Screening I during the academic year? How many of those candidates were admitted into Teacher Education?

Over the course of the 2011/2012 academic year there were 15 UG candidates who applied for Screening I. Of these, 14 were admitted into teacher education, one applicant was deferred due to dispositional concerns.

  1. How many master’s level candidates were admitted into the program during the academic year?

There are no master’s level candidates in the ECE program.

  1. How many undergraduate candidates applied for Screening II during the academic year? How many of those candidates were approved for student teaching?

During the 2011/12 academic year there were 11 candidates who applied for Screening II (5 during the fall 2011 semester and 6 during the spring 2012 semester). All 11 were approved for student teaching.

  1. How many master’s level candidates were approved for student teaching?

There are no master’s level candidate in the ECE program.

  1. How many candidates successfully completed their student teaching experience?

All 5 of the candidate who student taught during the 2011-12 academic year successfully completed student teaching.

Additional Comments:

The screening I applicant whose application was deferred during the fall 2011 semester met with the program director to discuss the dispositional concerns and a performance improvement plan was articulated. Following this counseling, the applicant withdrew her application and is no long pursuing licensure through the ECE major.

Candidate Performance on Key Assessments

1.What do the data from key assessments and dispositions indicate about candidates’ ability to meet standards?

Overall most candidates perform as expected on the various program assessments. However, a concerns emerging from multiple assessments related to our candidates knowledge (factual and content knowledge for teaching) of social studies as measured by both the PRAXIS II Elementary Education Content Knowledge exam and the Core Content Assessment is weaker than their knowledge within the other subject matter areas (literacy, mathematics, and science). The screening process (both screening I and screening II) seems to be effective in helping faculty make decisions regarding candidates’ formal progression through the program. For example, the program assessments timed to coincide with these screening processes provide useful and detail information that help faculty confer with candidates about their progress in the program.

2.What changes are needed to improve candidate performance (including changes to assessments and scoring guides)?

Most immediately, faculty note that scoring rubrics need to be aligned with NAEYC’s new program standards. Additionally, rubrics across program assessments, particularly those assessments that might provide information about how particular knowledge and skill is developing overtime should be revised with this possibility in mind. For example, there are several assessments that provide information about candidates developing repertoire (Conceptions of teaching and learning, planning portfolio, and PGP) that are placed at different times in the program (spring of sophomore year, spring of junior year, end of fall senior year respectively) – we should be sure the element of the rubric evaluating the initial repertoire across these assessments is comparable if not the same so that we can track development/change overtime to better understand exactly how the repertoire develops across the program.

Additional Comments:

Performance on the Core Content Assessment (taken as part of student teaching orientation after all subject matter content and methods courses, raises the question about course sequencing. Currently candidates complete the mathematics, science, and social studies subject matter and content methods courses in the sophomore year and are thus at least 1-1.5 years removed from student teaching. Programmatically we need to think differently about how experiences across content areas are distributed programmatically.

One of the key things we realized regarding program assessments is the need to realign rubrics with both the new NAEYC program standards and to think more globally about the collection of program assessments and how rubrics can be developed to potentially document growth/development of the candidates’ in particular areas as they move through the program and complete assessments that are situated at particular times in the program (early, mid, late).

Diversity

1.What do data from key assessments and dispositions indicate about candidates’ ability to work with diverse populations?

Early program assessments – those timed with screening I show that candidates are, at best, superficially aware of diversity – with few if any teacher candidates making specific mention of particular ways in which diversity (either broadly or narrowly defined influences their conception of teaching and learning). As an early assessment this might be expected, we ensure that candidates complete their field experiences (including student teaching) in diverse settings. The PGP suggests that in student teaching the candidates are proficient in making content accessible to all learners, their teaching reflects an understanding of the learners (and their learning) in their classrooms, and that they are able to modify materials and subject matter to meet the needs of their students.

2.What changes are needed to improve the candidates’ performance in working with diverse populations?

While candidates are proficient in meeting the needs of the students in their classrooms (and they work regularly in classroom with racial, socio-economic, and language diversity) one thing we could do better at ensuring is ensuring that candidates are explicitly drawing on knowledge of second language acquisition, and culturally relevant pedagogy to inform their instructional choices.

Additional Comments:

None

Field-Based Experiences

1.What do data from field-based experiences indicate about candidates’ ability to be successful in the classroom?

Candidate teaching performance as evaluated on the PGP indicate that candidates are proficient as beginning teachers. There are a few areas – mostly those involved with communicating with and working with parents that - that candidates could have more experience with as most mentor teachers indicated that the candidates do not have many opportunities to interact with the families.

2.What changes are needed to improve candidate performance during their field-based experiences?

We should work to develop more robust partnerships with particular schools and teachers and be more intentional in the ways in which we work together to meet the objectives of particular early field experiences. Specifically with relation to candidates work with families, we need to think differently about the curriculum to create more opportunities for the candidates to work with families.

Additional Comments:

None

Mentor Teacher/University Mentor

1.What do data indicate about the effectiveness of the mentoring teachers and university mentors?

Most of the university based supervision that happens in the ECE program is conducted by faculty members, the candidates appreciate the consistency in message from the pedagogical courses and field experiences right through to student teaching. For the most part mentor teachers have been effective, from time to time with new mentor teachers there is a learning curve – where we must think differently about how we prepare mentor teachers’ for the specific goals and intent of particular field experiences. Partly we spent time during the spring 2012 developing new relationships with schools who host student teachers, thus we spent a good deal of time navigating and working out different perspectives, transition of responsibilities from mentor to student teacher, etc. While not every pairing was successful we felt that the relationship in the schools was positive and we will continue to work in those schools and even with some of the less “successful” mentor teachers to build a stronger collaboration.

2.What changes are needed to improve the effectiveness of mentoring teachers and university mentors?

We need to formalize the supports put in place for mentor teachers. While we have school-based mentor teacher meetings at the beginning of each placement – these meetings have focused mostly on logistics and the requirements the teacher candidates have to fulfill over the course of the placement. These meetings should extend beyond logistics and requirements, to include building a shared understanding of the PGP and even more collaboration with sites and particular mentor teachers to both support mentor teacher and student teacher growth, but also to work together to craft a more flexible set of experiences that are sensitive constraints of schools, classrooms, mentor teachers, and/or teacher candidates.

Additional Comments:

With the new metro calendar for the 2012-13 academic year, we have reached out to schools we hope to build a stronger partnership with to being involved in the conceptualization and staffing of the intersession dates.

What are the activities and timeline for implementing needed changes?

  1. Revision of Rubrics – this will occur largely over the summer of 2012. The revision of rubrics will focus on making sure they alignment with NAEYC program standards are explicit. Also rubrics (and program assessments) will be considered wholistically rather than individually. For example we noted in our administration of assessments aligned with screening I and screening II that both provide details about the candidates developing repertoire, yet the relevant portions of the rubrics for these assessments were not parallel. If the rubrics were comparable if not the same for these particular elements we could potentially look for patterns of change in our candidates over time.
  2. Curricular development with relation to candidates work with families and communities. Next years seniors will be the first to follow a new course sequence where they student teaching in the fall semester and take some intentional coursework following student teaching. One such course focuses on Children in Families and Communities. The redesign of the Children in Families and Communities course will have candidates revisit one of their student teaching sites to work much more intentionally with families – an aspect that has been challenging to fold into the student teaching semester. Intensive curricular design will be happening during the fall 2012 semester with initial implementation occurring during the spring 2013 semester.
  3. Working with Claudia Russell – Principal at Glenview elementary schools to develop and staff both the fall and spring intersession days. Some of the initial planning will take place beginning summer 2012 and will continue throughout the coming academic year.