PREPARE, implemented by High Point University, was a Teacher Quality Partnership grant offering a Master of Education for elementary education, secondary mathematics, and special education (in grant years 2-5). The residency model included a living wage stipend to support time spent earning the accelerated master's degree. The PREPARE impact…

Teachers are the most important school-related factor impacting students' academic outcomes. To meet the needs and potential of all students, North Carolina must be able to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. North Carolina continues to experience challenges with vacancies and positions filled with teachers who are not fully certified in…

Implemented by Pfeiffer University, REPERTOIRE: Recruiting Educators, Preparing Educators, and Retaining Teachers to Optimize Interest in Rural Education was a collaborative partnership with Montgomery and Stanly County Schools in rural North Carolina. Pfeiffer University and the Division of Education and Division of Arts and Sciences provided…

Schools of education continue to struggle with how to best meet the needs of practicing teachers enrolled in graduate teacher education programs. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Education designed a graduate teacher education program with an embedded outdoor education residency component to disrupt practicing teachers'…

Our classrooms haven't kept pace with innovation. The Ford Model T represented breakthrough technology in its day--more than 100 years ago--but it wouldn't serve us well today. Likewise, our traditional classroom model from the same era doesn't work well for far too many students and teachers. In fact, as a result of this outdated model, it is…

To enhance teachers' preparedness to support the growing number of multilingual learners, teacher educators need to engage inservice teachers working across K-12 settings in continued professional learning. In this study, we described a teacher education program designed for inservice teachers who were from diverse backgrounds and worked in a…

Alternative preparation programs, which "provide alternatives to the traditional undergraduate program path to teacher certification" (Darling-Hammond et al., 2002, p. 287) existed in 40 states by 1993 (Wilson et al., 2001). Today, approximately one quarter of new teachers each year enter the profession through an alternative teacher…

Time constraints and the pressure to prioritize ELA and mathematics appear to drive teachers' planning and allotment of instructional time, especially given the widening post-pandemic needs of students. This prioritization can often lead to limited time for social studies instruction. Additionally, high-quality social studies resources (such as…

Teacher education students are more likely to be White than general bachelor's degree-seeking students across the nation (King, 2019), even as K-12 student populations are becoming more racially diverse (USDOE, 2022; DRIVE Taskforce, 2021). Colleges of education are contributing to the reproduction of a predominantly White teacher workforce. In…

In North Carolina and across the nation, districts and schools struggle to recruit and retain effective teachers, especially teachers of color. For more than a decade, declining enrollments in educator preparation programs and rises in teacher vacancies and attrition rates, coupled with population growth and increasing demand for teachers, have…

As in other highly skilled careers, licensure requirements were put in place to ensure that candidates that enter the teaching profession are competent and effective. Unfortunately, licensure requirements can change from year to year and vary depending on the subject area in which a candidate plans to teach, making the pathway to obtaining full…

Cherokee is an endangered Indigenous language. Revitalization efforts often include offering Cherokee language instruction, but these efforts have been hampered by a lack of qualified teachers. An initial licensure program was launched in fall 2019 aimed at supporting Cherokee language renewal via the preparation of teachers. While a step forward,…

Teacher residencies have been an ongoing discussion in the educator preparation world for nearly a decade. This paper describes a promising practice in program design at a university that offers alternative pathways to licensure to meet the demands of school districts, especially in economically disadvantaged communities in one region of the…

In this program description, we examined the impact of East Carolina University's educator preparation program on beginning special educators' preparedness and confidence to meet professional standards and fulfill their job responsibilities using Q methodology. For this work, undergraduate interns who were enrolled in a rural-focused teacher…

Educators in PK-12 schools were surveyed to seek their perceptions of colleagues who they considered informal teacher leaders, defined as leaders who were not appointed to a leadership role by a school or district administrator. The survey asked administrators, educational specialists, and teachers working in PK-12 schools across four states to…