This digital ethnographic study aimed to understand how and why college students decide to be teachers while many trained teachers leave the profession every year in the United States. A purposive sampling technique enabled 30 prospective teachers in a college of education to participate in this study. The research questions that guided the study…

In early 2017, Congress rescinded two education regulations passed late in the Obama administration. The first regulation, which attempted to define and implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), received most of attention since states were busy planning how to implement the new law in the 2017-2018 school year. However the second regulation…

The U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) is dedicated to improving results for infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities ages birth through 21 by providing leadership and financial support to assist institutions of higher education (IHEs), states, and local districts. During a 5-year period, OSEP…

The field of teacher preparation is falling short of its most important responsibility: ensuring that the teachers we train are ready to do the job. For more than a decade,TNTP preparation programs produced teachers who were no more or less effective than teachers from any other program-- some were great, some were poor, most were about average.…

This article describes how evidence-based theory fuels an audit culture for teacher education in the USA, placing faculty under monitoring and surveillance, and severely constraining judgment, discretion, and professional decision-making. The national education reform efforts, Race to the Top and Common Core State Standards, demand fealty to…

Residency models for education in the medical profession have existed for many years. Nationwide, policies are being implemented to bring this model to the field of teacher preparation. How this plays out within education programs is less researched, and there is a need to document the transition from traditional teacher education, that is,…

Tennessee began its movement toward Middle Level Licensure during the 2002-2003 school year. Only 14 years later, in 2016, Middle Level Licensure in Tennessee will change. In this article, the background and experiences of seven middle level education teacher candidates at the University of Memphis who were the first candidates to complete the…

Improving teacher preparation is critical to long-term improvement in teacher quality. More than 200,000 new teachers enter classrooms each year. Increasing student enrollment, the retirement of baby boom generation teachers, and high attrition in their first five years (between 40 and 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession) have…

With conversations about the best ways to evaluate teacher performance proliferating across the nation, preservice preparation could be the next stop on the teacher-quality continuum to receive a similarly high level of scrutiny. New models for preparing teachers, such as the yearlong apprenticeship or "residency" model, have received…

Describes a six-year series of science leadership institutes in Northeast Tennessee designed to prepare K-12 teachers and principals for leadership roles in the improvement of school science. Discusses training participants' work with peers, the principal's role, and the ripple effect. (KHR)

In the first decade of the 21st century, the nation, the states, and colleges and universities began to grapple with the challenges of globalization, changing demography, the implications of the digital era, and of a less expansive public sector. Although not a transformative period for higher education, the decade saw significant innovations in…

The Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP) is a project within NSF's (National Science Foundation's) Math Science Partnerships (MSP) initiative. Funded at $23 million over five years, the AMSP involved 51 school districts and nine higher education institutions in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The AMSP faced two significant challenges in…

In 1986, the Appalachia Educational Laboratory (AEL) established a minigrant program to foster collaboration between K-12 schools and colleges of education. Between 1986 and 1991, AEL minigrants offered seed money for 63 college-school partnership projects in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Prior to 1991, college-school…

This paper describes the reform processes in teacher education in Tennessee over the past ten years. The decade of school improvement efforts, which culminated in 1984 with the passage of the Comprehensive Education Reform Act (CERA), is discussed. The paper presents: (1) a summary of action taken between l975-80; (2) an account of the action…

Edvantia, Inc. (formerly AEL) publishes "TransFormation" twice a year to provide policymakers with interpretive summaries of significant reports and rigorous studies about school transformation, giving special attention to research with possible implications for improving low-performing schools.This final print issue of…