Rethinking How We Design Programs

The landscape of higher education continues to change causing us to re-think the way we offer programs. Redesigning programs by listening to students pushes us to make radical changes. This chapter shows how the authors changed the content and delivery model by constantly reviewing student input on how we offer an online, competency-based alternative teacher certification program. They created annual measures that define program success, reviewed lead metrics to gain insight on areas working and needing improvements, and made ongoing changes to design and offer the program after listening to students' needs and desires. The program changes included continuous daily enrollment, changes in the instructor model to support student progression, an advising model focused on supporting individual student success throughout the program, and enhanced mentor support for fieldwork. The goal is to offer credentialing programs in different ways that prioritize accessibility, affordability, and applied field-based opportunities.

It’s Who You Know: The Role of Social Networks in a Changing Labor Market

Teacher labor markets are evolving across the United States. The rise of charter schools, alternative teacher certification, and portfolio districts are transforming teachers’ access to employment, changing the way they search for and apply for jobs, and may also change the role that social networks play in the job search. However, we know little about how teachers use their networks to find jobs, particularly in increasingly fragmented local labor markets. We draw on interviews with 127 teachers in three districts chosen to reflect an increasing presence of charter schools: New Orleans, Detroit, and San Antonio. We find that the extent of fragmentation in a city’s labor market drives the use of networks, with important implications for job access and equity.

The Experience of Learning in an Alternative Certification Program

This chapter describes an alternative teacher certification program to achieve two objectives. The first is to highlight the connection to experiential learning. This connection to experiential learning that underscores the strength of a program in which “work” is essential to gaining true knowledge. The second objective is to refute the negative perception that alternative teacher certification programs may carry due to the negative connotations associated with such programs. These objectives will be accomplished by describing the State University of New York (SUNY) Empire State College's Master of Arts in Teaching Program and demonstrating that it meets the high standards expected from any teacher preparation program. It is the author's hope that stakeholders with an investment in education and in teacher preparation, in particular, will not make unfounded assumptions about alternative preparations and instead understand that there are high quality alternative teacher certification programs that support the profession of teaching.

Using Classroom Observations and Student Surveys to Evaluate Alternatively Certified Teachers

One of the greatest challenges faced by school leaders across the United States is the recruitment of high-quality educators, and many programs have been developed to address this problem. This study evaluates one such program. We evaluate the Arkansas Teacher Corps (ATC), an alternative teacher certification program that places teachers in high-needs schools in Arkansas. We measure teacher effectiveness through classroom observations and student surveys. We form our comparison group by matching ATC Fellows with 1–2 similar teachers in the same school who were not certified through ATC. We use multivariate regression to examine differences between ATC Fellows and comparison teachers on multiple dimensions of teaching. Students rate ATC teachers as significantly more effective on teacher-student relationships in class, teacher-student relationships out of class, and class engagement. Third-party observers detect no significant differences.

Help (not) wanted: Neo-liberal discourses of leadership against community knowledge and control in comparative context

This article compares two neo-liberal education reform activities that are not often studied in tandem: alternative teacher certification in the USA, as explored through Teach for America, and the growing international service learning movement. Guided by the Movement for Black Lives’ call for a world where those “most impacted in our communities control the laws, institutions, and policies that are meant to serve us,” the authors explore the ways in which programs’ neo-liberal justifications obscure the authority, history, and agency of the communities they purport to serve, while convincing people outside of the community that those within are benefitted. The comparisons drawn highlight the ways in which deficit orientations permeate different local and global contexts to perpetuate and normalize privatization and the wresting of control from local communities. In making this comparison, the authors aim to better understand what these programs have in common: a white supremacist world view at once unstated and pervasive, which reinforces harmful ideas about what it is to respond to the purported needs and desires of others, not expressed in their own terms. This globalization of “helping” may increase the difficulty of those targeted by such “help” to speak in their own terms.

Alternative and Authentic

In this piece, the author describes an alternative teacher certification program to achieve two objectives. The first is to counter an argument that current programs in this category do not fit the criteria of alternative certification pathways that were established in the 1980s. The author will use this established framework (Walsh & Jacobs, 2007) to demonstrate that such programs still frame these criteria. The second objective is to refute the seemingly wide-spread negative perception that alternative teacher certification programs often carry due to the generalization of these types of programs. This will be accomplished by describing SUNY Empire State College's Master of Arts in Teaching Program and demonstrating that it meets the high standards expected from any teacher preparation program. It is the author's hope that stakeholders with an investment in education and in teacher preparation, in particular, will not make unfounded assumptions of alternative preparations and instead understand that there are high quality programs that support the profession of teaching.

From the Pulpits to the Boards: A Study on Prospective Second Career Teachers in Turkey

<p class="apa">Teaching career is the widest state employment type in Turkey. The career is resourced by many higher education institutions besides the ones deploying regular teacher training programs. Teacher candidates other than the graduates from education faculties have to attend a program specially designed to instruct on foundations of education such as theories, principles, strategies, planning, teaching methods and assessment. That alternative teacher certification program paves the way to transition to teaching career as well. This study was carried out with 11 religious officials who intend to shift into teaching career. The data was collected through 5 essays written by each participant while they were attending the program. The study was conducted as content analyses of total 55 essays. The analyses revealed that the participants, 1 preacher-woman, 4 mosque leaders-preachers and 6 Quran instructors, did not display any role confliction, intended to use their skills and experiences developed through their current careers selectively. The results were discussed with relevant available literature.</p>