Programs are Community-based

The vision of learning community that guides Virginia Tech programs includes a set of beliefs, attitudes, values and operating procedures that emphasize the collaborative preparation of school personnel through university-public school partnerships. Programs for the preparation of school personnel at Virginia Tech are characterized by a commitment to the importance and value of learning communities. Our notion of community has been informed by various scholars such as Ernest Boyer (1995), Jerome Bruner (1997), Patricia Cross (1996), Palmer Parker (1997), Philip Schlechty (1992), Peter Senge (1994), Thomas Sergiovanni (1999), and others who have delineated the nature and ethos of learning community. While each of these scholars has a particular vision of learning community, together they share the importance of common goals, co-participation, mutuality, and respect.

Professional education programs at Virginia Tech are built on a belief that learning is enhanced when it occurs within a community of people who share common goals including a strong commitment to support each other in making meaning, that is to say, creating shared meanings.  Virginia Tech programs for the preparation of school personnel build on recent thought, theory and research about the learning process that suggests meaning is socially constructed (Richardson, 1999).  In other words, meaning is created rather than discovered.  Meaning-making occurs in groups (communities) of people who are “engaged in intellectual interaction for the purpose of learning”(Cross, 1996, p. 3).

At the heart of our quest for community is our commitment to diversity. We believe effective learning communities are inclusive.  Diversity is an especially important aspect of inclusive learning communities because variety in background experiences and points of view are essential to informed discussion.  Further, members of strong learning communities have positive intentions for the betterment of society generally and, in the case of educators, for the betterment of schools in particular.  Community members collaborate in part because such activities are valuable for creating productive connections among participants that are important for the development of shared meanings. 

Learning communities devoted to schooling value the knowledge of all participants, including school-based practitioners and their students who bring their own unique experiences and insights to issues under study.  Members of these communities regard learning as a search for meaning that is pursued through a process of inquiry. Learning communities also eschew hierarchies among participants, recognizing that all members of school-related communities are knowledgeable in their own right about the learning process, about teaching, about schools and about schooling because each person has had various personal experiences that are relevant and germane for meaning making (Moll & Greenberg, 1990).  Such communities draw on the diversity represented among their members and replace competitiveness with collaboration.  Authentic and effective learning communities involve all learners in an active search for meaning rather than passive absorption of knowledge that is dispensed by authorities.

The cohort nature of the 5^th-year and 5-year initial preparation programs and the off-campus advanced programs develops strong learning communities. In these programs, candidates move through key learning experiences as intact groups, which creates numerous opportunities for collaborative learning in courses as well as in the school-based learning communities where they have their field experiences. In the 4-year programs there are also common experiences that bring those candidates together. Technology has also helped us both strengthen and enlarge our learning communities as we connect within and across cohorts and with faculty and students at school sites, e.g. the WebPal Project, which links English education candidates to middle school students in chat rooms to discuss adolescent literature they have read in common; a computer-mediated community of learners that links candidates in educational psychology classes to classroom teachers to share analysis of video cases and discuss the ways that theory and practice work together to create successful learning environments for students. Furthermore, faculty and candidates engage in school-based learning communities during internships experiences.

The beliefs of the professional education programs are compatible with a major university-

wide initiative that is founded on the concept of learning communities to transform the larger enterprise as well.  As stated on the Learning Communities Web site, “An obligation of any university is to create an environment in which individuals may develop a more thorough understanding of themselves and their world. This assertion is deceptively simple, because effective education requires combining multiple intellectual, social, emotional, and physical learning experiences. Therefore, ‘We do not learn a way of life and ways of deploying mind unassisted, unscaffolded, naked before the world. Rather, it is through the give and take of talk, the active discourse with other minds, that we come to know about the world and about ourselves’ (Bruner, 1996).”  By creating learning communities wherever appropriate in the university, we are combining the knowledge strengths of the institution with an extraordinarily effective approach to teaching and research. Few other colleges and universities in the learning communities movement have cast the net this wide.

Programs are Inquiry-based

Members of the Virginia Tech professional education learning community are committed to an inquiry-based approach to learning (Lampert, 1999).   We believe an inquiry-based approach allows participants to build personal and group understanding of content, generates new knowledge that encourages development of teaching and learning theory, and improves teaching practice as well as a disposition to go on learning (Fullan & Hargreaves, 1992; Schön, 1987).  Graduates of our programs are active problem-solvers who have the knowledge, skills and dispositions required to identify real world problems/issues and propose, implement and evaluate the effectiveness of their own answers to questions that emerge from their practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999).  Such inquiry is integrated into both initial and advanced programs as teacher inquiry, teacher as researcher, problem-based learning, and action research.

Our commitment to an inquiry-based approach for preparing professional educators is evident in the courses candidates take as well as in the strong field-based components of their program.  These experiences are designed to help candidates develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary for conducting inquiry.  Candidates not only acquire knowledge of the tools and processes they will need to conduct inquiry throughout their program, they are also challenged in their learning community to examine various ways of knowing and to appreciate multiple representations of knowledge (Gardner, 1993; John-Steiner, 1997).  Candidates learn how to formulate problems, collect data, reduce data for analysis, interpret and transform data to enhance their understanding of theory and practice. Supervisors and faculty alike model the inquiry approach and offer encouragement as well as feedback that support these important dispositions toward teaching as inquiry.  

Programs are Standards-based

The practice of professional educators is grounded in knowledge of their disciplines, of pedagogy, of learning, and of schools and schooling (e.g., Shulman, 1987; Reagan, 1993, Wilson & Berne, 1999). Therefore, our programs are committed to content and performance standards. To articulate these standards within and across our learning communities, we have grouped the principles into five ideas: a commitment to all students and their learning, a knowledge of content and how to teach that content, ways of managing and assessing student learning, an inquiry approach to teaching, and importance of community in the education enterprise.  These ideas are those on which the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards are based as well as those into which INTASC principles can be grouped.

Because we believe that the basis for good pedagogy is a broad and deep knowledge of the discipline(s) being taught, we have moved the majority of our initial preparation programs to the graduate level so that candidates can not only immerse themselves in their major discipline but also have opportunities to explore other related areas of interest. Candidates in these programs bring not only strong content preparation to their teacher preparation courses but diversity as well because frequently they come to teacher education after other experiences. Additionally, in initial preparation and advanced programs with national professional preparation standards and discipline or content area-related standards, those standards are aligned with INTASC principles and Virginia program standards as well. Among the Virginia standards for state-approved programs is the requirement that candidates know the Virginia Standards of Learning for their discipline and how to facilitate their students’ accomplishment of those standards.

The ISTE guidelines for technology serve to guide our integration of technology into curriculum and field-based experiences across the preparation programs. Additionally, the Virginia technology standards articulate what candidates must be able to do regarding technology. We value the contribution that technology can bring to teaching and learning, and strive to develop the skills of our candidates so that they can become full partners in any educational endeavor they enter.

Programs are Practice-based

With respect to teaching, learning is a complex psychological and social process that is promoted by knowledgeable, reflective, caring and skillful practitioners (Elliott, 1995; Hawkey, 1997). It is this commitment to pedagogical knowledge and the connection of pedagogy to the context of schools that infuses the “practice” in all programs (Ball & Cohen, 1999). By developing this practice-based theory of education, candidates are grounded in the complexities of life in schools and the needs of the children whom they must educate.

Virginia Tech professional education programs are committed to introducing and exploring strategies that school personnel can use to promote student learning.  Teaching strategies provide teachers with a means to frame their knowledge about methods of instruction, learners, and subject matter.  Brophy’s (1997) notions about “Active Learning” highlight the ways Virginia Tech graduates show that they know how to help their students construct useable knowledge through effective planning, use appropriate classroom management techniques, provide instruction that is differentiated according to the needs of individual learners (including children with special needs), assess/diagnose student needs and fully evaluate outcomes.  However, because we also believe that educators learn from their practice when they inquire sensitively and systematically into the nature of learning and the effects of teaching, these educators understand the complexities of classrooms and resist simplistic formulas for teaching and learning (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Darling-Hammond, 1999; Dewey, 1929).

Performance Expectations for Candidates

These four essentials that ground our Conceptual Framework are inextricably interlaced so that only as a whole do they describe the basis for our professional education programs. Candidates’ performance and program effectiveness are assessed as candidates’ progress through their programs and begin their careers.  The following expectations for candidates’ performance in both initial and advanced preparation programs are embedded in the four essentials. Candidates in initial preparation programs will:

Candidates in advanced preparation programs will:

Assessment of Candidate Performance

Candidate performance is assessed at key points across programs.  Each program has developed a Program Performance Matrix and database for collection of performance data within the program.  Those data are part of the criteria for determining progress through the program. All programs have exit measures, e.g. portfolio and internship, linked to outcomes delineated by professional standards, state standards, national, and Unit performance expectations. These exit measures are evaluated with rubrics and usually have two or more evaluators involved in the assessment.

References

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Brophy, J. E. (1997). Motivating students to learn. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (1999). The teacher research movement: A decade later. Educational Researcher, 28(7), 15-25.

Connelly, M. F., & Clandinin, D. J.  (1988).  Teachers as curriculum planners:  Narratives of experience.  New York:  Teachers College Press.

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Lampert, M.  (1999).  Knowing teaching from the inside out:  Implications of inquiry in practice for teacher education. In G. A. Griffin (Ed.), The education of teachers:  Ninety-eighth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education  (pp. 167-184).  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press.

Moll, L. C., & Greenberg, J. B. (1990). Creating zones of possibilities:  Combining social contexts for instruction.  In L. C. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky and education:  Instructional implications and applications of sociohistorical psychology, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

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Wilson, S. M., & Berne, J.  (1999)  Teacher learning and the acquisition of professional knowledge:  An examination of research on contemporary professional development.  In A. Iran-Nejad & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Review of educational research (24) (pp. 173-209).  Washington, DC:  American Educational Research Association.