Standard 3. Field Experiences and Clinical Practice
The unit and its
school partners design, implement, and evaluate field experiences and clinical
practice so that teacher candidates and other school personnel develop and
demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all
students learn.
Evidence: Handbooks, Early Field Experience Evaluation, Student Teaching Internship Evaluation, Clinical Faculty Team Sites, Clinical Placement Sites, Clinical Faculty Satisfaction Survey
Element 1: Collaboration Between Unit and School Partners
Early field placement requests with specific school faculty are submitted to the Center for Teacher Education no later than the first week of the semester. Criteria for early field placement includes having passed Praxis I and having at least the target GPA (2.5 content courses for undergraduate programs and 3.0 with content requirements met for graduate programs). The Center coordinates placements with the central office designee in each school division. Principals approve any placements in their schools. All cooperating teachers/clinical faculty meet the guidelines set forth by VACTE/ATE-VA, e.g. they are licensed in the field in which they have the student teacher; they have at least three years’ experience in the same school setting; and they are recognized by their peers and supervisors as good teachers (see list of cooperating teachers’ experience and credentials that will be provided during onsite visit). Student teaching internship placements are requested during the fall semester, but all placements are contingent on candidates having met all the criteria to enter the internship. In many cases the specific placement requests are the result of prior informal discussions between Unit faculty and faculty in the clinical sites, in order to best serve the needs of both the candidate and the classroom teacher’s students.
Three funded grant initiatives during the past four years
have enabled Unit faculty and its school partners to deepen the already
excellent relationships we have had.
Clinical Faculty grants from Virginia Department of Education (a
collaborative project with two other area universities) provided resources to
enhance the involvement of cooperating teachers. Knowledgeable classroom teachers who had served as cooperating
teachers for a few years were selected as clinical faculty team leaders. In addition
to re-evaluating assessments and procedures, the leaders shared how each school
operated with preservice candidates.
The leaders decided they could do more to integrate candidates into each
school’s learning community. Together we developed strategies that would help
candidates become involved in the total school and community experience. The clinical team leaders lead a school team
of five or six teachers who have either been assigned a student teacher intern
or preparing to have one by participating in the team meetings. Currently, there are 23 active school sites,
with three more to begin the process for next year.
All elementary placements are in schools where faculty work intensively with selected school partners. For example, in the three Roanoke Valley schools, where candidates are placed for both the early field experience and the student teaching internship, a faculty member and two graduate assistants are assigned. The Montgomery County schools are divided among two faculty members and four graduate assistants. All elementary school placements are in Clinical Faculty school sites. The elementary school sites provide a good blend of inclusion for disabilities, low socio-economic groups, and international or minority students. Candidates are engaged in a year-long experience in the same elementary school. In the elementary schools, principals, teachers, Unit faculty, and even the candidates are involved in selecting cooperating teachers and classroom experiences.
For example, during the past five
years the candidates in their spring student teaching placement at Price’s Fork
Elementary coordinate an event called “Heritage Day.” During the school day the student teacher interns organize
instructional activities that involve traditions from the community, such as
mathematics in quilting, a variety of cooking activities, learning songs and
poetry traditional to Appalachian culture. The culmination of the day event is
a Heritage Fair in the evening, in which local people are invited into the
school to share their expertise and knowledge with the children. Storytelling,
dancing, music, quilting, cooking, display and presentation about coal
mining. Through the experience of
coordinating this event the candidates gain an authentic knowledge about
resources in the community, the value of connecting with community to support
schools and children, and the amount of commitment and work to coordinate such
an event.
At Kipps Elementary the candidates
work with teachers in after school and before school clubs. In the past these have included sign
language club, running roos (running club) Spanish club, and chess club. The candidates also work with teachers to
organize evenings that have an instructional focus, for example literacy night
where parents children and teachers come together to explore literacy practices
with their children.
The PT3 Capacity Building and Implementation grants and VETA grants have provided resources for clinical faculty and Unit faculty to engage in workshops together, learning new instructional software and developing more facility with technology. We also placed equipment on mobile units at two high schools so that both student teacher interns and cooperating teachers could use technology to enhance instruction.
A service learning grant initiated by the secondary faculty is enabling them to develop a clinical school site that can serve as a model for integrating secondary student teacher interns in a school and its surrounding community. Under the guidance of Kathleen Carico and Katrina Landon, a clinical team leader, we have initiated a new approach for secondary placements at William Fleming High School in Roanoke City Schools. Candidates who want a diverse, city experience are placed in both the early field experience and the internship in the same school, i.e. essentially candidates have a year long experience in the same setting. To involve the candidates in the community outside of school, candidates worked with the West End Center for Youth in Roanoke, where they sponsored after school computer clubs for the students. All activities are collaboratively planned with the focus on developing a school site where candidates can become partners in the learning community and learn from classroom teachers who have been successful in teaching at-risk, inner-city youth.
Because of the nature of secondary placements in highly specialized areas, such as technology education, marketing education, and agricultural education, these placements are rarely in a school site with a clinical team leader. However, the cooperating teachers for these placements are almost always graduates of our programs and have excellent collaborative relationships with those unit faculty.
Advanced Programs
Administration and Supervision. Collaboration with superintendents, principals, and supervisors is an integral part of the development, implementation, and evaluation of the administration and supervision program. First, the department has an advisory committee that provides input on all programs. This committee meets from time to time and information is forwarded from the department head to programs for consideration and change. Second, the Program for the Preparation of School Principals and Supervisors was initially developed collaboratively with five school divisions in the Roanoke area, a Virginia Department of Education official, and Virginia Tech faculty. The old program was completely scraped and the new program became operational in 1989. Since that time the program has been revised periodically by faculty with some input from mentors during the pre-internship mentor training. The mentors are particularly involved in revising the internship. New advisory committees are being created to formalize the review of the program and will be operational sometime in 2003. These advisory committees are described in our evaluation document as follows: “Three geographically dependent advisory panels, comprised of representatives of all positions included within the program, a parent, and a member of the Virginia Department of Education will be established. The panels are geographically dispersed because the program serves three regions of the state: Northern Virginia, Tidewater, and Southwestern Virginia. The panels will review content, instructional procedures, and administrative processes in the program; data collected from environmental sensing; and student and program assessments and make recommendations for change.” (Click here to see composition of Advisory Board.)
Collaboration occurs
during the internship. The candidates, mentors, and the campus supervisor of
the internship meet with interns to audit their work. Needed changes in the internship
to meet the needs of the school division or the intern are made as necessary as
long as they do not compromise the quality of the experience.
Counselor Education. Collaborative efforts exist both with Roanoke and Montgomery Counties. Our Master's courses are all offered in Roanoke, so our presence there is growing. We rely on guest speakers in both the Orientation to Professional Counseling and the School Counseling course. Many of the speakers in the Orientation course are local school counselors who provide insight into the various responsibilities and functions at various school levels. Many of the speakers in the School Counseling course are Directors of Guidance who share their insights into the direction and future of school counseling, ethical issues, and the realities of evaluation. Many of the speakers are our previous students; others are potential employers for our students.
We encourage school counselors and systems to let us know if or when there are particular needs that are difficult to meet with the current school staffing. The school counseling coordinator has mat with the directors of guidance of all the local schools and has requested meetings with groups of counselors. Since there has been a faculty replacement and a geographic shift in our program, the collaboration is not at an ideal level at this point. Just recently, however, as a result of a request from a school counselor who has a particularly challenging ninth grade, one of our interns is developing an anger-management group that will hopefully be implemented in that school.
Reading Specialist. The faculty who lead the reading specialist program
work closely with advisors from school systems in the area. In particular,
faculty develop long-term reciprocal
relationships with personnel from school systems that face issues that
traditionally have impeded school literacy learning for many students. Faculty
work with school systems that have expressed commitment to working successfully
with students whose primary language is other than English, students who face
the challenges imposed by poverty, and students who are racially diverse
(non-white students). So for example, the program maintains a dialogue with
literacy specialists and supervisors from Fairfax County in northern Virginia.
Literacy faculty members communicate regularly with these advisors through
face-to-face meetings, telephone conferences, and electronic correspondence.
Advisors inform the faculty about the problems they face and the methods they
use to address those problems, and they consider the recommendations that
faculty propose. They suggest directions for our program, send teachers to us
for further professional learning, and inform us about the long-term
development of our graduates. Frequently, qualified advisors are invited to
teach courses in the Reading Specialist Program that parallel their particular
areas of expertise. One example of this is that currently Beth English, a
school advisor who holds a doctorate in reading and linguistics from the
University of Virginia, is teaching a course in linguistic theory and reading
and writing expression each spring. (To discuss this association, you may wish
to contact Pat Fege at Pat.Fege@fcps.edu.)
In addition to these
long-term relationships, the Reading Specialist Program has responded to
requests from a number of school systems around the state to provide the entire
certification program for teachers in the system. For example, we have provided
the Reading Specialist Program for Franklin County, Wythe County, Buchanan
County, Fairfax County, and Floyd County. Each of these programs has been
adapted to meet the particular needs of the county, while maintaining the
procedures, integrity, and criteria we have specified for the Reading
Specialist Program at Virginia Tech (See folio
prepared for IRA for these). Throughout these programs we work closely with
school advisors to shape, monitor, and assess the effects of the program on
teacher and student learning and school improvement. For several counties, we
have offered programs periodically as their needs dictate and their resources
allow. Thus we have offered two such programs in Buchanan and Fairfax Counties.
Besides these on-going
associations with public schools, the Reading Specialist Program articulates
with public schools through the culminating experience for the program, which
is a teacher-as-researcher project in which project candidates design an intervention
to support student learning. They prepare a report in which they describe the
intervention, explain how they studied what they did, describe what they
learned from the process, and articulate the new questions they have as a
result of their research. In addition to preparing a report of this work,
candidates hold a conference for local educators during which they describe
their work and learning and involve visiting educators in a discussion of it.
We have held these conferences at school sites, including Francis Scott Key
Middle School in 2001 and Braddock Elementary School and Walnut Hill Staff
Development Center in 2002. We are scheduled to hold another conference at
Braddock Elementary School on April 5, 2003.
Element 2: Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Field Experiences and Clinical Practices
Initial Programs
The 5-year elementary program has early field experiences from the freshman year on. However, once candidates are accepted into the graduate portion of that program, there is also an early field experience that precedes student teaching like that of the 5th-year program where candidates are in schools for extended periods. (The early field experience ranges from 9 to 12 weeks, comprising different configurations of days. See early field handbooks for elementary.) All programs have the early field experience after acceptance into professional studies (either at the undergraduate or graduate levels) and use the evaluation of that experience as an important decision point for continuation in the program. The graduate programs have a fall field experience, which is tied to course work such as specific content methods and inquiry. In the secondary graduate programs and second language programs candidates are in the field during fall semester for two days per week for 10 weeks, which is 150 hours. The undergraduate secondary program candidates are in the field two one-half days per week in conjunction with a methods course. Some programs in Career and Technical Education have other types of early field experiences in business and industry so that candidates can make practical classroom connections.
Handbooks, describing the purpose, ethical conduct, activities, and evaluation of the early field experience, have been jointly developed by Unit faculty and school partners over the years. For example, the suggested activities in the TESH handbook for early field experience evolved as together we sought a clearly defined experience that would be applied in all settings. (Click here for link to all handbooks.)
The evaluation instrument for the early field experience also evolved from clinical faculty and Unit faculty discussions. While content knowledge, strategies, and communication were important aspects of this early classroom experience, it was agreed that this was a good place to assess various dispositions toward children, responsibilities, initiative, enthusiasm, collegiality, and professionalism. University supervisors are in the field with candidates each week, but it is the cooperating teacher who has the most contact with candidates. Therefore, all evaluations are done in triads. Formal evaluations are conducted at mid-term and at the end of the term. At each of the two sessions, candidates bring a self-assessment and the university supervisor and cooperating teacher bring their assessments. The mid-term discussion centers on strengths and areas for improvement (formative evaluation) from which goals for the remainder of the term are formed. In addition, it is at that point that a “plan of improvement” might be generated if warranted. In that case, the plan is filed with the Center for Teacher Education in case the plan is not met and further action is needed, e.g. another early field experience. The evaluation process treats learning to teach as developmental; however, assessment of the early field experience is one major marker for continuation in the program and placement into student teaching. If a candidate does not get a positive recommendation at the completion of the early field experience, he/she may be placed in another field experience with another plan of improvement if the cooperating teacher, the supervisor, and the Center director agree that another experience is warranted, i.e. the candidate has made progress but not sufficient progress. In other cases, the candidate may be counseled out of the program.
All elementary placements and some secondary placements are negotiated within the school setting although central administration offices ultimately approve the placements. For example, at Price’s Fork Elementary clinical faculty decide on placements and student teachers operate as part of the grade team. Clinical faculty recommend other teachers who have strengths in areas that candidates need or want to refine. For example, a clinical teacher may know that a colleague is extremely effective with diagnosis of reading problems. Together they negotiate time for the student teacher to work with the second teacher. Therefore, the clinical faculty program works on a whole school basis; at the request of the clinical faculty, payments are submitted to the school and all teachers share in making decisions about what new classroom equipment they will purchase. In this way, all teachers in the school are committed to supporting student teachers’ growth. At Kipps Elementary placements are jointly made and then requests are submitted to the central administration office. Clinical faculty and the Virginia Tech model leader have early morning meetings to discuss issues and topics that might benefit candidates. Clinical faculty then present seminars to student teaching interns on such topics as child abuse and helping children in the classroom through the emotional stresses; integrating Art and Music within social studies, led by the art and music teacher; first and second year teaching; how to use the technology that’s available in the school; and special needs children (topics for spring 2003).
Clinical faculty in the three participating departments at William Fleming High School invite student teachers to be part of the department functions and recommend other teachers and experiences as well. During that year-long experience secondary student teachers become partners in the whole department enterprise. There are clinical faculty teams at three of the high schools where we place student teacher interns. These clinical faculty have been trained to assist student teacher interns become acculturated to the school and to integrate them into the professional environment of the school.
During the full days of student teaching, candidates normally teach three classes or a portion of the school day (some schools are on block schedule and elementary schedules differ). In some programs candidates may assume an entire teaching load for a short period, but the intent of teaching abbreviated loads is to allow time for student teachers to prepare thoughtfully, to reflect on their teaching, to immerse themselves in school events and procedures, and to develop the evidence to demonstrate their having met the standards on the final evaluation. (Those standards are tied to INTASC, to Virginia licensure content standards, to Virginia SOLs, to ISTE, and to outcomes from the Conceptual Framework. In addition to indicators that help guide the performance expectations, there are rubrics that delineate levels of performance.) Additionally, candidates are gathering evidence for their portfolios that adds to their support for having met the outcomes of the program as delineated on the portfolio evaluation, especially using technology to facilitate instruction and demonstrating their impact on student learning.
Each spring cooperating teachers/clinical faculty are sent a survey asking them to rate the quality of our university supervision. (Click here for a summary of the last two years’ data. In addition, they are asked to write about the strengths of the supervision and to offer suggestions.) The data and suggestions are shared and discussed with program faculty and with doctoral supervisors in order to improve the quality of clinical supervision. Follow up with faculty and supervisors occur when the survey results and commentary direct attention to specific problems.
Advanced Programs
Administration and Supervision. All candidates in the program are required to take an internship throughout the twenty-four month program (see Internship Handbook. They may select a 400 clock-hour internship or a 720- hour internship. They earn a provisional certificate with the 400-hour internship or a full license with the 720-hour internship. The internship begins in the first semester and continues throughout the 24-month program. All candidates are required to select mentors. Mentors cannot be (other than in rare cases) candidates’ home-school principals or supervisors. Each intern selects a primary site (elementary, middle, high school, or central office) and completes a minimum of 200 clock hours at that site. They work with their mentors to identify schools at the other levels and an agency in the community that deals with children and families (social services, court services, psychological services, private agencies) in which they complete a minimum of 50 clock hours each.
School systems work closely with interns and the program in the identification of mentors and site locations. For example, Superintendent of Schools Fred Morton met with the intern supervisor to discuss the program and the interns who would be in the Montgomery County Schools (VA) and potential placements for each. He, then, placed the students in sites he believed would be most beneficial to the students and the schools.
The internship is objectives driven. There are required objectives for both MA and EdS candidates. EdS candidates have more objectives to complete than MA candidates. The objectives have been in use for about 10 years and are revised from time to time (the most recent update was in 2001) by faculty, mentors, and home-school principals. This generally occurs during the mentor training that is scheduled at the beginning of each new cohort. Mentors provide on-going feedback to the candidates and the intern supervisor on the relevance of the objectives to the work of principals and supervisors. Revisions are made as found necessary to keep the objectives current.
For evaluation of Clinical Experience all candidates maintain internship logs (see Internship Handbook). These logs are reviewed at least once each semester by the internship supervisor. Review is based on a rubric. At least once a year, a full audit of the internship work of each candidate is conducted. A description of how the mentor and campus intern supervisor collaborate in conducting this audit follows:
Present method. The candidate reviews his or her work on each objective with the mentor and faculty clinical director. The log is reviewed and the mentor and clinical director decide whether the objective has been met or not (click here for internship objectives). If it is not met, the candidate is informed of the specific work he or she must complete to achieve the objective. The objective is marked “Continuing” and the student implements the recommendations of the assessment team. A follow-up assessment is conducted by the mentor and again during the next visit of the campus clinical director.
Revised method to be implemented in spring of 2003. The student, mentor, and faculty clinical director apply a rubric to each objective and a score is assigned. If no score is more than one point away from the other scores and the average of the scores meets a pre-set criterion, the student is marked as achieving the objective. If the student does not meet the objective, the student, mentor, and faculty clinical director develop a plan for meeting the objective. The objective is marked “Continuing” and the student implements the recommendations of the assessment team. A follow-up assessment is conducted by the mentor and again during the next visit of the campus clinical director.
At
the end of the internship, a conference is held with the candidate, mentor, and
campus supervisor. The candidate submits his or her internship log (click
here for format) and an audit is conducted on each objective. The audit is
conducted as described above. New rubrics will be developed for this audit
during the spring of 2003. All required objectives must be met by the intern by
the end of the 24-month program. If this is the case, the student “passes” the
internship; if not, the student, mentor, and faculty clinical director develop
a plan to meet all unmet objectives. A grade of “Incomplete” is assigned. Follow-up visits and assessments are
conducted by the mentor and faculty clinical director until all objectives have
been achieved.
Counselor Education. School counseling students have two clinical experiences. For full time students completing the program in two years, the Practicum course is scheduled during the students' second semester of their first year. Students work both in school settings and in a clinic at the Roanoke Higher Education center. School settings are arranged with cooperating school counselors at all three levels in Montgomery County, Roanoke County and Roanoke City. Students are able to shadow and observe the school counselors in their various roles and functions in the schools. The school counselors suggest and provide access to students who need counseling but are not considered severely needy. Counselor Education doctoral students, who attend the sessions at the school sites, perform supervision of the practicum students. Students also see clients at the clinic, which provides access to adult clients. A minimum of one hundred hours is required. This includes a minimum of forty hours of direct contact with students/clients, other hours are accrued with planning, supervision, and observation.
The Internship is completed in the second year. A minimum of six hundred hours is required for internship, including a minimum of 240 hours of direct contact. Students complete their internship at two different levels, as required by the Virginia licensure regulations. Students indicate in the spring which levels and which geographic region they would prefer. The school counseling coordinator sends the requests to the each school system in the spring. The school system contact person varies in each of the school systems, frequently the personnel office, the director of guidance, or the superintendent is the contact office. Working relationships have been successfully arranged with Montgomery County, Giles County, Floyd County, Roanoke County, Roanoke City, and Salem City for internships within the last two years. There are also some private schools and a specialized school for students with emotional disorders who have hosted our intern students. The site supervisor is required to be a licensed masters level school counselor, have a minimum of two years experience, and have the approval of the principal and the superintendent. Internship activities vary somewhat by school level, but the interns are encouraged to participate in individual and group counseling, guidance curriculum delivery, assessment, support team meetings, parent conferences, etc. The site school counselor, a doctoral student, and the supervising faculty member provide supervision. Interns meet individually with a doctoral student supervisor on a weekly basis during the first semester, and in group sessions bi-weekly with the faculty member throughout the school year. The faculty member meets with each site supervisor at least once each semester and receives a written evaluation of the intern's progress twice during the semester.
Reading Specialist. While there is no student teaching requirement for
the Reading Specialist Program, candidates do complete a practicum in the
current program, and they will complete two practica in the revised program,
which is currently being reviewed by department and college curriculum review
committees.
The first practicum in
the Reading Specialist Program, EDCI 5404:
Practicum in Clinical Reading, is designed to provide candidates with
guided opportunities to tutor a learner who is struggling for success with
school literacy. To be eligible to take this practicum, candidates must have
completed the four other reading courses with a minimum of a B+ average. In
addition the candidate must have demonstrated competence at literacy assessment
by preparing two assessment reports and a portfolio of assessment strategies.
One assessment report must describe the assessment activities, analyses,
interpretations, and instructional recommendations for a learner at the early
stages of literacy development and a second for a learner at more advanced
stages of literacy development. The portfolio must provide evidence of the
candidate’s knowledgeable use of at least ten different assessment techniques.
These documents will be reviewed and approved by faculty in charge of the
program before a candidate may begin the practicum. These procedures are
currently followed in the existing program for preparation of Reading
Specialists, and they will be maintained in the revised program.
In completing the
practicum, candidates must work with a struggling literacy learner twice a week
for at least 10 weeks. For each meeting, the candidate must develop a log of
the tutoring in which s/he describes the purposes of the session, what happened
during the session, an analysis of the learner’s strengths and needs, and
suggestions for subsequent instruction. Candidates must bring their logs to
class each week and discuss their work with the professor and their colleagues
who will provide direction and critique. Candidates must write two reports
about their tutoring—one designed for other professionals and another designed
for caretakers and family members. The logs and reports must be reviewed and
approved by the professor in charge of the practicum in order for candidate to
successfully complete of the practicum. The review of documents will be
conducted using the measures specified for this practicum in the Folio for the
Reading Specialist Program prepared for the International Reading Association.
In addition to EDCI 5404,
a second practicum is included in the revised program. This is EDCI 5784:
Practicum on the Roles of the Reading Specialist. To be eligible for this
practicum, the candidate must have completed all other courses in the program
with a minimum of a B+ average. This practicum has been designed as a year-long
experience during which candidates participate, with assistance and guidance
from the professor in charge of the practicum and from a school-based reading
specialist, in the major roles of the reading specialists. These include, for
example: identifying and critiquing state and national reading programs,
supporting para-professionals, supporting classroom teachers, supporting
school-based learning communities, participating in professional organizations,
communicating with various stakeholders, and informing policy makers. The
professor of record will collaborate with the school-based reading specialist
to review each candidate’s work on each assigned task and to determine whether
the student is successful. To support this evaluation process a rubric will be
developed for each task. (See course syllabus for illustrative rubrics.)
Element 3: Candidates’ Development and Demonstration of Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions To Help All Students Learn
To enter clinical practice, i.e. student teaching internship, candidates must have successfully completed an early field experience, be recommended by the cooperating teacher in whose class they worked, have a positive early field evaluation which focuses on dispositions, have passed Praxis I and have taken Praxis II if applicable. Evaluation criteria for student teaching are linked to state, national, unit, and professional standards, if applicable. In most programs, university supervisors (some programs use the term university mentor) are in each school once a week. (Because fewer career and technical student teaching placements are available locally, these candidates are placed at greater distances, necessitating supervisors to visit less often but for longer periods when they do.) After all classroom observations of teaching, university supervisors give written and oral feedback. These post-teaching discussions are formative and reflective; the aim is to help the candidate problem solve rather than telling. Cooperating teachers/clinical faculty observe daily and give feedback daily. Depending on schedules, they may also participate in the weekly conferences with the university supervisors. In all cases the supervisors discuss progress weekly with the cooperating teachers, either in person or by electronic mail. Candidates also can communicate daily with supervisors via electronic mail. The mid-term and final evaluations are almost always done in triads, with candidates self-assessing their performance, and supervisors and cooperating teachers assessing candidates independently. At mid-term the conference results in objectives for the second part of the term. If needed, a formal plan of improvement is developed and signed by the candidate.
University supervisors are almost always doctoral students with content specialties and teaching licenses in the field they are supervising or a faculty member may serve as a supervisor. Doctoral students supervising for the first time take a one-hour course taught by the Director of Teacher Education to assure a consistency of supervisory practice, evaluation, and understanding of the theoretical and philosophical bases for the clinical experience, i.e. the program is performance and standards based but at the same time candidates should be developing inquiry skills that will assist them in analyzing courses of action to improve student learning. In addition, survey data from cooperating teachers, along with all the written comments, are shared with the new supervisors. We discuss ways that they can improve their field supervision based on the feedback on the surveys.
The majority of our clinical placements are in Montgomery County, Roanoke County, and Roanoke City. Montgomery County is known for its total inclusion model PK-12, so candidates in those schools work with a wide range of exceptionalities as well as rural students or international students, depending on the school locations. The two elementary cohorts in this school system have intensive and beneficial experiences with developing instruction for students with exceptionalities. Roanoke County also works from an inclusion model, and Roanoke City has the most ethnic and economic diversity of any of the school systems. Secondary candidates have two placements, and therefore learn to work with two different types of school populations. The exception is the learning community model we have established at William Fleming High School in Roanoke City, the high school in our service area with the greatest diversity from several perspectives. Those candidates are placed, at their request, at Fleming for both their early field experience and student teaching. In that learning community model, candidates study the community surrounding the school and contribute in some way to the community in service learning projects.
Candidates must present evidence of having helped students learn as a result of their teaching. Some of these instances become part of their portfolios; others are shared in seminars for discussion. See these portfolio discussions of measuring student growth for English, click on Principle Eight (“The Crucible” student portfolios or Shakespeare KWLs) or Principle Four (“After Apple Picking” “The Crucible” or “exit slips”); and for social studies, Measuring Student Progress (click on In the Classroom to get to student progress) and Assessment, Evidence of Student Growth). Also more examples will be available onsite as faculty and candidates continue to be concerned about student privacy.) While candidates do present specific evidence, we are currently exploring multiple ways for them to show their effectiveness and to assess quality of their evidence. In our Performance-based Assessment Transition Plan this task will be at the heart of our work at the end of this year as we plan some strategies and during next year as we work with candidates to implement those strategies. Concurrently and subsequently, faculty will be developing reliable measures of assessing candidate effectiveness in meeting this standard that permeates all that teachers do.
Throughout professional education studies, candidates are expected to develop dispositions that support their demonstrations of the belief that all children can learn. The educational psychology course for preservice teachers, the educating exceptional learners course, and reading in the content area all have specific objectives and experiences addressing both dispositions and strategies for teaching diverse learners. All the content methods classes also further develop these dispositions through understanding how children learn specific content. In the principals’ survey of our 2001 graduates after their first year of teaching, “demonstrated a belief that all children can learn” was ranked highest of the eleven items. The first-year teachers ranked themselves almost the same as their principals on this item. Principals also ranked the first-year teachers equally distinguished and proficient in “positively impacted student learning”; however, the first-year teachers did not rank themselves as distinguished nearly as often. (See Employer Survey and Candidate Self-Assessment of First-year Teaching.) This could suggest that our candidates are learning to think deeply about their teaching and know when they could do better.
Advanced Programs
Administration and Supervision. The assessment of candidates is described above; however, I will provide a brief summary here. Assessment of the achievement of intern objectives occurs each semester. During the fall semester, the campus supervisor audits the achievement of objectives. In the spring semester, an on-site audit is conducted by the candidate, the mentor, and the campus supervisor. Assessment rubrics have not been used until now; they will be developed for each objective for the spring 2003 on-site audit. A more general rubric was used in the fall 2002 audit. It is attached. At the end of the internship, a full audit of all objectives is conducted by the candidate, mentor, and campus supervisor. Rubrics will be developed to assess overall candidate performance in the internship. Information collected from these assessments will be used to determine whether the candidate has acquired the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of an effective school leader and to assess the performance of the program. Remediation will be provided candidates as needed and the program will be revised as needed. Please see the assessment document.
Counselor Education. In the Counseling Diverse Populations and the School Counseling course, candidates are expected to adopt a stance of advocacy for students or other individuals whose voice can easily be left out. Part of this process is understanding the impact of underlying beliefs, worldviews, and policies that effect the educational system.
Throughout the practicum and internship experiences, candidates are required to keep logs and journals of their experiences as well as to review tapes of their counseling sessions with their supervisors. During the supervision sessions, they are asked to reflect on their personal development as counselors, their integration of skills and theories, and the effects of their counseling approaches. Candidates work on a dual level of working with students on developing and meeting goals, while simultaneously develop their own goals and assessing their own process of meeting those goals. Evaluation of each candidate is based on progress in these areas, understanding that each individual develops in unique ways and tempos.
Reading Specialist. For the Reading Specialist Program, materials from
the first practicum will be reviewed regularly by the professor of record for
evidence of candidate and the student learning. Relevant documents from the
first practicum include the tutoring logs, the two tutoring reports, and the
candidate’s weekly oral presentation of tutoring during the fifteen class
sessions that take place to support the tutoring. The specific experiences and
measures used for this practicum are detailed in the folio for the Reading
Specialist Program prepared for review by the International Reading
Association.
Materials associated with
the second practicum will be reviewed for evidence of candidate learning and
school improvement. Relevant activities and documents will be assessed using
rubrics prepared for this course. (See syllabus for illustrative rubrics.)
These rubrics will be used by the professor of record as well as the
school-based reading specialist who is participating with the program.
Assessment will focus on evidence of candidate and student learning and school
improvement.
