1.0
Quality Principle I: Evidence of student learning
The core of TEAC accreditation is the quality of
the evidence the program faculty members provide in support of their
claims about their students’ learning and understanding of
the teacher education curriculum. Overall, TEAC requires evidence
that the candidates can teach effectively and do what else is expected
of them as professional educators.
Whatever the particular topics of the curriculum
that faculty members claim their students master, TEAC requires
that the program faculty members address the following general components
of their program in ways that also indicate that the faculty has
an accurate and balanced understanding of the academic disciplines
that are connected to the program under accreditation review.
1.1
Subject matter knowledge
Candidates for the degree must learn and understand the
subject matters they hope to teach. TEAC requires evidence that
the program’s candidates acquire and understand these subject
matters.
1.2
Pedagogical knowledge
The primary obligation of the teacher is representing the
subject matter in ways that his or her students can readily learn
and understand. TEAC requires evidence that the candidates for the
program’s degree learn how to convert their knowledge of a
subject matter into compelling lessons that meet the needs of a
wide range of students.
1.3
Teaching skill
Above all, teachers are expected to act on their knowledge in a
caring and professional manner that would lead to appropriate levels
of achievement for all their pupils. Caring is a particular kind
of relationship between the teacher and the student that is defined
by the teacher’s unconditional acceptance of the student,
the teacher’s intention to address the student’s educational
needs, the teacher’s competence to meet those needs, and the
student’s recognition that the teacher cares.
Although it recognizes that the available measures of caring are
not as well developed as the measures of student learning, TEAC
requires evidence that the program’s graduates are caring.
Cross-cutting dimensions of Quality Principle
I.
TEAC calls special attention to the liberal arts and general education
dimensions of the teacher education curriculum. Because these dimensions
cut across and are essential parts of each component of Quality
Principle I, the program faculty must also address and provide
evidence about them, as they would for any other aspects of their
case for their graduates’ subject matter knowledge, pedagogical
knowledge, and caring teaching skill.
The skills and content of a liberal arts education
(e.g., technology, learning to learn, multicultural perspectives)
are essential parts of the teacher’s subject matter knowledge,
pedagogical knowledge, and teaching skill. Graduates who understand
their teaching subject also know and understand
· the technological dimensions of their
subject;
· the qualifications that limit generalization owing to different
cultural perspectives;
· how to fill in the gaps in their knowledge and apply what
they have learned in college to new situations;
· how their subject matter fits with the rest of knowledge,
its purpose, value, and limitations.
Teachers are expected to be well-informed persons
even though they may never directly teach much of the information
they acquire. TEAC requires evidence that the candidates know and
understand subject matters that they may never be called upon to
teach, but which are still associated with and expected of educated
persons and professional educators in particular.
These include the oral and written rhetorical skills,
critical thinking, and the qualitative and quantitative reasoning
skills that are embedded in subject matter, pedagogy, and teaching
performance. They also include knowledge of other perspectives and
cultures and some of the modern technological tools of scholarship.
Learning
to learn
Multicultural
perspectives and understanding
Technology
COMMENT on cross-cutting themes: Teachers can be
said to have acquired teaching skill at the level TEAC envisions
(1) if they employ the teaching technologies that are available
because they understand them; (2) if they reach all the pupils in
their class through their knowledge of individual and cultural differences;
and (3) if they continue to develop professionally because they
understand how to learn on their own and how to apply what they
have learned to novel situations in their classrooms.
They can be said to have acquired teaching skill
at a sufficient level if they have ways to distinguish the essential
content from the peripheral, ethical teaching practices from the
unethical ones, knowledge from opinion, obligations from academic
freedom, and the unique responsibilities of teaching in a democratic
society from teaching in a non-democratic one.
Cross-cutting themes:
two examples |
| 1. The case that the program’s
graduates know their subject matter in mathematics would also
include evidence that they know how to solve mathematics prob-lems
they were not directly taught, that they know how to learn
new areas of mathematics, that they understand the contributions
of other cultures to the discipline of mathematics, and that
they can use calculators and computers appropriately when
they apply their mathematics to problems.
|
2. The case that the program’s
graduates know pedagogy (e.g., how to teach reading) would
include evidence that the graduates know how to learn and
use new or alternative methods of teaching reading, know how
to improve their teaching of reading, know how to make accommodations
in their teaching for students of differing backgrounds, and
know how to employ, when it is appropriate, technologically
based instructional programs in reading. |
Noddings, N.
(1999). “Caring and competence,” In G. Griffin (Ed.)
The education of teachers. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. pp. 205-220. (Return to 1.3)
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