TEAC expects that a faculty’s decisions about its programs are based on evidence, and that the program has a quality control system that (1) yields reliable evidence about the program’s practices and results and (2) influences policies and decision making.

Quality Principle III addresses the ongoing research and inquiry needed to meet the other two quality principles. TEAC’s Quality Principle III presupposes a system of faculty inquiry, review, and quality control is in place: the faculty has a means to secure the evidence and informed opinion it needs to initiate or improve program quality.

Quality Principle III also encourages the program faculty to become skilled at creating knowledge for the improvement of teaching and learning and to modify the program and practices to reflect this new knowledge.

TEAC expects that the faculty will systematically and continuously improve the quality of its professional education programs and provide evidence about the following two issues in the faculty’s ongoing processes of inquiry and program improvement.

3.1 Program decisions and planning based on evidence

From time to time, a teacher education faculty will decide to modify its curricula, assessment systems, pedagogical approaches, faculty composition, and so forth. TEAC requires evidence that the information derived from faculty’s research and inquiry into Quality Principle I and Quality Principle II has a role in improving the program, and will continue to have such a role in the future.

The program faculty’s research into Quality Principles I and II entails, for example, the investigation of any local factors that are associated with, and implicated in, student learning and its assessment.

To satisfy Quality Principle III, the program faculty must be committed to consistently improving its capacity to offer quality professional education programs. Wherever possible, the program faculty should base the steps it takes to improve the program on evidence derived from its inquiry into the effects various factors have on the assessment of student learning.

3.2 Influential quality control system

The faculty must have a quality control system in place to examine and evaluate the components of the program’s capacity for quality, including, its curriculum, students, faculty expertise, program and course requirements, and facilities.

TEAC requires evidence, based on an internal audit conducted by the program’s faculty, that the quality control system functions as it was designed, that it promotes the program’s continual improvement, and that it yields evidence that supports Quality Principles I and II.

Many factors may affect the quality of a program and influence the assessments of the academic accomplishments of the program’s students. TEAC requires that the faculty undertake ongoing inquiry and research into the likely factors associated with the students’ accomplishments. TEAC expects that, over time, this inquiry will lead to a better understanding of the local factors and components of program quality that are important and would justify their continued nurture and investment. This inquiry and the efforts to control quality should also lead to an awareness of some factors that can be treated with indifference because they have only marginal effects on program quality.

Although any number of factors and components of the program may affect program quality, TEAC requires the program faculty to address directly seven standards (4.1–4.7), each of which seems to have a plausible association with student learning and program quality.

TEAC’s seven standards are based upon the U.S. Department of Education’s requirement that any accrediting agency recognized by the Secretary as a reliable gatekeeper for federal funding have standards for seven dimensions of program capacity: curriculum, faculty, resources, facilities, accurate publications, student support services, and student feedback.

Although TEAC encourages programs to investigate and provide evidence of other local factors that affect capacity for quality, TEAC requires programs to provide plans to investigate, over time, and through their quality control systems, plausible links between student learning and the seven federal components of program quality.

Ultimately, the evidence for an adequate quality control system comes from the program faculty’s ongoing investigation of any plausible links between capacity and student learning. In other words, the program faculty’s quality control system should have agents that continually investigate and ask, What about each component could be expected to facilitate student accomplishment and learning, and what evidence can we rely on to support and justify that expectation?

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