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Evidence-based inquiry cycle: A model for meeting the council for the accreditation of educator preparation standard 5
Abstract
This article outlines the need for support and best practices for educator preparation providers (EPPs) to meet the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) standards, specifically, CAEP’s Standard Component 5.1 Quality Assurance System. The purpose of this article was to identify a continuous improvement model that EPPs can be utilized to support quality assurance processes in meeting CAEP Standard Component 5. The article used a secondary analysis methodology to examine past theories, models and research to outline best practices for EPPs. The findings provided a strong case for teacher education programs to utilize an evidence-based inquiry cycle for the foundation of their quality assurance systems and positive change in general. Additionally, best practices were identified to aid in maintaining such a system including support for providers, collaboration with stakeholders, an emphasis on positive culture, and a focus on quality outcomes and data. This article has implications not only for EPPs but for other providers focusing on quality assurance measures that should be supported through inquiry, strong evidence, and continuous improvement efforts. A practical recommendation of this study is that EPPs should use an evidence-based inquiry cycle to assist in developing, implementing, and modifying each provider’s quality assurance system to better serve their candidates.
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Purpose
This article presents a definition and rationale for evidence-based reform in education, and a discussion of the current state of evidence-based research, focusing on China, the U.S., and the U.K.
Design/Approach/Methods
The article contrasts the state of educational research in the U.S., the U.K., and China, world leaders in evidence-based reform.
Findings
The article suggests ways in which Chinese, U.S., U.K., and other scholars might improve the worldwide quality of evidence-based reform in education. One indicator of this partnership is an agreement among the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Nanjing Normal University, and Johns Hopkins University to work together on Chinese and English versions of the website Best Evidence in Brief and a collaboration between Johns Hopkins and the ECNU Review of Education at East China Normal University.
Originality/Value
This article is the first to compare developments in evidence-based reform in education in China with parallel developments in the U.S. and U.K. Building understanding of current evidence-based policies should help all countries learn how evidence can play a greater role in education policy and benefit many students.
To be effective, school health instruction should be taught by health educators who have graduated from accredited health education teacher education programs and are certified in health education. Unfortunately, the nation has failed to ensure that all those who teach health in schools are well prepared. States vary in the required coursework for health teachers in terms of initial licensure and continuing education for licensure renewal; most elementary teachers are not required to receive preparation in health education; health education and physical education are often viewed as synonymous disciplines; support for in-service education of health teachers is often lacking; and more research is needed in professional preparation and development of school health educators. This article provides a call to action in five areas to strengthen both the professional preparation and professional development of school health educators. Given that education is a social determinant of health, public health educators must become stronger allies in supporting school health to promote health equity. Public health practitioners can advocate to state and community school decision makers for comprehensive school health education taught by teachers with appropriate professional preparation and certification in health education. Public health faculty can educate their students about the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child framework and effective strategies for its implementation, and seek rigorous professional preparation and certification and accreditation standards for their school teacher preparation programs. National health and education organizations can call for new leadership and investments in health education teacher preparation and development for a brighter future.
Teachers need to update their competence profiles for 21st century challenges. Teaching strategies need to change and so do the competences teachers need to develop so as to empower 21st‐century learners. The European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu) represents a paradigmatic example of this endeavour, taking stock of these needs. Defining the requirements of education professionals by teacher competence frameworks can serve multiple purposes at different levels in education systems. At the micro level, it can support and guide teachers' practice and continuous professional development. At the meso level of local education governance, it can support the development of school institutions as learning organisations, providing common ground for dialogue, collaboration and reflection in professional communities of practice. At the macro level of quality assurance, it can provide reference standards for initial teacher education, and for education professionals' quality along the career continuum. The European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators was designed to align with institutional and contextual requirements in different countries, whilst remaining open to adaptation and updating. It links teachers' and students' digital competence development, and can be linked to institutional capacity building. At the same time, the framework is generic enough to apply to different educational settings and to allow for adaptation as technological possibilities and constraints evolve.
The present article offers a mixed-method perspective on the investigation of determinants of effectiveness in quality assurance at higher education institutions. We collected survey data from German higher education institutions to analyse the degree to which quality managers perceive their approaches to quality assurance as effective. Based on this data, we develop an ordinary least squares regression model which explains perceived effectiveness through structural variables and certain quality assurance-related activities of quality managers. The results show that support by higher education institutions’ higher management and cooperation with other education institutions are relevant preconditions for larger perceived degrees of quality assurance effectiveness. Moreover, quality managers’ role as promoters of quality assurance exhibits significant correlations with perceived effectiveness. In contrast, sanctions and the perception of quality assurance as another administrative burden reveal negative correlations.
Objectives: This study outlines the journey of an online university to evaluate faculty performance standards, key performance indicators, and systems for quality assurance using an appreciative inquiry summit model. The study reveals the power of quality appreciation as an approach that elicits a shared vision for quality definitions and standards and serves as a historical marker in the higher education shift from data-driven faculty performance approaches to strengths-based, inclusive methods. Method: The retrospective business case outlines one university’s 2018 Appreciative Inquiry Summit, 5D (define, discover, dream, design, destiny/deliver) approach, resulting deliverables, lessons learned, and conclusions. Results: The summit and subsequent quality appreciation processes laid a foundation for inclusive leadership and inclusive teaching and learning. Quality appreciation was observed to be a third component to quality enhancement that had heretofore included quality control and quality assurance mechanisms. Quality appreciation, based on appreciative inquiry (AI) approaches, is a method for uncovering the positive core of an organization that results in ideal quality standards, definitions, and desires for ongoing quality creation. Conclusions: This case provides a view of one university’s building upon data-driven methods for faculty performance evaluation. The use of appreciative inquiry to advance a quality appreciation agenda and human-centered approaches served as a stepping-stone toward a vision for inclusive, strengths-based quality enhancement. Implication for Theory and/or Practice: Quality control mechanisms and systems for quality assurance are supported by quality appreciation. In this case, faculty quality appreciation is the integration of AI practices with ongoing evaluation and identification of faculty and classroom quality standards. Quality Appreciation leads to strengthened definitions of quality that are values-driven and founded in the heart and soul of the university’s teaching and learning.
Teacher preparation programs (TPPs) have received a great deal of policy and research attention of late. And despite the commonsense notion that preparation for formal classroom responsibilities should improve the readiness of teacher candidates, the value of formalized preservice teacher education is unclear. In this review of the quantitative evidence about TPPs, I find that most studies show only minor differences in the value added of teachers who graduate from different programs, and that there are only a few studies that focus on the association between the features of teacher preparation and teacher workforce outcomes. The lack of evidence on the importance of the features of teacher preparation is primarily due to data deficiencies: data often do not permit connections between TPP features and teacher workforce outcomes. As a consequence, feedback loops that could theoretically provide TPPs with actionable information about program design typically do not exist.
The first of its kind, Teacher Education across Minority-Serving Institutions brings together innovative work from the family of institutions known as minority-serving institutions: Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions. The book moves beyond a singular focus on teacher racial diversity that has characterized scholarship and policy work in this area. Instead, it pushes for scholars to consider that racial diversity in teacher education is not simply an end in itself but is, a means to accomplish other goals, such as developing justice-oriented and asset-based pedagogies.
Responding to the challenge of more rigorous and outcome-oriented program evaluation criteria of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), authors take a critical look at the intersection of two standards: Clinical Partnerships and Practice (Standard 2) and Program Impact (Standard 4). Illustrating one aspect of a secondary education teacher preparation program, authors consider how clinical partnerships can be designed in light of these standards to have a positive impact on P-12 student learning. Focusing on the program evaluation framework, authors describe a spectrum of diverse formative and summative growth measures that document the scope of impact for all stakeholders, including students. In light of the Feuer, Floden, Chudowsky, and Ahn (2013) questioning framework, authors assess program outcomes. In closing, the authors (a) conclude that comprehensive evaluation models are needed to document complex outcomes, which will make program impact more visible and measureable; (b) recommend using the Feuer et al. decision-making framework to initiate and guide programmatic design and evaluation model development; and (c) affirm CAEP's expectations—clinical partnerships go beyond positive relationships, coselection of mentor teachers and candidates, and commitment to diverse settings to ensuring P-12 student achievement—as attainable goals for educator preparation accreditation.
Fundamental to teachers becoming responsive to student learning needs is the availability of detailed information about what students know and can do. High-quality assessment data can provide that information, but much more is needed to improve teaching practice in ways that have a substantive impact on student learning. A set of conditions are identified that result in such an impact, based on a synthesis of the international literature on professional development that has demonstrated a positive impact on student outcomes and a professional development program in over 300 New Zealand primary schools. This professional development program is focused on the interpretation and use of assessment information, building relevant pedagogical content knowledge in literacy and developing leadership for the change management process. These developments occurred within systematic inquiry and knowledge- building cycles based on assessment data for both teachers and leaders. Student achievement gains in reading and writing have accelerated at a rate averaging more than twice that expected, with even greater gains for the lowest-performing students. Both the projects have led to the identification of a set of conditions necessary for assessment data to result in improved teaching practice.
A national literacy professional development project reduced the achievement gap for students experiencing difficulties in reading or writing in 91 of New Zealand's schools. It was based on two premises: coherence within and between the multiple levels of the schooling and educational administration systems, and a focus on evidence-informed inquiry into effectiveness at each level of the system. Over the 2 years of the project's operation, these two premises interacted in ways that led to ongoing problem identification. Examples include how students understood their learning, how teachers and school leaders taught these students, how professional development facilitators changed their approaches, and how the project leaders and policy makers developed new systems for learning. Solutions were actively and collaboratively sought at all levels. Research data included assessment of student literacy in reading or writing; participant observations of the project leadership operations; interviews with principals, literacy leaders, and teachers; scenario responses; and interviews with facilitators. An analysis of facilitator practice early in the project illustrates how project leadership responded to the problems identified. Ongoing learning resulted from the interaction between facilitator feedback to teachers and their reflective responses to the observations of that feedback. Important to the success of this program is the continued feedback, not only to teachers implementing change, but also to the facilitators and policy makers instrumental in the training of the teachers. This feedback, coupled with reflective practice, at all levels of the educational system provided the means for teachers to improve the success of all students in their classrooms.
In today's climate of grading schools and blaming teachers, educators more than ever need to understand exactly what they do well. It is hard for educators to resist being overcome by all the negativity, and even harder to maintain their motivation each day. In this article, the author discusses how National School Reform Faculty (NSRF) and Critical Friends Groups (CFGs) emerged from efforts to uplift the professional development of teachers. The author also discusses how NSRF and CFGs protocols help teachers identify what they do that is really good and use it more effectively. Explanations about the three NSRF protocols--Success Analysis Protocol, Microlab Protocol, and Inquiry Circles Protocol--are presented in this article.
The present work develops ideas first presented in
Studies in Logical Theory. "All logical forms (with their characteristic properties) arise within the operation of inquiry and are concerned with control of inquiry so that it may yield warranted assertions." "Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole." After an introductory section, the three remaining parts of the treatise deal successively with the structure of inquiry and the construction of judgments, propositions and terms, and the logic of scientific method. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study examined the effects of using Appreciative Inquiry in accreditation and related institutional effectiveness activities within higher education. Using an explanatory participant-selection mixed methods approach, qualitative data from a series of interviews were used to explain the experiences of individuals identified from quantitative survey results. Appreciative Inquiry is a theoretical framework for action research, organizational development, and evaluation that emphasizes the positive aspects of human systems. In recent years, Appreciative Inquiry has been applied specifically to improvement activities associated with regional accreditation, such as the Vital Focus self-assessment that precedes the transition to the Higher Learning Commission's AQIP process. Few studies have attempted to identify common attitudes or themes across multiple institutions using Appreciative inquiry, and no prior studies have addressed the specific impact of Appreciative Inquiry-based accreditation activities. In the initial quantitative phase of the study, ANOVA procedures failed to detect a significant difference in perceptions of either institutional or individual change among three levels of participation. Multiple regression analysis indicated that on-going communication and allocation of resources around the inquiry results are two characteristics most strongly correlated with perceptions of positive institutional change. These two characteristics, along with having a positive topic, continuation of project teams, and training on theory underlying the process, also correlated strongly with perception of positive individual change. The mixed methods results explained these statistical findings in greater breadth and depth by linking them to the results of the qualitative interview phase of the study. Participants described structural and climate changes at their institutions as well as changes in themselves regardless of their level of participation. The stories told by the interview participants reinforced the characteristics of Appreciative Inquiry that correlated with perceptions of change in the statistical analyses and showed the different forms that these characteristics might take at different institutions. Overall, the findings suggest that institutional effectiveness activities based on highly inclusive, open conversations on positive topics, which are supported in all phases by administration, have great potential for changing institutions and individuals in a positive way. Appreciative Inquiry adds value to the accreditation process in higher education institutions.
Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation
Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation. (2022). CAEP 2022 revised standards workbook. Retrieved from
https://caepnet.org/~/media/Files/caep/accreditation-resources/caep-2022-standards-workbook-final.pdf?la=en
International Journal of Education and Practice, 2023, 11(3): 657-668
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