The traditional teacher preparation model and traditional assessments are outdated, necessitating flexible and accelerated pathways to address declining enrollment and educator shortages. Apprenticeships and competency-based education offer viable alternatives, emphasizing skill attainment over traditional timelines. Effective alternative…

Tennessee state law (Tenn. Code Ann. § 49-5-5619(b)(2)) charges the Tennessee Department of Education (the department) with producing an annual report on the levels of effectiveness of educators endorsed to teach in grades Kindergarten through third (K-3) for the most recent three school years. This is the second annual report and examines recent…

Following a set of state meetings held throughout fall 2020, the Virginia Education Assessment Collaborative (VEAC) decided to offer a mini-conference in November 2020 to round out offerings and to buttress conversation around topics of high need and interest to Educator Preparation Providers (EPPs). Leveraging the familiar process of the…

Despite calls for more evidence regarding the effectiveness of teacher education practices, causal research in the field remains rare. One reason is that we lack designs and measurement approaches that appropriately meet the challenges of causal inference in the context of teacher education programs. This article provides a framework for how to…

In the United States, people often feel like they need to choose between pursuing a conventional four-year college degree or working, leaving millions of people with no opportunity to achieve the professional and economic advancement that comes with a bachelor's degree. What if this is a false choice? Apprenticeship Degrees offer a hybrid option…

The purpose of this article is to provide recommendations as to how teacher content knowledge can be improved to enhance the efficacy of RT programs for secondary PE students. We offer four recommendations including 1) Embed RT for adolescents content knowledge within physical education teacher education (PETE) programs, 2) Professional…

Teacher residencies offer promising alternatives to traditional educator preparation programs. Research points to three primary benefits: higher retention of teachers in the field, greater demographic diversity among teachers prepared through residency programs, and the potential to increase student achievement. At a time when enrollment in…

The 2020-21 accreditation year continued to be impacted in significant ways by the ongoing nature of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. All accreditation activities, including site visits, were adjusted to reflect this new reality and to maintain full implementation of the system while continuing efforts to refine the newer aspects of the current…

SHAPE America has identified four goals as part of the "50 Million Strong by 2029" initiative; one of these goals is healthy behavior. School-based health education is uniquely positioned to be a primary route through which this goal can be achieved. Health education is an academic subject included in a well-rounded education, based on…

Critical teacher shortages in the U.S. drove the development of the Teacher Residency model to improve recruitment, preparation, and retention of highly qualified educators within public schools. Faculty and staff involved in the Teacher Quality Partnership project, a U.S. Department of Education funded teacher preparation program at the…

Ensuring that cultural sensitivity in teacher education programs is addressed will enhance new teachers' confidence and effectiveness in the classroom. As the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, teacher candidates have experienced a non-contact environment at every stage of their professional education. Specifically, the pandemic impacted the…

Drawing on reflexive conversations, we describe our experiences teaching a new mandatory course in Indigenous education at Western University in London, Ontario. By discussing the successes, challenges, and mistakes made while teaching this course, we hope to continue to decolonize our practice as settlers, PhD students, and educators with the…

Creating a strong clinical practice experience for every teacher at scale requires that three core actors--prep programs, school districts, and states--work together. This framework sets out the six focus areas of clinical practice backed by research and supported by the field as the most important to build a quality clinical practice experience.…

Clinical practice opportunities are critical elements of teacher preparation. However, the landscape is extensive, encompassing an ever-growing variety of preparation models, from centuries-old traditional student teaching to newly minted registered apprenticeships. The purpose of this paper is to create a clinical practice lexicon for the…

As educator preparation programs (EPPs) seek to enact programmatic innovations to effectively prepare candidates to enter the profession, they must create structures that empower teacher candidates (TCs) to apply their knowledge in increasingly complex situations within authentic contexts, i.e., the classroom (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015).…