Accountability in Teacher Education: Fourth-Year Results from a Longitudinal Study Evaluating a Redesigned Teacher Education Program.

Overview & Synopsis

Western Illinois University's College of Education and Human Services has redesigned its teacher education program for pre-service elementary teachers. The redesigned program provides more classroom observations and onsite field experiences in the schools at earlier stages in student teachers' education and offers methods classes with integrated coursework (which are team taught by subject matter experts) that allows for the application of integrated, thematic units in actual classroom settings. A longitudinal study compared students in this redesigned program to students in a traditional teacher education program. Data collected on three redesign cohorts and their control groups over 4 years included: demographics, high school percentile rate, ACT scores, cumulative grade point average in college, percent receiving semester honors in college, scores on the Teacher Belief Inventory, preliminary certification pretest scores, scores on a written philosophy of education essay, assessment of their unit planning skills, performance on the State Teacher Certification Test, and job attainment. Overall, students in the redesign groups did at least as well as, or in several cases did better than, students in the traditional teacher education program. (SM)