Building Consensus: Articulating a Knowledge Base for Teacher Education.

Overview & Synopsis

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) developed new standards to contribute to reform in teacher education. However, during the first 2 years of implementing the new standards, a large number of colleges were turned down, in part because of a lack of guidelines and conceptual clarity. Significant to these standards is the preparation of a knowledge base for which there is conceptual confusion. A design for a self-study at larger teacher education programs has been developed and described; this paper describes a model for developing an NCATE self-study for a middle or small sized program. Otterbein College (Ohio) developed a 3-stage model, implemented over a 3-year period, for self-study of its status with regard to NCATE standards. The program model maximizes input from three sources: professional education faculty, liberal arts faculty, and cooperating practitioners. In stage 1, education faculty studied and measured existing offerings against certain established characteristics of a knowledge base. Liberal arts faculty reviewed general program objectives, objectives specific to their teaching areas, and admissions requirements. Practitioners, through an advisory committee, listed characteristics of successful beginning teachers and related these characteristics to admissions requirements and program goals. In stage 2 a curriculum alignment study was conducted, and discrepancies between state and NCATE guidelines and present offerings were identified. Stage 3 involved the education department in drafting and redrafting a document, eventually reaching consensus. All aspects of the process and the minutes of the initial faculty meeting are presented in five tables. (IAH)