Ann Bullock, dean, professor and director of teacher education in the School of Education, has co-authored two chapters in Using Data to Improve Teacher Education: Moving Evidence into Action published in 2021 by Teacher College Press.
Ann Bullock, Dean, Professor, and Director of Teacher Education in the School of Education, has co-authored two chapters in “Using Data to Improve Teacher Education: Moving Evidence into Action” published in 2021 by Teacher College Press.
The book, “Using Data to Improve Teacher Education: Moving Evidence into Action,” offers concrete examples of how data can be used by faculty, staff, and program leaders to improve their collective work as teacher educators. Strong external accountability mandates often lead to tensions that undermine local morale and motivation. This volume focuses on the practical work of navigating these tensions so that valuable programmatic change can happen. It describes policies and practices drawn from a study of “high data use” teacher education programs from around the country that have strategically engaged the challenges of learning to use data for program improvement. Readers will see how the data-use work carried out in these programs strengthened local program identity and coherence. Representing a collaborative effort between researchers and practitioners, this volume presents lessons learned to assist teacher educators who are engaged daily with the challenges of making data useful and used in their programs.
The book features:
- Examples of how tensions between external mandates for accountability and program improvement can be navigated in ways that are grounded in local program values.
- Detailed case study portraits of individual programs that offer a full and action-oriented sense of data use work.
- Strategies for ensuring that data systems are responsive to multiple stakeholders, such as faculty, administrators, students, and policymakers.
- A diversity of perspectives and experiences from small liberal arts colleges, large teacher preparation institutions, and research-intensive universities.
The chapter titled, “Leadership strategy and practice,” is co-authored by Tine Sloan, teaching professor in the Department of Education and director of the California Teacher Education Research and Improvement Network at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Diana B. Lys, assistant dean for the educator preparation and accreditation and clinical assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Ann Adams Bullock, dean and professor in the School of Education, and director of teacher education at Elon University.
Skillful leadership is essential to building local capacity and commitment to using data for program improvement. While concerns about leadership often center on the actions of a dean, department chair, or program director, the program portraits presented in the present volume (Alverno College; University of California, Santa Barbara; and East Carolina University) indicate how important it is that leadership functions are distributed across all sectors of professional practice within a teacher education program. Course instructor, field supervisors, cooperating teachers, and administrators face a set of shared leadership challenges related to both the contemporary policy context and institutional history of teacher education. This chapter begins by identifying some of these common challenges, and then describes what the co-authors have learned in their efforts to engage in multiple program contexts.
The chapter titled, “Improving programs through collaborative research and writing,” is co-authored by Joy N. Stapleton, assistant professor and elementary program director at Winthrop University, Diana B. Lys, assistant dean for the educator preparation and accreditation and clinical assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Christina M. Tschida, associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Appalachian State University, Elizabeth Fogarty, lecturer in literacy education at the University of Minnesota, Ann Adams Bullock, dean and professor in the School of Education, and director of teacher education at Elon University, and Kristen Cuthrell, professor in elementary education and middle grades education in the College of Education at East Carolina University and director of Rural Education Institute.
Teachers spend only 3% of their day collaborating with their colleagues (Mirel & Goldin, 2012). This isolation associated with teaching is not new. Lortie documented it as early as 1975 in his book Schoolteacher, and it remains evident today (V. Strauss, 2013; Webb, 2018). This culture of isolation follows teachers as they move into faculty positions in colleges of education where they often work in academic silos, especially early in their career (Jones, 2013; Norrell & Ingoldsby, 1991). Academic silos can be difficult to navigate for faculty in small educator preparation programs (EPPs) where faculty take on many administrative roles, and in large EPPs where faculty carry heavy teaching loads and navigate increasingly intense standards for promotion and tenure. One potential way to offset academic isolation is through the formation of vibrant intellectual communities to support teaching and scholarly production. These communities can leverage collaborative research to improve programs and, ultimately, to contribute to the research base on teacher preparation. In this chapter current and former faculty from East Carolina University describe our roles as collaborative researchers who developed a collective and program-focused research agenda that contributed to the improvement of our teacher candidates as well as programs. As faculty at a large regional EPP, we balanced heavy teaching loads and increasing demands for promotion and tenure as our institution pivoted to be more research-intensive. Specifically, we describe the collaborative process surrounding three key program innovations and highlight informal networks, program improvements, and collaborative research efforts to sustain innovations.
References:
Sloan, T., Lys, D. B., & Bullock, A. A. (2021). Leadership strategy and practice. In C. A. Peck, K. Cuthrell, D. H. Pointer Mace, T. Sloan & D. B. Lys (Eds.) Data to improve teacher education: Moving evidence into action (pp. 153-172). Teacher College Press.
Stapleton, J. N., Lys, D. B., Tschida, C. M., Fogarty, E., Bullock, A. A. & Cuthrell, K. (2021). Improving programs through collaborative research and writing. In C. A. Peck, K. Cuthrell, D. H. Pointer Mace, T. Sloan & D. B. Lys (Eds.) Data to improve teacher education: Moving evidence into action (pp. 193-208). Teacher College Press.