Testing Teacher Candidates

Americans have adopted a reform agenda for their schools that calls for excellence in teaching and learning. School officials across the nation are hard at work targeting instruction at high levels for all students. Gaps remain, however, between the nation's educational aspirations and student achievement. To address these gaps, policy makers have recently focused on the qualifications of teachers and the preparation of teacher candidates. This book examines the appropriateness and technical quality of teacher licensure tests currently in use, evaluates the merits of using licensure test results to hold states and institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of teacher preparation and licensure, and suggests alternatives for developing and assessing beginning teacher competence. Teaching is a complex activity. Definitions of quality teaching have changed and will continue to change over time as society's values change. This book provides policy makers, teacher testers, and teacher educators with advice on how to use current tests to assess teacher candidates and evaluate teacher preparation, ensuring that America's youth are being taught by the most qualified candidates.

Americans have adopted a reform agenda for their schools that calls for excellence in teaching and learning. School officials across the nation are hard at work targeting instruction at high levels for all students. Gaps remain, however, between the nation's educational aspirations and student achievement. To address these gaps, policy makers have recently focused on the qualifications of teachers and the preparation of teacher candidates. This book examines the appropriateness and technical quality of teacher licensure tests currently in use, evaluates the merits of using licensure test results to hold states and institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of teacher preparation and licensure, and suggests alternatives for developing and assessing beginning teacher competence. Teaching is a complex activity. Definitions of quality teaching have changed and will continue to change over time as society's values change. This book provides policy makers, teacher testers, and teacher educators with advice on how to use current tests to assess teacher candidates and evaluate teacher preparation, ensuring that America's youth are being taught by the most qualified candidates.

Teacher candidates need authentic practice with language learners so that they can test and hone their skills based on the concepts learned in their teacher education programs with real students. These candidates need practice before and beyond student teaching and fieldwork. If they are given the chance to practice during as many teacher education courses as possible and have access to language learners throughout their programs, they can focus on applying the specific content of each class they take in a real-world context with real students. Engaging Teacher Candidates and Language Learners With Authentic Practice highlights strategies teacher educators can use to give their teacher candidates authentic practice attached to coursework. By focusing on ways that authentic practice has been integrated into teacher preparation programs and studies that have been realized, this publication will provide practical ways for others to provide this authentic practice, which is much needed in teacher preparation programs. This book highlights topics such as pedagogy, student engagement, and intercultural competence and is ideal for educators, administrators, researchers, and students.

Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers are underrepresented in public schools across the United States of America, with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color making up roughly 37% of the adult population and 50% of children, but just 19% of the teaching force. Yet research over decades has indicated their positive impact on student learning and social and emotional development, particularly for Students of Color and Indigenous Students. A first of its kind, the Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers addresses key issues and obstacles to ethnoracial diversity across the life course of teachers’ careers, such as recruitment and retention, professional development, and the role of minority-serving institutions. Including chapters from leading researchers and policy makers, the Handbook is designed to be an important resource to help bridge the gap between scholars, practitioners, and policy makers. In doing so, this research will serve as a launching pad for discussion and change at this critical moment in our country’s history. The volume’s goal is to drive conversations around the issue of ethnoracial teacher diversity and to provide concrete practices for policy makers and practitioners to enable them to make evidence-based decisions for supporting an ethnoracially diverse educator workforce, now and in the future.

Journal of Education and Learning (EduLearn) is an interdisciplinary international journal of original research and writing on education. The EduLearn aims to provide a forum for scholarly understanding of the field of education and plays an important role in promoting the process that accumulated knowledge, values, and skills are transmitted from one generation to another; and to make methods and contents of evaluation and research in education available to teachers, administrators and research workers. Breaking the Barriers of a "Silenced Identity": Teacher Trainees' Attitudes towards the Bilingual Presentation in Hebrew and Amharic Baratz Lea 87 Transformative Learning Model for Youth Life Skills Entrepreneurs in Poor Weavers Songket Palembang Ayi Olim, Bertha N 99 Computer Presentation Programs and Teaching Research Methodologies Vahid Motamedi 111 Effects of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition Learning Model on the English Learning Skills Hadiwinarto Hadiwinarto, Novianti Novianti 117 Toward a Better Preparation of Student Teachers’ Reading Skill: The SQ3R Strategy with Authentic and Simplified Texts on Reading Literacy and Vocabulary Mastery Robi Soma, Amirul Mukminin, Noprival Noprival 125 An Investigation on Organizational Charlatan Behaviour and Moral Identity as Predictors of Shame: Importance for Education Juneman Abraham, Rahma Putri Noka Berline 135 Effects of an Informal Energy Exhibit on Knowledge and Attitudes of Fourth Grade Students David Goodman 145 The Investigation of Critical Thinking Dispositions of Religious Culture and Ethics Teacher Candidates Abdulkadir Cekin 158 Factors Contributing to Examination Malpractices at Secondary School Level in Kohat Division, Pakistan Qaiser Suleman, Rizwana Gul, Sadia Ambrin, Farrukh Kamran 165