Corporation
of New York
Vol. 4/No. 2
Spring 2007
The Lost (and Found) Voters of Hurricane Katrina
At the Heart of South Africa, a Constitution and a Court
A Timeless University Trains Teachers for a New Era
Philanthropy Now: Diversity and Creativity for Changing Times
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A Timeless University Trains Teachers for a New Era
It was the existing relationship between education and arts and sciences divisions that clinched the TNE deal, in Ayers’ view. He had been involved in integrating Curry with liberal arts even before becoming dean, and four years into the grant remains highly enthusiastic about TNE’s prospects. He’s particularly proud of the advisory process it generated. Seven advising teams have been formed, each led by a college department chair or associate dean and consisting of faculty from both colleges. “Students were the active agents in the alliance,” Ayers noted, “and brought teachers into it. Now advisors from the College know Curry advisors. They work together to make sure students are getting the very best advice to help them as teachers, which assures they will live up to their potential.”
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Also thanks to the impetus of Teachers for a New Era, the University of Virginia has worked harder to recruit underrepresented groups to the teaching profession and as a result of these efforts has concluded that initiatives must begin much earlier—ideally before students have matriculated into college—recognizing the importance of outreach to high school students and entering college students considering teaching but still undecided. At the same time, the Students Exploring Teaching (SET) program has targeted non-Curry students still deliberating about formal teacher education, and has also had notable success with underrepresented groups. After TNE, these efforts will become a permanent feature of the College of Arts and Sciences.
In the summer of 2006, Ayers expanded on the success of Teachers for a New Era at the University of Virginia with a conference of leading historians at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home. The next generation of history teachers was invited from all over the country, along with master high school teachers and researchers. They came together for two days of deep discussion and discovery aimed at determining the optimum way for history to be taught and went away armed with ideas they said would never have occurred to them otherwise, according to Ayers. “This conference and the national conversation it inspired were a direct outgrowth of TNE and our friendship with Carnegie Corporation,” he said, “and it is one of many examples of how the program is growing, rather than shrinking, as the grant comes to an end.”
A Psychologist Assesses Teacher
Quality
Bypassing their own contributions, Provost Gene Block and Dean Ed Ayers
see the most promising aspect of Teachers for a New Era in the assessment
programs designed by Dr. Robert C. Pianta. A professor in the Curry School
of Education and in the Department of Psychology, Pianta has a background
in clinical, developmental and school psychology. His work has focused
on how children’s experiences at home and at school affect their
development, an interest stemming from his years as a special education
teacher when he observed that “close relationships were powerful
assets to kids and their teachers.” The author of more than 200
publications on such subjects as school readiness and teacher-child interaction,
Pianta exudes energy, and the framed marathon photos and bibs on his office
walls testify he’s good for the long haul.
Pianta directs the new Center for the Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL), which produces evidence-based research on student learning (from preschool through high school) with particular emphasis on the challenges posed by poverty, social or cultural isolation or lack of community resources. While acknowledging that assessment is complicated because “there are lots of variables in the classroom that make it hard to determine specifically what value a teacher adds to learning,” the Center’s work shows that “if you combine analysis of pupil performance with empirical analysis of what teachers actually do in classrooms, that information can be fed back into improved teaching,” Block said.
According to Pianta, the Center is thriving because of TNE and because of Gene Block’s interest in teacher education. “Initially we were not really part of TNE, but we needed more money for doing assessment,” Pianta recalled. “I went to one of the provost’s seminars and talked about our line of work—a large-scale observation metric—and his attention was caught. I said, ‘teachers matter, and we have the scientific evidence for the ways they matter and can improve on it.’ He felt CASTL made sense for UVA: The capacity was here, and its promise could be met.”
Daniel Fallon considers CASTL “the heart of what we’re up to,” and added, “Pianta is ahead of everybody. Post-TNE efforts will be built around him.” By taking observations of the practices of effective teachers and turning them into real information about what teachers do, Pianta is building a framework for assessing teacher behavior and pupil performance that will be tested experimentally all around the country. What emerges will be a picture of real life in the classroom, not just numbers. “So far, Teachers for a New Era has done a good job of connecting future teachers to arts and sciences,” Pianta said. Now, he explained, we need to figure out how to connect to teachers in the field for better outcomes.
Recent studies of pupil outcomes confirm that there really are differences between “good” and “bad” teachers, he further explained. One study followed 1,000 first graders randomly assigned to teachers of varying abilities, and revealed that kids from tougher circumstances who landed in low-rated classrooms lagged even further behind, creating big gaps in reading achievement between them and higher scoring, less vulnerable kids. “The prevalence of ‘good’ classes is only about 25 percent overall,” Pianta pointed out, “and poor kids are somewhat less likely to get one of these. Yet all the teachers passed the state cut. I wonder—are we paying attention to the right things?”
“It’s unfortunate that teachers haven’t been studied more using the tools of developmental psychology,” he believes. “Experts in adult cognition tell us that teacher skills and the attitudes they form regarding themselves and students are related to working memory. They process information in real time. Teachers who can do this well have a high level of cognitive skills. We can help develop these skills by understanding the basic components of teaching. This may help improve the basic science of how teachers are trained. If we can engage in systematic, rigorous research, teacher education will be in a different place ten years from now.”