Teacher Education Annotated Plan Excerpts

Excerpt 1 [Massachusetts Collaborative]

The evaluation team will document and evaluate the activities designed to increase the number of science, mathematics, and engineering majors choosing to become teachers, and to improve the induction of new science and mathematics teachers into the profession.

Project Participants, Audiences & Other Stakeholders

STEMTEC will link the members of the highly successful Five Colleges, Incorporated consortium--the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) and Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges -- with three neighboring community colleges, Springfield Technical (STCC), Holyoke (HCC), and Greenfield (GCC) and the neighboring school districts. These are the school systems of Springfield, Holyoke, Amherst, Hadley, Northampton, South Hadley, and Franklin County. The partnership of a region's flagship public university campus, private colleges, community colleges and school districts with highly varied populations will provide a model with national implications. The State Department of Education, including PALMS, the Massachusetts NSF/SSI program, will be a participating agency. The Continental Cablevision Corporation will be a corporate partner providing Internet access to area schools and assisting with the dissemination program.

Project Features

Project Context

STEMTEC will serve both elementary and secondary teachers. Elementary teachers usually identify themselves early in their college experience and are generally not planning to major in mathematics or science. Since they will only be taking a few courses in these fields, these courses must provide them with strong content, an opportunity to engage in scientific research, and exemplify the best possible teaching. Math and science majors who already plan to enter teaching as elementary specialists or as middle school or high school teachers also need courses in their major which consciously exemplify effective teaching.

However, many secondary science and math teachers do not decide on teaching careers until college graduation or later. Dramatically improving introductory courses for science and math majors will help to retain them in those areas. It will also interest them in teaching careers because they will become excited about science and math and about learning (Tobias, 1990). We will also offer opportunities for college majors in science, mathematics, engineering, and related areas to gain an exposure to teaching by working with teachers who are graduates of our teacher enhancement projects and to consider teaching as a career option. Both the courses and the teaching opportunities will help recruit under-represented groups into teaching. Inclusion of the community colleges in all aspects of this project will also be critical in these recruiting efforts.

Project Features

We cannot end our support of students when they enter teaching since we know that many excellent math and science teachers are lost to the field during those first few years. STEMTEC will offer a number of support systems for new teachers including bringing them into the community of school and college faculty developing new courses, linking them with our teacher enhancement graduates, and offering them appropriately scheduled courses which are taught using the methods supported by this project.

Excerpt 2 [New York City Collaborative]

Project Features
Describes project goals and the contributions to the project of prior evaluation

Among others, the major goals of the New York Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (NYCETP) during the first three years include: (1) fostering the development of collaboration within and between the five campuses of the City University of New York (CUNY) and New York University (NYU) which are members of the NYCETP: (2) faculty development emphasizing curriculum and teaching standards (i.e., NCTM & NCR Standards documents); and (3) the design and development of curriculum. Two evaluation practices have facilitated the attainment of these goals. The case studies were carried out in order to facilitate the attainment of the first two goals, fostering collaboration between faculty on different campuses and faculty development, while stimulating the Collaborative's efforts to begin accomplishing the third goal, development of curriculum.