Standard 5: Faculty Qualifications, Performance, and Development Faculty are qualified and model best professional practices in scholarship, service, and teaching, including the assessment of their own effectiveness as related to candidate performance; they also collaborate with colleagues in the disciplines and schools. The unit systematically evaluates faculty performance and facilitates professional development.
CCTC Common Standard 3: Faculty Qualified persons are hired and assigned to teach all courses and supervise all field experiences in each credential preparation program. Faculty reflect and are knowledgeable about cultural, ethnic, and gender diversity. The institution provides support for faculty development, and recognizes and rewards outstanding teaching. The institution regularly evaluates the performance of course instructors and field supervisors, and retains in credential programs only those individuals who are consistently effective.
Qualified Faculty
Stanford University, Stanford University School of Education (SUSE), Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP), and Prospective Principals Program (PPP) take particular pride in their education faculty. Since the inception of US News & World Reports nearly thirty years ago, SUSE has been consistently ranked among the top institutions in the nation in research and scholarship. Candidates for SUSE’s professional preparation programs seek admission to SUSE in large part to work with the distinguished Stanford faculty who teach STEP and PPP courses. Some SUSE faculty hold joint appointments in other departments of the university and many more hold courtesy appointments.
Stanford University and SUSE observe most competitive standards in filling professorial positions expecting, beyond a doctoral degree, a record in excellence in publication in scholarly and professional books and periodicals, exemplary teaching, leadership in the academic community, and where appropriate, close connections to fields of practice. In order to obtain tenure status at Stanford University, candidates must demonstrate that they are among the very best scholars in their field of expertise nationally as well as internationally. Assistant professors are hired when they demonstrate significant potential to achieve this status (see http://www.stanford.edu/dept/provost/faculty/policies/handbook).
SUSE fully supports the staffing of STEP and PPP with tenured and tenure-line faculty. Both professional preparation programs are a vital and central component of the SUSE design and mission, and faculty are as committed to teaching in the professional preparation programs as they are to teaching their doctoral and masters students and to their research. Of the 22 required STEP and PPP courses, 18 are taught or co-taught by tenure-line faculty. The paragraphs that follow provide highlights of several examples of faculty members whose teaching assignments include participation in either STEP or PPP.
While not an exhaustive list of their accomplishments, these examples illustrate the depth and expertise that SUSE faculty bring to their teaching in its professional preparation programs and their many scholarly contributions to the field of education.
Myron Atkin has recently been designated a National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences, in honor of distinguished service to the National Academies. He is also the principal investigator of a National Science Foundation supported research project that focuses on how teachers modify their teaching practices to conduct the kinds of assessments in their own classrooms that contribute directly to improved student learning. Among his recent publications is “The OECD Study of Innovations in Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education,” in the Journal of Curriculum Studies.
Arnetha Ball is the co-principal investigator for Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers for Technology, a nationwide federal program to promote technology integration in teacher education programs. She is chair of the American Educational Research Association’s Nominating Committee and is integrating literacy and technology into schools in East Palo Alto, California. Her research interests focus on linking social, cultural, and linguistic theory to investigate the oral and written literacy patterns of marginalized students and the practices of their teachers in poor, urban and inner-city schools, community-based organizations, and cross-national learning contexts in South Africa and the United States. She recently published a chapter entitled “Preservice Teachers’ Perspectives on Literacy and Its Use in Urban Schools,” in Lee and Smagorinsky’s, Worlds of Meaning: Vygotskian Perspectives on Literacy Research.
Jo Boaler directs the National Science Foundation funded Stanford Mathematics Teaching and Learning Project, which provides Northern California teachers with valuable case studies of different teaching approaches in high school mathematics. She is also president of the International Organization for Women in Mathematics Education and recently published Multiple Perspectives on Mathematics Teaching and Learning and Experiencing School Mathematics: Traditional and Reform Approaches to Teaching and their Impact on Student Learning.
Ed Bridges is the founder and former director of the Prospective Principals Program. PPP candidates established the Edwin M. Bridges Educational Leadership Fund in his name to provide scholarship assistance for students. He is also the former coordinator of the Superintendents’ Roundtable group and recipient of the Roald F. Campbell Lifetime Achievement Award in Educational Administration. A scholar in the field of educational leadership, he has contributed two important books to the field: Problem-Based Learning for Administrators and Problem-Based Learning in Leadership Development.
Elizabeth Cohen, a leading sociologist of education well-known for her work to design and study equitable classrooms, is the former director of the Program for Complex Instruction at Stanford and former principal investigator for several grants focused on strengthening teaching and learning in heterogeneous, untracked classrooms. Her Designing Groupwork: Strategies for Heterogeneous Classrooms is widely used by teachers and teacher candidates in the United States, Canada, and overseas.
Larry Cuban has been voted “Teacher of the Year” six times by SUSE students. He has recently published the books How Can I Fix It? An Educator’s Guide to Solving Problems and Managing Dilemmas, and Oversold and Underused: Computers in Classrooms. A former social studies teacher and school superintendent, he contributes to both STEP and PPP his experience in schools and the research he has done on school reform and the making of “good schools.” He is also well known for his classic text with David Tyack, Tinkering Towards Utopia, and is a former president of the America Educational Research Association.
Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education and faculty sponsor of STEP, recently received the Jason Millman Memorial Award from the Consortium for Research on Educational Accountability and Teacher Evaluation. The award is given for outstanding scholarship, leadership, and public voice on teacher evaluation. Among other professional activities, she served as the founding executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future and principal author of its report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future and as a past president of the American Educational Research Association. She has recently spearheaded the creation of a University education/business school partnership to develop educational entrepreneurs--school leaders who are prepared to design and launch new model schools--and a California Schools Redesign Network. Her most recent books include Learning to Teach for Social Justice, Teaching as the Learning Profession, and The Right to Learn.
Elliot Eisner, the Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, has published extensively on the practical uses of critical qualitative methods from the arts for the description, interpretation, and evaluation of schools, classrooms, and teaching processes, including Cognition in Curriculum and The Education Imagination. The National Art Education Association recently selected Elliot Eisner to receive the 2002 Manuel Barkan Memorial Award. This annual award is presented to an individual, who through published work in either art education or studies, has contributed a product of scholarly merit to the field. He has also received numerous awards for his works, including the Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award from the American Educational Research Association, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Senior Fulbright Fellowship and the Jose Vasconcelos Award from the World Cultural Council. He has recently published the book The Arts and Cognition, and is past president of both the John Dewey Society and the American Education Research Association.
Pam Grossman is involved in the Study of Teacher Education at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where the goal is to construct a nuanced description of the internal workings of teacher preparation that will highlight how teacher education classes are taught, how students learn, and how learning is documented and judged. She has also worked extensively with school district administrators on the effect of district curriculum policy on teachers. She is an expert in English education and teacher education, and has contributed a seminal text to the field with her book, The Making of a Teacher: Teacher Knowledge and Teacher Education. She is the former holder of the Boeing Chair of Teacher Education at the University of Washington.
Kenji Hakuta is the Vida Jacks Professor of Education. He recently testified to the United States Commission on Civil Rights regarding language minority students. He is on the board of the Educational Testing Service and is chair of the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board. He also serves on the board of the Spencer Foundation. Known for his work on second language acquisition and work in public policy, he has published Improving Schooling for Language Minority Children.
Michael Kirst is co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education, a research consortium including Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Southern California whose agenda is to provide analysis and assistance to California policymakers in building an on-going picture of California education, including information on student enrollment, performance, curriculum, human and fiscal resources, and school reform. He holds appointments in the School of Education, Business Administration, and in the department of Political Science and has recently published the second edition of his book Political Dynamics of American Education with Fred Wirt.
Rachel Lotan serves as STEP director. In her previous position as co-director of the Program for Complex Instruction at Stanford University, she worked on the development, research, and worldwide dissemination of complex instruction, a pedagogical approach to creating equitable classrooms. She has co-edited Working for Equity in Heterogeneous Classrooms: Sociological Theory in Action, and Groupwork in Diverse Classrooms: A Casebook for Educators. She is also the principal investigator for a project supported by the Spencer Foundation entitled “Language Acquisition and Mastery of Content for English Language Learners in Heterogeneous Classrooms.”
Ray McDermott was awarded the George and Louise Spindler Award at the 2001 American Anthropology Association meeting. The award is given annually by the Council on Anthropology and Education for contributions to the field of educational anthropology. His investigations of schools focus on inequality in education and he recently co-authored Successful Failure: The School America Builds.
Na’ilah Nasir is a cognitive psychologist who studies learning. Her recent research examines the development of youth mathematical reasoning and strategic thinking, showing that the culture of basketball provides a unique context in which math learning can take place for certain children. She recently co-edited a special issue of Mathematical Thinking and Learning.
Amado Padilla received the Carolyn Attneave Award at the 2nd Annual National Multicultural Conference and Summit. The award was given in honor of his longstanding dedication to learning the importance of knowing and respecting diversity and the differences therein, and his ability to mobilize networks across cultures. He is highly involved with the California Foreign Language Project, a program that assists California teachers in foreign language instruction, and is chair of the Committee on Foreign Language Education for the California Department of Education. He writes, among many other topics, on the education of immigrant children, and has recently published a chapter on “Quantitative Approaches in Educational Research” in the Handbook on Research on Multicultural Education.
Robert Roeser was named one of the six William T. Grant Foundation Faculty Scholars and awarded funds for his study, “Studies in School Experience and Patterns of Motivation and Achievement among Diverse Samples of Adolescents.” His research focuses on the relation between adolescents’ motivation to learn in school and their achievement, mental health, and behavioral conduct in and out of school. He wrote “Schooling and Mental Health Issues” as an introduction to the special issue of the Journal of School Psychology.
Carl Thoresen is the principal investigator of the Fetzer Institute’s “Treatment Effects of Spiritual and Religious Factors on Health Outcomes for Depressed and Isolated Post-MI Patients” and former director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, a research study that
demonstrated the benefits of forgiveness. He co-authored the books Behavioral Counseling and Counseling Techniques with J. Krumboltz.
Guadalupe Valdés studies the sociolinguistic processes of linguistic acquisition by learners in different circumstances--those who set out to learn a second language in a formal school setting (elective bilingualism) and those who must learn two languages in order to adapt to immediate family-based or work-based communicative needs within an immigrant community (circumstantial bilingualism). Her research, which has made her one of the most eminent experts on Spanish-English bilingualism in the United States, focuses on methods of instruction, typologies, measurement of progress, and the role of education in national policies on immigration. She recently published Learning and Not Learning English: Latino Students in American Schools.
Decker Walker studies the use of computers, video and telecommunications, and other increasingly accessible information technologies in improving pre-college education. Using a combination of in-class observations, interviewing, and teacher testing, he studies what actually happens when teachers and students use technology. A broader aspect of his program includes field studies in educational settings about the application of computers, and policy analysis of the information of technology in secondary schools and in teacher education. He recently wrote Curriculum and Aims with J. Soltis. Beyond its professors, STEP and PPP value a diversity of clinical staff, including practicing secondary teachers and principals, retired teachers, doctoral candidates, doctorate-holding practitioners with subject-specific teaching experience, teaching scholars holding advanced degrees in education, and administrators and educators published in their fields. Many courses are co-taught by faculty and clinical staff to take advantage of the knowledge and skills they bring in combination. For the 2001-02 academic year STEP has employed six adjunct faculty and instructors who are expert field practitioners with scholarly training. The reputation for academic rigor in the STEP and PPP faculty extends to all participants in its educative mission. Clinical faculty are rewarded for their knowledge and expertise, and compensations for their contributions are part of the operating budget for STEP and PPP. Stanford’s academic reputation attracts clinical faculty of high qualification and considerable experience (see instructors’ curricula vitae and STEP budget).
From this pool, STEP is able to attend carefully to compatibility, matching all cooperating teachers, supervisors, and Curriculum and Instruction (C&I) instructors to their candidate charges by subject matter. Licensed teaching experience and strong expertise in teaching are requirements for all supervisors and cooperating teachers, and a significant consideration even at the level of hiring and assigning teaching assistants. Beyond licensure in the fields they teach, clinical staff share with our candidates and professors a value of continuing education, and seek work in STEP to further their own professional learning as well as that of the teacher candidates whom they instruct and mentor.
Modeling Best Professional Practices in Teaching As described earlier, each course of the STEP curriculum occupies one of the five organizing strands that define our mission: Foundations; Curriculum & Instruction; Language & Literacy; Pedagogical Strategies; and Practicum & Student Teaching. From this integrated base, faculty design coursework in cooperation with one another and with support staff, so that, for example, assessments build upon one another across subject matters and through the progression of the year, technology skills taught for one course are integrated into subsequent courses as well as the year-end portfolio, and all courses develop out of and feed back into the program’s central purpose of developing professional practice to bring about the success of all students. Faculty who teach in STEP meet regularly as a large group at least quarterly (see meeting schedules) and more frequently around courses and program links that define their shared work. A number of courses are co-taught by tenure-line faculty, who co-plan syllabi, assignments, and course activities. As a result of this careful planning, each course includes analyses and assignments that link directly to the classroom and are pursued as part of student teaching. A number of courses include the use and conduct of case studies that build sequentially upon one another. Central assignments such as the literacy case, the adolescent development case, and the curriculum case, are developed in, and reinforced by, work in other courses. During the summer, preparation in the use of educational technology supports candidates work on ED166X: The Centrality of Literacies in Teaching and Learning case study by teaching the skills and applications that are then used to present the case study in a multi-media format. During the fall, when students are writing their adolescent case, the ED246B: Secondary Teaching Seminar focuses upon developing and practicing methodological skills such as observing individuals and classrooms, interviewing, shadowing, and conducting student assessments. In the winter, when students are writing their case of instruction, in their C&I courses they are constructing a curriculum unit, teaching that unit in the spring, and then examining student learning in relation to their teaching goals. This tight integration is made possible by faculty collaboration in planning and creates a much more powerful curriculum than what would result from individual course offerings developed independently. In teaching their courses in STEP and PPP, faculty use a variety of instructional approaches and methods. In addition to the emphasis on case-based and problem-based learning described earlier, classes are designed to integrate lectures, large and small group discussions, simulations, video analyses, and role-plays. Often, STEP candidates experience in their university classes varied and highly complex pedagogical approaches that they are, in turn, encouraged to use with their high school students. These more sophisticated instructional strategies serve a dual purpose: they advance the learning of the candidates and they also provide a first-hand understanding of how they might be implemented. Experiencing, in addition to reading about, innovative pedagogy is an important predictor of candidates’ actual use of sophisticated instructional strategies. STEP and PPP comply with and welcome the Stanford University course evaluation policy, which requires that at the end of each course, students complete anonymous, two-page evaluations including both rated-scale and open-ended items. Results of these evaluations are tabulated by the Registrar’s Office and summaries are returned to the instructors as well as reported to the Dean of the School of Education. Instructors also receive the original forms completed by the students to be able to read the specific comments made by the students. The STEP faculty sponsor and director use these evaluation results to plan and adjust course offerings (see summaries of course evaluations).
Well beyond Stanford University’s end-of-quarter summative assessment system, STEP is committed to collecting formative assessments during the academic quarters, in order to learn how candidates learn as well as what they learn. Journal work allows instructors and candidates to communicate about their learning experiences as well as course subject matter. In several classes, such as ED166X: The Centrality of Literacies in Teaching and Learning and ED240: Adolescent Development and Learning, journals topics are designed as precursors to and scaffolding for later formal assignments, offering students opportunities to practice discussion and analysis of important topics, and offering instructors insight into students’ first impressions of learning these important topics. Large assignments, such as the case studies described above, are handed in one or more times to allow for student-instructor specific feedback and communication. Courses such as the C&I sequence and ED269: Principles of Learning for Teaching also set up peer response groups to allow students to hear feedback from a diverse audience in case conferences. Faculty and students communicate extensively via email, individual meetings during office hours, and many other formal and informal encounters. Beyond coursework-specific assessments, STEP gathers data from program-wide assessments. At mid-year, the STEP Director schedules advisory meetings with candidates in which she discusses with them their academic progress, study plans, and their student teaching placements. Program-response surveys are distributed at critical points during the academic year, and the majority of STEP courses administer mid-quarter feedback surveys. Feedback about the work of cooperating teachers and supervisors is solicited and reviewed by the director and the associate director of clinical work. Feedback is provided to the supervisors based on this review (see November Check-In, Placement Evaluation Form, and Supervisor Evaluation Form).
As research scholars, STEP professors demonstrate serious commitment to the craft and profession of teaching by investigating and publishing analyses of instruction and education within STEP. All faculty have published extensively in leading peer-reviewed journals and are known as leaders in their fields. Most publish on issues related to teaching and learning, and most participate in national panels and task forces related to policy, research, and practice in their fields. Their extensive experience is documented in their curricula vitae. For their efforts in educational practice and scholarship, STEP professors are awarded. Each year SUSE awards one or two Excellence in Teaching award at its commencement ceremony; in the past five years six STEP or PPP-affiliated professors have won this award (Professors Elizabeth Cohen, Larry Cuban, Linda Darling-Hammond, Ray McDermott, Rob Roeser, and Guadalupe Valdés).
Modeling Best Professional Practices in Scholarship Stanford University is a research institution and its faculty follows their research mission down a number of paths important to effective education. SUSE faculty are well known for their scholarship and research that significantly contributes to knowledge generation and questioning, and in some cases defining their field of expertise. Research on the effectiveness of various educational reforms, teaching approaches, and curricular advances are important topics explored by faculty members connected with STEP and PPP. A brief sampling of their publications is included on the previous pages and is augmented in the collection of curricula vitae in the documents room. A number of studies have been conducted on the outcomes of STEP and PPP by faculty, research fellows, and doctoral candidates. A special volume of Issues in Teacher Education will be devoted to studies of STEP that illuminate various methodologies for examining teacher education and means of using research to develop and evaluate program reforms. Several of these studies were presented at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education annual meeting in 2001 and at the American Educational Research Association annual meeting in 2002. As SUSE’s collection of curriculum vitae shows, STEP and PPP faculty are active, engaged scholars. They are invited to be keynote speakers and active participants at national and international meetings of scholars, at professional conferences, and on numerous advisory committees. They occupy significant positions in professional organizations and serve as expert witnesses in various debates. They publish in prestigious journals of research and they author and edit volumes, many of which have become canonical texts for the field and are widely used in other professional preparation programs. It would be impossible to list briefly all of the contributions to the field of this faculty.
Modeling Best Professional Practices in Service In addition to their extensive scholarly work, members of the faculty contribute significantly to discussions and shaping of policy about current educational issues and concerns. For example, a number of STEP and PPP faculty have served as presidents of AERA. The following examples illustrate this point rather than provide exhaustive evidence.
Myron Atkin serves on the National Commission for Excellence in Teacher Education and has been for many years a senior advisor to the National Science Foundation, Directorate for Science and Engineering Education. He is a member of the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences and the Mathematical Sciences Education Board. He is also Co-Chair of the International Steering Committee, OECD Study of Innovations in Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education in Member Countries, and co-principal investigator for the U.S. phase of the study. He participated on the Consensus Planning Committee, National Assessment of Education Progress in Science, and the National Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment. He is a member of the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences.
Arnetha Ball is Co-Chair of the Assembly on Research of the National Council of Teachers of English and a Mentor sponsored by the NCTE Research Foundation for Cultivating New Voices in the Academy. She is an Editorial Board Member of The Journal for the Conference on College Composition and Composition Editorial, the American Educational Research Journal section on Social and Institutional Analysis, and the Educational Researcher.
Jo Boaler is currently President of the International Organization for Women in Mathematics Education, a sub-committee of the International Congress for Mathematics Education. She belongs to the following organizations: Psychology of Mathematics Education; The Royal Society of Arts, selected fellow; British Society into the Research and Learning of Mathematics; American Educational Research Association; British Educational Research Association; The British Psychological Society, graduate member; Research into Social Perspectives in Mathematics Education; Gender and Mathematics Association National Council for Teachers of Mathematics; Association of Teachers of Mathematics; and the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction. She is on the editorial board of the following journals: Journal for Research; Mathematics Education Research Journal; Journal of Mathematical Behavior; British Educational Research Journal; British Journal of Educational Psychology; and the Gender in Equity: Gender and Education & Mathematics Education Research Journal.
Linda Darling-Hammond serves on numerous committees and boards. She is currently co-chairing the National Academy of Education’s Committee on Teacher Education and the California Professional Development Task Force of the California Department of Education. She serves as a member of many different advisory boards and councils such as the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the George Lucas Education Foundation. Her focus on the advancement of teaching and learning is evident in her membership in this partial list of organizations: Technical Review Panel for the Schools and Staffing Survey; U.S. Department of Education; the National Academy of Education Executive Board; and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She also acted as Chair of the Council of Chief of State School Officers, Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium Standards Drafting Committee. Furthermore, Professor Darling- Hammond is active in the following organizations: the National Academy of Education; American Educational Research Association; National Society for the Study of Education; American Education Finance Association; Politics of Education Association; and National Urban Education Association; and serves on the editorial board of numerous professional journals.
Pamela Grossman is at present Member-at-Large of the American Educational Research Association Council and Co-Chair, Assembly for Research, National Council of Teachers of English. She is also a member of the following three editorial boards: Educational Researcher; American Educational Research Journal; and Research in the Teaching of English.
Michael Kirst is the Co-Chair for the Technical Advisory Committee, California High School Exit Exam, and Chairman of the Board of International Comparative Studies in Education. He is a member of the National Academy of Education, the International Academy of Education, and the National Research Council. He is a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a Visiting Professor for Stanford at Oxford, and has received research travel grants from the German Academic Exchange Service, United States-Japan Foundation, and the United States State Department.
Amado Padilla is a member of the American Psychological Society, the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, the American Educational Research Association, and the American Evaluation Association. He is active in language organizations such as: the Linguistics Society of America; Linguistics Association of the Southwest; American Association for Applied Linguistics; International Association for Intercultural Communication Studies; Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages; and the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages. He is also a fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.
Robert Roeser is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Research on Adolescence and the Society for Research on Child Development. He served as guest editor for the Educational Psychologist, the Journal of School Psychology, and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of School Psychology.
Collaboration STEP begins its participation in the educational community at the local level and builds from there to state, national, and international levels using its faculty as key ambassadors. Collaboration with School Organizations With local schools, we collaborate on the design of the core C&I courses being co-taught by Stanford University professors and credentialed, expert teachers. We depend as well on experienced teachers to work with us as supervisors and as cooperating teachers. We call on our administrative and teaching colleagues from participating clinical and professional partnership schools to advise and evaluate our program, and to participate in our research and evaluation of ourselves as an educational unit. In the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area, SUSE faculty can be found in classrooms and school districts through the numerous research and professional development projects (their specific, current commitments are detailed in the Preconditions Report to the CCTC). STEP shares SUSE’s firm belief that creating a profession of teaching—and a professional preparation program—depends upon the widespread availability of knowledge and standards for practice that provide a basis for teacher development and for program decisions. One source of such standards is the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification process. In 1998-99, Stanford launched the Bay Area’s first support group for National Board Certification. As of September 1998, there were only six Board-certified teachers in the Bay Area. All six accepted the invitation to serve as support providers, along with a group of teacher educators, for Bay Area teachers who wanted to pursue Board certification. Three years later, more than 120 teachers are meeting in this support group, and other support groups have been launched with Stanford University’s assistance by colleges, districts, and county offices in this area. This process has begun to develop a community of teachers armed with deeper knowledge and greater certainty about practice, more articulate about both their own practice and instructional policy, and able to provide leadership to the profession. Some of these teachers have started new schools, some have mobilized the use of standards in their districts and departments, some have served as Beginning Teacher and Support Assessment (BTSA) mentors, and some have begun to serve as cooperating teachers, supervisors, and teacher educators for STEP and elsewhere.
The planting of these seeds allows the cross-pollination that helps good practice spread across the educational community. These spillover effects are key to attaining STEP’s goal is to create multiple pathways to productive professional learning for educators so that self-sustaining communities of practice can emerge. We also pursue these goals through work on school reform and redesign. SUSE and STEP together have embarked upon a unique educational effort as of fall 2001 by helping to launch a new public high school in East Palo Alto (EPAHS), which also serves as a professional development high school with Stanford. The school, which is the first public high school in this community since Ravenswood High was closed for desegregation in 1976, enrolled 80 ninth graders in the fall of 2001 and will add one grade each year.
The school demographics reflect the community: about 60% of the students are Latino, 30% are African American, and 10% are Pacific Islander and other. The school features a project-based curriculum tied to rigorous standards and performance assessments. Highly qualified teachers are well trained to serve the needs of all students. All are fully credentialed and all will pursue National Board Certification. The school also offers its students computer access, training, and support. EPAHS supports student teachers and provides a demonstration site for the development of other schools and teachers in the area. We intend this model of new school creation to be the source of professional development school partnerships in the future. In the development of EPAHS, SUSE and STEP faculty and staff are engaged in dialogue, design, and delivery of instruction with local educators, administrators, community activists, and families. Faculty are also working with other new small schools that are being developed in the Bay Area (Silicon Valley Essential School in Palo Alto, Evergreen in San Jose, Eastside Prep in East Palo Alto) and schools that are redesigning themselves to support greater equity, personalization, and achievement for all of their students (Hillsdale High School, Fremont High School, and the school redesign projects in San Francisco and Oakland, among others.) Collaboration Between STEP and Other Units of the University As candidates in a graduate level program, STEP candidates are expected to have completed an undergraduate program of study (usually a major) closely related to the field they will teach. Thus, the design of STEP assumes that much of the initial grounding in subject matter is acquired during the undergraduate years. However, to attract well-qualified candidates and to open new pathways to teaching, STEP has recently developed a Coterminal Teaching Program that relies on close collaboration with several departments in the Humanities and Sciences at Stanford. In establishing relationships with the English, Spanish, Physics and Biology departments as well as the Urban Studies Program among others, STEP has begun to co-advise undergraduates interested in a teaching career. STEP and departmental faculty are co-designing subject matter programs to be submitted for approval to the California Commission for Teacher Credentialing. Such combined advisement helps undergraduate students prepare a course of that provides thorough subject matter preparation as well as introduction to educational theories and research, and to professional practice (see STEP Coterminal Teaching Program documentation). This process also encourages dialogue about the teaching of content and content pedagogy in the STEP curriculum and the university departments. Collaborative efforts also have been initiated linking teacher education and administrator programs. For example, in the summer of 2000, a new PPP course ED354X: Redesigning School: Systems and Structures for Success developed by Michael Copland and Linda Darling-Hammond, focused on structures and practices that have emerged from recent research as common to successful schools. The course was open not only to current PPP candidates, but also to an invited list of teacher leaders in the Bay Area, all of whom have had connections to the STEP program as cooperating teachers, and all of whom were involved in school-wide change efforts. The course provided future administrators and teacher leaders a window into the possibilities associated with distributed forms of leadership in the context of school renewal.
Additional work for the leaders of redesigning schools is being launched between SUSE and the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). The Stanford Educational Leadership Institute will enable the SUSE and GSB to bring the knowledge and resources of these two enterprises together to assist education leaders and managers--superintendents, principals, and teacher leaders--in designing, redesigning, and managing school organizations that are more powerful sites for teaching and learning and for the production of equitable educational outcomes. A Stanford Scholars program is being designed to support on-going development of content knowledge for practicing teachers, and to offer pedagogical institutes around such areas as the use of group work, literacy development, and technology integration. SUSE and STEP offer ED231: Developing and Supporting Teachers, to current and potential cooperating teachers, current and potential supervisors, and graduate students. In addition, professional development workshops are offered to the same audience during the academic year.
Dr. Charla Rolland, SUSE Consulting Associate Professor, serves as Director for Professional Enhancement. She initiates and organizes extensive activities of outreach to the field and coordinates collaboration efforts between STEP and its surrounding community, as well as other institutional partners. These kinds of efforts are particularly important to support teacher education by developing settings in which teachers can learn and can continue to learn to teach effectively. Collaboration with Other Institutions While Stanford University’s focus begins at the local level, its identity as a research institution broadens the scope to the state, national, and international levels. Stanford professors hold membership in the widest variety of professional organizations and are called to participate in a diverse array of task forces, conferences, and colloquia on the state and progress of education as a field. SUSE and STEP faculty are routinely consulted by the legal, political, and media systems to speak on topics of current and pressing importance to education (see http://ed.stanford.edu/suse/index.html for latest about faculty in the news). In December 1999, Stanford University President Gerhard Casper hosted a meeting of California college and university presidents to discuss the importance and improvement of teacher education. The goals of this first-ever summit were to: discuss with presidents what is known about teacher education best practices; to evaluate strategies for improving teacher quality and addressing teacher supply needs; and to secure commitments to the ongoing improvement of teacher preparation through investments in programs and engagement in policy.
Unit Evaluation of Professional Education Faculty Performance SUSE’s faculty submit an annual report to the Dean for evaluation. This report documents faculty members’ activities and achievements in the following areas: scholarship, teaching, contributions to the field, and participation in professional activities. The Dean meets with each faculty member individually to review the annual report and to gather further information about his or her work. Faculty salary increases are based on documented achievements. Letters to faculty state that merit increases are based on the following criteria: 1) scholarly productivity; 2) teaching, including advising and mentoring; 3) service, outside of Stanford as well as to the university; and 4) external support for research and related activities.
The Dean also reviews course evaluations by students. The frequent, scheduled, and formal conversations as well as many informal ones among STEP faculty about curriculum, instruction, and assessment of candidate work are important vehicles for improving the quality of teaching. From co-planning major assignments to sharing information about particularly successful classroom activities, STEP faculty constantly make candidate learning the focus of their work. The planning and the constant examination of the STEP curriculum by STEP faculty as a whole and the coordination among the various courses contribute to strengthening quality of instruction. There is also a feedback loop in place to evaluate the performances of clinical faculty. Frequent feedback is solicited from candidates on the quality of their placements and the work of the supervisors (see discussion of program assessment in Standard 2). The Associate Director for Clinical Work regularly conducts site visits and meets with supervisors both as a whole group and individually. Feedback about the work of cooperating teachers and supervisors is solicited and reviewed by the director and the associate director of clinical work. Feedback is provided to supervisors based on this review (see November Check-In, Placement Evaluation Form, and Supervisor Evaluation Form).
Unit Facilitation of Professional Development With her arrival to SUSE a year and a half ago, Dean Stipek put extra attention to the support and development of new faculty. She established a process by which assistant professors in the beginning of their academic careers are appointed a three-member team of more senior faculty to guide them in their academic progress and provide and support for developing their scholarly work around teaching, inquiry, and service. As noted earlier, faculty are actively involved in professional conferences and meetings. SUSE provides resources through a faculty account to support this participation. STEP also takes the professional development of the clinical faculty very seriously. Supervisors meet monthly (see Supervisor Meetings and Curriculum) and attend day-long workshops at the beginning of each quarter. Many participate in the STEP seminar on Developing and Assessing Teaching. STEP has also invested generously in sending faculty and supervisors to conferences and workshops. For example, a large number of faculty and supervisors attend conferences of the California Council for the Education of Teachers. Recently ten of the 17 supervisors attended the University of California at Santa Cruz conference on mentoring “Launching the Next Generation of New Teachers.” Supervisors are also encouraged to attend STEP courses and receive a stipend of $750 for each course they attend. Quarterly workshops and monthly meetings are designed to discuss standards, strengthen observation and feedback skills, and analyze video feedback. The Director of Professional Enhancement and the Associate Director for Clinical Work also attended and participated in several conferences and workshops related to their work. For example, during the summer of 2001, they participated with faculty from partner schools in institutes sponsored by the California Network for School Redesign. Evidence for participation in professional development activities for clinical faculty and staff is provided in the documents room.
