ITQ RTWS

Renaissance Partnership Members

Kentucky State University , Division of Education and Human Services
Franklin County Public Schools
Weyerhauser, Inc.

At Western Kentucky University, we are continuing development and implementation of the electronic portfolio, the teacher work sample (TWS), and the overall accountability system.

Electronic Portfolio

Faculty members have worked hard toward fully implementing the electronic portfolio system in the undergraduate program. As of last fall, all required teacher education courses in our elementary, middle grades, and secondary programs have one or more clearly identified (and electronically posted) critical performances that relate to Kentucky New Teacher Standards. Additionally, critical performances have been identified in the literacy, exceptional education, and library and media education programs. This fall many of the developed critical performances in these programs have been loaded into the portfolio system, and students will be uploading their work for these into the electronic database. Work has even begun in departments that provide content knowledge, for instance, in English and art, to develop critical performances that address content standards in these disciplines. Also, graduate programs have reviewed state and national standards and are in the process of developing critical performances at this level.

Additionally, this summer and the beginning of this semester involved accountability system and electronic portfolio workshops to prepare new and returning faculty to effectively use the system

Teacher Work Sample

All WKU student teachers are producing a teacher work sample. In the spring, 215 teacher work samples were completed and scored using WKU’s new TWS Scoring Form that allows scores to be scanned and embedded into the electronic accountability system database. Using the Common Performance Data form developed by the Renaissance Partnership assessment coordinators, these scores as well as student demographic information, GPA (admissions, overall, and major), Praxis II scores, and other data were matched to allow for analysis of relationships between these variables. The most immediately interesting finding was that performance on the TWS is significantly positively related to performance on the Praxis Principles of Learning and Teaching.

Additionally, this summer preliminary work began to establish the scoring reliability of the TWS with WKU faculty. Key faculty was recruited to develop and carry out research in this important area. Preliminary analysis revealed that more faculty and practitioners must become involved in this process for us to reach acceptable levels of scoring reliability. An October 2003 training and scoring workshop has been scheduled that should include up to 40 faculty and practitioners and lead to improved understanding of and consistency in the scoring process.

Accountability System

Although the structure of our system has been long in place, there have been a few hurdles that slowed our progress in entering data in the system. These hurdles are finally being overcome, and this semester we should realize a fully implemented accountability system. Existing data housed in various systems will be migrated within weeks, staff entering new data will be trained before semester’s end, and preliminary reports of relationships among data should be in hand by the turn of the year.

Spring, 2003

Teacher Work Sample Training and Implementation
In the fall of 2000 the initial Teacher Work Samples were piloted by three public school teachers at Hearn Elementary School, Frankfort, Kentucky. Each was given a stipend for writing and teaching a TWS unit of instruction and an additional stipend for serving as a mentor for two student teachers each, one each 8 week placement of the spring 2001 semester. One other Hearn Elementary teacher was trained in the TWS model and was assigned as a mentor for a KSU student teacher for the spring 2001 semester. This teacher was also awarded a stipend for mentoring a student teacher. Since the elementary student teachers were acting as the pilot group and the secondary education majors were not required to participate, the elementary student teachers were also paid a stipend for successfully completing a TWS. The TWS was not used as a part of the evaluation for the participating elementary group.

To prepare the seven elementary student teachers of the spring 2001semester for the TWS project, an intensive five hour workshop was conducted by Dr. Al Hickey, TWS Coordinator, and assisted by Dr. Jo Anne Rainey, Assessment Coordinator. The role of the university supervisor of the mentoring team was also assigned to Al Hickey, who supervised all seven of the student teachers, four during the first 8 week placement and three during the second 8 week placement. Each of the seven student teachers successfully completed the TWS, which were taken to the June 2001 Renaissance meeting in St. Louis for scoring.

After this successful launching of the implementation of the TWS, other training workshops were conducted:

1) April 30, 2001, seven KSU faculty, five Education and two Arts and Sciences.
2) August 7, 2001, six fall elementary student teachers and their Cooperating Teachers.
3) November 29, 2001, eight faculty and cooperating teachers, and twenty student teachers for the spring, 2002 semester
4) December 3, 2001, thirteen faculty and Cooperating Teachers.
5) December 4, 2001, eighteen faculty and Cooperating Teachers.
6) Fall 2001 semester: Six Cooperating Teachers and one KSU faculty member were given individual workshops to accommodate their schedules.

The spring 2002 semester was the first requiring all education majors to implement and write a TWS. There were twenty student teachers. All university supervisors and the Cooperating Teachers had received training in the TWS strategy and served as the mentors for each of the student teachers under their supervision. In addition, Dr. Hickey and Dr. Rainey served as part of the mentoring teams through the weekly seminar for the twenty student teachers. Of the twenty student teachers required to do a TWS for the spring 2002 semester, eighteen successfully completed it. Ten of these were selected for scoring at the June 2002 Renaissance meeting in St. Louis, MO.

On August 7, 2002, eleven student teachers attended a TWS workshop conducted by the TWS Coordinator, Dr. Hickey. The eleven are made up of 4 elementary education majors, 3 music education majors, 1 art education major, 1 physical education major, 1 biology education major, and 1 English education major. Two of the Cooperating Teachers, art and music, have also completed TWS training, giving each of the twelve student teachers a TWS trained Cooperating Teacher. All of their university supervisors have also received the TWS training, giving each of the student teachers a fully trained mentoring team for the first time since the start of the KSU TWS project.

For the Fall 2002 semester 11 student teachers completed the TWS in their respective majors (See above). These 11 are in the scoring process by the Renaissance coordinators.

Fifteen student teachers have received the 4 hour TWS workshop training in preparation for the completion of the TWS for the Spring 2003 semester. TWS training and mentoring has been extended into the weekly student teacher seminars, made possible by the TWS Coordinator now serving as the seminar instructor . Each weekly seminar is dedicated to a different TWS topic, including questions confronting the students in the TWS process, and thorough discussions on the prompts and their significance to the different majors.

For information about TWS training and implementation at KSU, contact Al Hickey, TWS Coordinator, at ahickey@gwmail.kysu.edu.

Teacher Work Sample Mentoring
We are continuing to make the TWS mentoring process at Kentucky State University more effective and responsive to students' needs. Steps have been taken to ensure that the mentoring process provide student teachers broader and more systematic support as they work to develop and complete the Teacher Work Sample. Each student teacher is assigned a TWS Mentoring Team. The team consists of the Cooperating Teacher, the University Supervisor, and the Mentoring Coordinator, Dr. Reginald Nnazor. The goal of the Mentoring Teams is to guide student teachers to successfully complete quality Teacher Work Samples. The TWS Project Team ensures that students understand the individual and collective roles of the TWS Mentoring Team.

To complement the support and guidance the students get from their Mentoring Teams, the Mentoring Coordinator, with the cooperation of the Director of Supervised Teaching, the TWS Coordinator, and the Assessment Coordinator holds, what we call, TWS Reflection Sessions with students during the weekly student teaching seminar. The reflection sessions are an opportunity for the students to share their experiences and ideas with one another in an open forum as they work on the Teacher Work Sample. The sessions also provide opportunities for the Mentoring Coordinator and the TWS Coordinator to identify and address difficulties students may have as they conceptualize, develop and complete the Teacher Work Sample.

Fifteen student teachers participated in a workshop session on the mentoring goal, structure and process during the Spring 2003 TWS training workshop. We are continuing to explore ways to further strengthen the process of guiding our students through the TWS development process.

For information about TWS mentoring at KSU, contact Reginald Nnazor, Mentoring Coordinator, at rnnazor@gwmail.kysu.edu.

Assessment, Accountability, Research, Collaboration, and the New Education Curriculum

Two priorities of the Division of Education and Human Services at KSU are to build collaborative bridges between academic programs and to hold ourselves accountable for our effectiveness in preparing teacher candidates to become caring and competent professionals. Active participation with the Renaissance TWS Project provides an effective medium, as we address those priorities. The TWS Project team is gratified by the spirit of cooperation consistently shown by our colleagues within Teacher Education as well as across our diverse campus.

Assessment and Research

In fall 1999, the Education and Human Services program at KSU underwent a major overhaul, with an almost entirely new faculty coming on board. A contingent of three attended the Iowa conference and, by spring 2000, our newly assigned Assessment Coordinator was actively collaborating with the Assessment Coordinators from other participating universities. She joined Dr. Nancy Keese, from Middle Tennessee State University, and Dr. Ed Smith, from Longwood University, to form a research group focused on the effectiveness of the TWS Project. An outcome of that collaboration was a pre-assessment tool to be implemented with students before their initial TWS experience. For the next several semesters, the Assessment Coordinator revised the pre-assessment instrument, based on KSU student responses from the previous semester, and then administered it to entering student teachers. In spring 2003, this practice was stopped. Since aspects of the TWS had been embedded into several courses, entering student teachers had become quite familiar with the TWS well before the student teaching experience, so the pre-assessment tool could no longer measure what it was designed to measure.

Accountability and Research

In spring 2002, the Assessment Coordinator designed a survey to tap the perceptions of Cooperating Teachers pertaining to the TWS model. For the first time, all our student teachers were assigned to complete a TWS, and we sought the input of the teachers who had worked with them daily. The 35-question survey utilizes a 4-point, Likert-type scale format, with 1 representing "totally ineffective" and 4 representing "extremely effective". Feedback allowed us, as a team, to answer the following questions: (1) How effective were student teachers in demonstrating the teaching processes of the TWS? (2) How effective was KSU in preparing student teachers to demonstrate the teaching processes prior to student teaching? (3) How effective was KSU in guiding student teachers along the teaching processes during the student teaching experience? (4) How effective was KSU in training Cooperating Teachers in relation to the teaching processes? (5) How effective were Cooperating Teachers, themselves, in guiding student teachers along the teaching processes? The survey results indicated that we were making progress with this Project; our overall rating was 3.28, which rests on the continuum between "somewhat effective" and "extremely effective". Ratings regarding preparation and support of our students in completing the TWS ranged from 3.24 to 3.32, indicating consistent performance in these endeavors.

In fall 2002, Mrs. Gwendolyn Ayuninjam was welcomed as the newest member and Data Management Coordinator of the KSU TWS team. The five member team now is working to develop an ACCESS database to store TWS data and to track trends and correlations between various indicators of student performances. As we gather data, we will make curricular and instructional adaptations, as necessary.

Collaboration and the New Education Curricula

In fall 2000, the Assessment Coordinator revamped our educational assessment course to better prepare our students to gain the knowledge and skills needed to succeed with the TWS and, thus, with teaching. A text in authentic assessment was chosen, and the course was redirected toward practical applications, with less emphasis on learning theories. We will continue to adapt the course, as needed. Moreover, the assessment course will be required of all education majors when our new curriculum is approved and implemented.

As we progressed in our implementation of the TWS Project at KSU, it became evident that we needed to revise education curricula significantly, across certification areas, so that teacher candidates could gain competence in all the teaching elements identified by the Project before they began student teaching and were required to complete a TWS. Our revision efforts began with two programs, Elementary Education and Health, Physical Education, and Recreation. After a year of meetings and discussions, the education faculty realized that revising a course here or there was not going to meet the needs of our students. Therefore, we agreed to begin at the beginning.

In summer 2000, we began the arduous process of deciding how our new elementary curriculum should align not only with the elements of the TWS but also with all the various standards and benchmarks required of most education programs: state standards and themes (in Kentucky, the nine New Teacher Standards and eight required themes), NCATE, and PRAXIS II. For the next two years, we grappled to reach consensus that would respect our ethnic and philosophical diversity, as well as various areas of expertise. All nine areas of teacher certification were involved in this cross-campus collaborative effort. The academic units involved follow, with certification information in parentheses: Behavioral and Social Sciences (Social Studies Education, 8-12); Education and Human Services (Elementary Education, P-5, and Interdisciplinary Early Childhood Education, birth-P); Fine Arts (Art Education and Music Education, both P-12); Health, Physical Education, and Recreation (Physical Education, P-12); Literature, Languages, and Philosophy (English Education, 8-12); and Mathematics and Sciences (Mathematics Education and Biology Education, both 8-12). By the end of fall 2002, we had reached formal agreements about which courses should be designed and offered to students to prepare them to become competent and professional elementary and secondary school teachers. Our proposed curricula will be submitted to the Educational Professional Standards Board this semester, spring 2003. As soon as the curricula are submitted for approval, we will turn our attention to the specifics of the courses. Now that we agree as to which standards/benchmarks/themes should be offered in which courses, we need to design the courses. Rather than viewing courses as "owned" by the faculty who teach them, we will view all courses as communally designed to best benefit our students. We will collaborate on course objectives, as well as methods to assess those objectives.

For information about TWS assessment and/or teacher education curricula at KSU, contact
Jo Anne Rainey, Assessment Coordinator and Teacher Education Curriculum Task Force Chair, at jrainey@gwmail.kysu.edu. For information about KSU's teacher education database, contact Gwendolyn Ayuninjam, Data Management Coordinator, at gayuninjam@gwmail.kysu.edu.

Spring, 2002

At Western Kentucky University, this spring there is maximum activity in both development and implementation on three fronts: accountability systems, teacher work samples and mentoring. It is truly the time in the five year development cycle where the focus is on implementing new initiatives while continuing development to facilitate implementation.

Accountability Systems

Faculty and staff are working hard to fully implement the electronic portfolio and to connect the five components of Western's performance data management system. The five components consist of: a) admissions data; b) field experience data to track placements in settings characterized by diversity and special needs environments; c) electronic portfolios that record critical performance data at four levels, including teacher work sample scores and exhibits; d) program exit data including Praxis II, Title II Report Card requirements and evidence of meeting Kentucky New Teacher Standards; and e) follow-up of graduates data including performance of first year teachers in Kentucky's Teacher Internship Program.

Anyone interested in more information about Western's accountability system or electronic portfolios should contact Tony Norman <antony.norman@wku.edu>.

Teacher Work Samples

This is the fourth semester for implementing teacher work samples with student teachers in the elementary program and the second semester for secondary education. Teacher work samples will be expanded to include seven teacher candidates in Family and Consumer Sciences and about 20 candidates in middle grades education. Overall, Western experts more than 170 student teachers to produce teacher work samples during student teaching in the spring of 2002.

Mentoring Teams

Faculty and staff at Western have been working hard to recruit and train Arts and Sciences faculty and school practitioners from partner schools to serve as mentors for candidates producing teacher work samples. The resources for mentoring teams for spring 2002 will consist of the following:

Elementary Education Program:
11 elementary education faculty
11 public school teachers
7 Arts and Sciences faculty floating to serve teams of 15 teacher candidates
Secondary Education Program:
5 secondary education faculty
5 public school teachers
Arts and Sciences faculty as needed by content areas
Middle Grades Education:
2 teacher education faculty
2 public school teachers
Arts and Sciences faculty as needed
Family and Consumer Education:
1 teacher educator
1 content expert
1 school practitioner

Arts and Sciences faculty members have been recruited and will be trained during the spring semester of 2002. They will be assigned and join mentoring teams at the second meeting of Education 489, the block course taken concurrently during student teaching. Field cooperating teachers serve as practitioners mentoring team members.

Anyone interested in more information about Western's teacher work sample or mentoring program should contact Toby Daniel <tabitha.daniel@wku.edu>.

Research

Currently, Western is collecting data from all 11 project institutions on program changes and developments that have resulted from project initiatives. Data will be collected each semester and a year 3 report is expected to be completed in August of 2002.

Arts and Sciences Training for Praxis II

A Praxis II training session lead by a consultant from ETS was held in November 2001. Sixty-five plus members and professional staff participated with all but two Arts and Sciences disciplines represented. Another training session was held January 11, 2002, with 25 participants. A majority of the participants in both sessions represent Arts and Sciences disciplines and the January session was held to accommodate faculty who had conflicts in November. All academic areas preparing teachers will have been represented through the two training sessions.

Standards-based Teacher Education Program (STEP)

The STEP project has sponsored both Praxis II training sessions and is supporting a consultant for the Physics Department during spring semester 2002. The consultant will be sharing methodological strategies for preparing teachers of Physics. The presentations will be over a two-day period with some of the information being applicable to science in general.

Project-Related Efforts Funded by Kentucky's Council for Post-Secondary Education (CPE)

At the current time, the following projects are being supported through the CPE Action Agenda, Education Excellence Trust Fund.

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Mentoring Project, 150+ participants. This project is in collaboration with the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board
Mentor training for the Renaissance TWS Project
Additional support for practitioners supervising student teachers and block students in the elementary education and physical education programs
Data management associated with the accountability system
Development of critical performances in Arts and Sciences disciplines for inclusion in teacher candidates electronic portfolios
Development of a model physical education program in a local high school
Enhancement and development of web courses
Celebration of writing in the public schools: jointly sponsored by the English Department of the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English/Language Arts
Pedagogy consultant for faculty development and secondary teacher training in the English Department
Professional development for foreign language teachers in target counties
Enhancing teacher preparation: a collaborative effort between WKU's Teacher Education Program and the Bowling Green Community College
Recruitment of under-represented and under-served students in Interdisciplinary Early Childhood Education
Family and Consumer Sciences Education New Teacher Workshop
Basic Principles of Finance and Investments: workshops for high school teachers
College of Education and Behavioral Sciences Praxis II preparation: software program
Summer workshops for K-12 Spanish teachers

For more information on the above project efforts, contact Sam Evans <sam.evans@wku.edu>.

Fall, 2001

Western Kentucky University acquires $382,000 from state trust fund to implement improvement of teacher quality strategies

On July 15, 2001 Karen Adams, Dean of Education at Western Kentucky University, sent a memorandum to her Western colleague deans of business, arts and humanities, and science and engineering announcing newly-acquired resources from Kentucky’s Education Trust Fund to support the all-university effort to improve the quality of teacher education graduates. These resources in the amount of $382,000 were directed toward eight all-university strategies to improve teacher quality at Western Kentucky University.

Use teacher work samples that document P-12 student learning in preparation programs and student teaching
Develop mentoring teams – consisting of teacher educators, school practitioners and arts, sciences and business faculty – to enable candidates to produce high quality teacher work samples
Engage school-based practitioners to provide field-based seminars and methods courses for in-service teachers
Assure alignment of content courses at Western with Kentucky’s core content standards
Increase university faculty awareness of core content needed by teachers, including PRAXIS content
Train P-12 supervising teachers and university faculty from arts, sciences, business and education in use of the teacher work sample methodology
Create innovative appointments for faculty from academic disciplines and teacher education (i.e., joint appointments, assigned time, etc.)
Increase opportunities for students to work in diverse community/agency settings with all types of learners

Specific resources directed at these strategies include:

Data management and accountability system	$ 5,000
PRAXIS for university faculty	$ 16,000
Content specialists (WKU arts, sciences and business faculty)	$ 80,000
Mentoring team training (200 P-12 teachers and 80 university faculty @ $200 each)	$ 56,000
Stipends for mentoring team supervising teachers (200 @ $200 each)	$ 40,000
Stipends for university faculty mentoring teams to cover 425 student teachers @ $200 each for a maximum of five candidates	$ 85,000
Arts, sciences and business faculty appointments in teacher education for 8 @ $10,000	$ 80,000
Curriculum alignment and program development	$ 20,000
TOTAL	$382,000

Teacher Work Samples

Implementation Expanded for Fall of 2001

Beginning in the fall semester of 2001, all student teachers in Western’s elementary teacher preparation program (representing 38 schools) will complete teacher work samples as a regular requirement of their preparation. In addition, seven student teachers at Bowling Green High School will develop teacher work samples as a first time requirement in Western’s secondary education program. Also, plans have been made for a spring 2002 pilot program for Exceptional Education and Family and Consumer Science student teachers. In preparation for fall 2001 implementation, 22 additional teacher educators and arts and science faculty completed teacher work sample training in April 2001. In June 2001 all elementary student teacher supervisors were prepared for their mentoring roles this fall.

(*Block I - 120; Block II - 40; both blocks do a part of Teacher Work Sample.)

Contact person: Tabitha "Toby" Daniel <tabitha.daniel@wku.edu>

Teacher Work Samples and Electronic Portfolios Prompt Teacher Education Program Redesign at Western Kentucky University

Teacher work samples are the driving force at Western Kentucky University to examine how teachers are being prepared to facilitate learning of all students. Since teacher work samples focus on seven processes directed at facilitating the learning of all students, faculty at Western is developing critical performances that teacher candidates must demonstrate prior to student teaching. Critical performances are those candidate knowledges and skills that must be developed in teacher preparation courses prior to student teaching (i.e. use of context, focus on learning goals, use of assessments, analysis of student learning, reflection and self-evaluation). The progressive skills (critical performances) to be developed in each course are being identified and examined. Teacher candidates are then required to demonstrate critical performances in each course and enter them into an electronic portfolio that becomes a permanent professional record of the candidate. The electronic portfolio also enables tracking of candidate performances throughout the program and the ability to link candidate performances to their ability to facilitate P-12 student learning in student teaching and in the first year of teaching.

Data Management System

The system has five components: (1) Program Entry Data, (2) Electronic Portfolio Data, (3) Field Experience Data, (4) Program Exit Data and (5) Graduate Follow-up Data. The system not only enables Western to track individual candidates through the program, it also provides aggregated course and program data that enables faculty to identify strengths and weaknesses that contribute to measured candidate performance in student teaching and in the first year of teaching.

Team Mentoring

Five teacher educators, five arts and science faculty, and five practitioners are currently being recruited for mentoring teams. Training of mentoring teams will include a workshop on the revised teacher work sample prompt, including examining and evaluating some teacher work samples using the scoring rubric, and discussion groups related to more effective mentoring (i.e., roles of each member, challenges of mentoring teams, etc.). Two major challenges to the development of mentoring teams have been: 1) the recruitment of arts and science faculty, and 2) involvement of teacher education faculty.

First, since the arts and sciences faculty are not housed in the College of Education, it has been a challenge to find those who are willing and/or able to spend time working on this project. To address this, we have focused our attentions on those arts and science faculty who are currently teaching classes for the teacher education programs and/or have an established connection with teacher education faculty. Also, at least initially, we have been able to offer a stipend for those willing to work with the project.

Second, our teacher education faculty have been faced with a large amount of change over the last year or so and have had their attention drawn away from the Renaissance project. We feel this will improve as time goes on.

In preparation for Year 3 of the project, Western Kentucky University is taking the following steps to expand the recruitment and training of mentoring teams:

Meeting with department heads and deans of arts and science faculty to discuss other options for rewarding participation in the Renaissance Project (i.e., P&T credit, load reduction),
Providing workshops to develop understanding of the teacher work sample prompt and scoring guide, and
Continued discussion groups to discuss what’s working and what’s not with the mentoring teams.

Contact person: Tabitha "Toby" Daniel <tabitha.daniel@wku.edu>

Accountability Systems

During the spring semester of 2001, Western is setting up its data management system and establishing a process to feed data back to program faculty in a user-friendly format. Also, follow-up surveys of first year teacher graduates will be conducted with a sample of 160 teachers teaching in Kentucky schools using a modified questionnaire that more clearly addresses the goals of the Renaissance Project.

Furthermore, the faculty is being provided a recent analysis of the responses to selected questions of 526 Western teacher graduates from a statewide teacher survey collected over a three year period (1996-1998). The questions selected were those that most clearly addressed the six critical teaching practices identified by the ten institutions of the Renaissance Project. Respondents were teachers who had completed their first, second, or third year of teaching. In general, between 50% and 63% of teachers reported feeling extremely or well prepared by Western to implement the six teaching practices, which suggests an overall level of moderate preparation. Of equal concern is an apparent trend of teachers' reporting less satisfaction with their preparation the more years they have taught.