 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
| Project Activities Overview |  |
Project activities in the
Renaissance Partnership Project are directly related to the six objectives
designed to achieve the project goal. By
clicking on each of the six activity topics below or in the right column, you
can learn more about the development progress in each area, the materials
available and contact persons at each site.
Data Management Systems
All sites are in the process of
developing data management systems to regularly collect, analyze and report on
teacher candidate performance, including the follow-up performance of first year
graduates. Candidate performance
includes the teacher’s ability to impact P-12 student learning.
Teacher Work Sample
All
sites are committed to developing the capacity to use teacher work samples as
primary strategy to focus teacher candidates’ development on their ability to
facilitate P-12 student learning. The
Renaissance model for teacher work samples identifies seven key teaching
processes which are described in a performance prompt, performance indicators
and scoring rubric that can be downloaded from this web site. Progress at each site with respect to teacher work sample implementation
is provided in the Project News section of
the web site.
Team Mentoring
This strategy combines the need of
teacher candidates for an augmented support system as they learn to design,
implement and evaluate units of instruction and the need for more collaboration
between teacher education, the arts and sciences, and schools in preparing
teachers. Team mentoring is a
developmental effort in the project to recruit, train and implement field
mentoring teams consisting of teacher educators, arts and science faculty and
school practitioners to provide intense collaborative support to teacher
candidates and new teachers. Both
the successes and challenges of this strategy are reflected in the web site
information in this area.
Business Partnerships
Efforts to initiate and develop
partnerships with business to support teacher preparation in this project
follows a national trend for business and industry to express more interest and
concern for the education of America’s work force. Also, the benefits of public schools/business partnerships over the past
ten years support the potential for extending business partnerships with teacher
preparation programs. However,
since there are no national models for business partnerships with teacher
education this strategy is developmental and a work in progress for this
project.
Networking
Connecting
people, ideas, information and materials has been a primary support strategy for
this project. With ten institutions
in nine states, a major vehicle for communicating and sharing information has
and will continue to be the internet and this web site. Again, this strategy has been developmental as project leaders work
together to establish more user-friendly ways to build and operate electronic
and people networks.
Research and Dissemination
Another very important support strategy from the inception of this project is to gather and use data to guide development. In the second year of this project, five studies are in progress that represent what project site leaders believed we needed to know about impact on teacher candidates, faculty and school practitioners, preparation programs, team mentoring and measurement of impact on student learning. Five research projects are described which are in progress. The reports from these studies will guide Year 3 development.