Is the edTPA the Right Choice for Evaluating Teacher Readiness?

The purpose of this article is to describe and analyze the edTPA, a performance assessment created by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) and administered by Pearson, Inc., to assess the professional readiness of student teachers. We challenge claims made in support of using this assessment, specifically within the context of arts teacher preparation programs, and we address areas of immediate critical concern to make alternative recommendations.     

Do You Really Want to Know? Elementary Music Personnel and Potential in Utah

This is the second of two articles reporting the results of a study by the author regarding the status of elementary music education in the state of Utah. This article focuses on the qualifications of Utah's elementary music teachers (music certified, elementary classroom certified, artists-in-residence, volunteers, and paraprofessionals) and the conditions under which they teach. Interactions among teacher qualifications and teaching status are explored. Paraprofessionals play a significant role in Utah's elementary music programs. While over 90 percent of elementary schools in the United States provide regular music instruction taught by certified music specialists, less than 10 percent of Utah's elementary population receives such instruction. Nearly half of the elementary students in the state receive no designated music instruction beyond that provided by their regular elementary classroom teacher. The influence of school funding, No Child Left Behind and other accountability measures, high-stakes testing, urban/rural populations, and leadership are highlighted. Policy considerations are discussed.     

Preparedness as a counter-memory. School desegregation,social chances and life chances

ABSTRACT

How should we understand the conundrum of love for the segregated school – a system built to keep you in your place? In Gone Home. Race and Roots through Appalachia, Karida L. Brown looks at African American teacher’s work in segregated schools and shows how desegregation could be felt in both gains and losses in the black community. Those teachers prepared their students for a world of integration without freedom. This essay proposes a counter-memory of segregation, a relational agency of teachers past that remains to this day. Former students’ commemoration of teachers, principals, and schools dating from the time of institutionalized racial exclusion works as a symbolic reminder in a still-racist world, representing not only the need to be prepared, but also to stay prepared.     

Newly Betwixt and Between: Revising Liminality in the Context of a Teacher Preparation Program

Through an analysis of a contemporary rite of passage-the final stage of teacher preparation-I develop a new theory of liminality that both builds on and extends Victor Turner's enduring insights. The analysis focuses on how preservice teachers in an undergraduate education program engage in a process of identity formation within an asynchronous, nondimensional, liminal space made possible and shaped by e-mail and with the support of experienced mentor teachers.     

开展临床指导教师对普通专科医师培训情况的调查结果分析

目的:调查我院专科医师培训开展的整体情况,为继续做好专科医师培训工作提供依据。方法:随机调查我院参与普通专科医师培训轮转科室的指导教师,发放自制调查表。结果:90%以上导师认为科室带教质量高;48.78%导师认为临床科室应为学员每月发放1000元以上生活补助;60.98%导师认为硕士研究生普通专科医师培训时间应为二年;60%以上导师认为应着重硕士研究生临床操作技能、医患沟通能力、病历书写能力及阅片能力等方面能力的培训;50%以上导师认为目前培训中存在的主要问题是生活无保障;图书馆国内外最新文献不足;监管力度不强;临床技能培训针对性不强等。结论:我院开展普通专科医师培训整体情况较好。但仍存在很多问题,在今后的培训过程中应继续为学员的生活提供更多保障,继续加强管理监督,保证培训按计划、按质量完成。     

关爱解剖学教师生命，远离肿瘤

解剖学是重要的基础医学学科之一。由于解剖学教师常年接触福尔马林,长期在弥散有甲醛的环境中工作,这类人群恶性肿瘤发病率明显高于正常人群。关爱这一特殊战线上默默奉献的的生命,让他们远离肿瘤是我们需要重视的问题。     

The True Meaning of Design

Recently, state and federal legislators have emphasized teacher quality in their efforts to improve public education. Many reformers believe that merit pay may prove invaluable in attracting highly qualified educators to the workforce and retaining them, as well as in improving students’ test scores. While merit pay's ability to recruit and retain great teachers is as yet unproven, recent studies have found little evidence that merit pay improves students’ test scores. The following article seeks to inform merit pay policies by offering insight from research in educational psychology and outlining possible implications for music education.     

Not Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth: Exploring the Merits of a Student–Teacher–Scientist Partnership

One major emphasis of reform initiatives in science education is the importance of extended inquiry experiences for students through authentic collaborations with scientists. As such, unique partnerships have started to emerge between science and education in an ongoing effort to capture the interest and imaginations of students as they make sense of the world around them. One such partnership is called the student–teacher–scientist partnership, in which teachers and their students participate in and contribute to the research of scientists. This article explores a partnership between a 10th-grade biology teacher, her students, and practicing scientists who collaborated in the design, implementation and evaluation of a horse evolution unit. The primary goal of the collaborative activity was to involve teachers and students in a process of conceptual change as a means of eliminating common misconceptions implicit in horse evolution displays in museums in various parts of the country. The evidence-based lessons developed enhanced students’ understanding of concepts in macroevolution but also connected the science classroom with a community of scientists whose personalization of the horse evolution unit situated biological concepts and the learning experience within the context of real-world issues.     

Early childhood arts education in the United States: A special issue of Arts Education Policy Review

ABSTRACT

In this introduction to Early Childhood Arts Education in the United States, a special issue of Arts Education Policy Review, the editors provide a platform for stakeholders' increased awareness and understandings of the need to ensure children's rights to arts education. They summarize the five articles comprising this issue, and invite stakeholders to consider example action steps to apply content from this Issue to arts interactions with young children.     

Rings that Flow Like Quicksilver

Preparing dance specialist teachers to successfully educate an increasingly diverse student population highlights a number of challenges within an educational policy landscape characterized by technical production, methods-centric teacher preparation, teacher-proof curriculum, and standardization. The ramifications of these policies have significantly narrowed the scope of teacher preparation and stripped curricula of educational foundations content. This article presents a praxis-incorporative approach for integrating social foundations content into dance teacher preparation based on a review of relevant national standards. Recommendations and insights, grounded in research findings from an undergraduate dance pedagogy course (n = 59) taught from critical and feminist pedagogical perspectives, are discussed.