Register for #AACTE25 by January 7 for the best rate! Register Now

AACTE Award to Recognize Study on Use of Rehearsals in Teacher Preparation

February 19, 2014
Press Releases & Statements
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For interviews, contact: Lisa Johnson Kiefer
202-478-4502 or lkiefer@aacte.org

(Feb. 19, 2014, Washington, D.C.) – The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) will present its 2014 Outstanding Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) Article Award to a group of eight authors whose study provides a provocative framing of the ways in which teacher educators design and guide novice teachers’ learning—specifically through the use of coached rehearsals within cycles of investigating and enacting practice. The award, which recognizes exemplary scholarship published in JTE in the areas of educator preparation or of teaching and learning with implications for educator preparation, will be presented March 3 at AACTE’s 66th Annual Meeting in Indianapolis.

The winning article, “Keeping It Complex: Using Rehearsals to Support Novice Teacher Learning of Ambitious Teaching,” was written by Magdalene Lampert, Ed.D. (BPE/Boston Teacher Residency); Megan Loef Franke, Ph.D. (University of California Los Angeles); Elham Kazemi, Ph.D. (University of Washington); Hala Ghousseini, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin); Angela Chan Turrou, Ph.D. (UCLA); Heather Beasley, Ph.D. (University of Michigan); Adrian Cunard (University of Washington); and Kathleen Crowe (University of Washington).

The article, published in the May/June 2013 issue of JTE, offers an analysis of a particular pedagogy of teacher education: rehearsal with coaching. The authors report on a study conducted in three different teacher preparation programs that analyzes what teacher educators and groups of novice teachers do together during rehearsals and considers how these rehearsals provide opportunities for novice teachers to learn to enact principles, practices and knowledge entailed in ambitious teaching.

AACTE’s Committee on Research and Dissemination reviewed articles for the award from a pool nominated by the journal’s editors at Penn State University. “The committee members found this study to be an important development and source of inspiration regarding the vision and enactment of teacher education pedagogy,” said Jennie Whitcomb, Ph.D., chair of AACTE’s committee and associate dean for teacher education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “It brings together and lifts up notions of core or high-leverage practices.”

“The work and thinking described in this paper represents what is possible in teacher education: a coherent set of powerful professional structures to support the education of novice teachers across settings, content areas and grade spans,” said Jesse Solomon, executive director of BPE, whose Boston Teacher Residency has been implementing the methodologies described in the article to great effect. “The challenge for us, and for the field, is how we educate a new generation of teachers at scale to enter the classroom ready to enact ambitious instruction. It will be through structures such as rehearsal with coaching that we are able to simulate much of the complexity of today’s classrooms and provide for new teachers the framework and coaching they need.”

For more information about JTE, visit http://jte.sagepub.com. For more information on AACTE’s 2014 award winners, visit www.aacte.org.

###

AACTE: Serving Learners
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is a national alliance of educator preparation programs dedicated to the highest quality professional development of teachers and school leaders in order to enhance PK-12 student learning. The 800 institutions holding AACTE membership represent public and private colleges and universities in every state, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam. AACTE’s reach and influence fuels its mission of serving learners by providing all school personnel with superior training and continuing education.