AACTE Kicks Off Regional Workshop Series for Quality Assurance Work

(April 24, 2017, Washington D.C.) – Today, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) launches its inaugural Quality Support Workshop in Fort Worth, Texas. The workshop, which runs through Wednesday, is the first in a new series of regional events focused on supporting teacher preparation providers to improve program quality. By providing a forum for educators to share experiences about program innovation and construct solutions to shared problems of practice, the Quality Support Workshops aim to meet the present-day needs of teacher educators.

Offered through the Association’s Quality Support Center, these workshops deliver professional development for assessment, accreditation, and documenting quality assurance in convenient sites around the country. Each event connects participants with specialists in facilitated, hands-on sessions where faculty can share strategies and develop customized, actionable plans for use in their home institutions.

“These learning events allow us to access the resource that AACTE members are to each other through an efficient program of sharing what members know,” said Sharon P. Robinson, Ed.D., president and CEO of AACTE. “It is a real, smart opportunity to leverage the assets within the membership as they support each other in sharing what has been learned in program change and program quality.”

In addition to engaging in general sessions to frame the quality assurance conversation broadly, attendees choose specialized workshops on topics such as analyzing their programs’ impact and progress toward achieving quality goals, assessing professional readiness of teacher candidates and interpreting assessment results, and reporting data outcomes to the community and key stakeholders. Depending on which sessions participants select, the workshops’ learning objectives include the following:

• Establish action steps based on data.
• Identify data sources, types of data, and methods for improvement initiatives.
• Analyze strengths and weaknesses of programs based on performance assessment (and related) data.
• Exchange surveys, rubrics, and other instruments for use in evaluating performance.
• Articulate the role of validity, reliability, and fairness in evaluating program performance.
• Articulate the relationship between findings and actions to drive continuous improvement.
• Respond to/engage stakeholders’ perspective on data.
• Differentiate among report writing, analysis of implications, and resultant actions.
• Conduct a review of an institution’s readiness to develop a quality assurance system.
• Collaborate with a team to describe/develop/design/support components of a quality assurance system.
• Depict the ethical considerations of preparing for a state program approval, specialized professional association national recognition, and/or national accreditation visit.

The two-day events will be held in multiple locations across the country to provide accessible, affordable, and targeted support for members and nonmembers alike. This year, AACTE will bring these workshops to three sites: Fort Worth, Texas, April 24-26; Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 10-12; and Seattle, Washington, November 9-11.

“While our workshops are inspired by members of AACTE, they are offered in the interest of our entire professional educator preparation community, including our colleagues in practice, nonmembers and policy makers,” said Robinson. “These events are for those who share an interest in helping the preparation of our next generation of teachers become ever more focused on the needs of real practice.”

To provide ongoing support, AACTE will soon unveil a new consultant database for teacher educators to access trained and vetted experts to assist with accreditation and continuous improvement processes. The Association also offers free online professional seminars in partnership with FutureLearn to provide convenient support around quality assurance themes.

Learn more about AACTE’s regional Quality Support Workshops at aacte.org and follow them on Twitter at #AACTE_QSW.

About AACTE
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is a national alliance of educator preparation programs dedicated to high-quality, evidence-based preparation that assures educators are profession-ready as they enter the classroom. The over 800 member institutions include public and private colleges and universities in every state, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam. Through advocacy and capacity building, AACTE promotes innovation and effective practices that strengthen educator preparation. Learn more at www.aacte.org.