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Studies of Excellence in Teacher Education: Preparation in the Undergraduate Years
Kenneth Zeichner
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Abstract
This book presents case studies of two highly successful teacher education programs. It is part of a three-volume series that includes seven case studies. The book documents the goals, strategies, content, and processes of teacher education programs that are widely acknowledged as exemplars for preparing prospective teachers to engage in skillful, learner-centered practice. Using observations, interviews, and surveys, researchers examined all aspects of each program of study and clinical practice. The book documents the capabilities of prospective teachers who graduate from these programs by focusing on the teachers' own work during teacher education and in the field, interviews with faculty and administrators in the schools where graduates teach, and surveys of principals. The book also examines what policies, organizational features, resources, and relationships have enabled these programs to succeed. Some of the programs' common features include a clear, shared vision of ...
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DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 468 432 SP 041 064
AUTHOR Zeichner, Kenneth; Miller, Lynne; Silvernail, David
TITLE Studies of Excellence in Teacher Education: Preparation in
the Undergraduate Years.
INSTITUTION American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education,
Washington, DC.; National Commission on Teaching & America's
Future, New York, NY.
SPONS AGENCY DeWitt Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund, Pleasantville, NY.
ISBN ISBN-0-9654535-6-1
PUB DATE 2000-00-00
NOTE 123p.; Edited by Linda Darling-Hammond.
AVAILABLE FROM AACTE Publications, 1307 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 300,
Washington, DC 20005-4701 (nonmembers: $25.95; AACTE members:
$20.95). Tel: 202-293-2450; Fax: 202-457-8095; Web site:
PUB TYPE Books (010) -- Reports - Research (143)
EDRS PRICE EDRS Price MF01/PC05 Plus Postage.
DESCRIPTORS Case Studies; Elementary Secondary Education; Higher
Education; *Preservice Teacher Education; Program
Effectiveness; Student Teachers; *Undergraduate Study
IDENTIFIERS Alverno College WI; Learner Centered Instruction; Program
Characteristics; Wheelock College MA
ABSTRACT
This book presents case studies of two highly successful
teacher education programs. It is part of a three-volume series that includes
seven case studies. The book documents the goals, strategies, content, and
processes of teacher education programs that are widely acknowledged as
exemplars for preparing prospective teachers to engage in skillful, learner-
centered practice. Using observations, interviews, and surveys, researchers
examined all aspects of each program of study and clinical practice. The book
documents the capabilities of prospective teachers who graduate from these
programs by focusing on the teachers' own work during teacher education and
in the field, interviews with faculty and administrators in the schools where
graduates teach, and surveys of principals. The book also examines what
policies, organizational features, resources, and relationships have enabled
these programs to succeed. Some of the programs' common features include a
clear, shared vision of good teaching; well-defined standards of practice and
performance; extended clinical experiences; and extensive use of case study,
teacher research, performance assessment, and portfolio evaluation. The two
case studies are "Ability-Based Teacher Education: Elementary Teacher
Education at Alverno College" (Kenneth Zeichner) and "Learning to Become a
Teacher: The Wheelock Way" (Lynn Miller and David Silvernail). (Papers
contains references.) (SM)
Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
from the original document.
Studies of Excellence
in Teacher Education:
Preparation at the
Undergraduate Level
Kenneth Zeichner, Lynne Miller
and David Silvernail
AACTE
2000
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Office of Educational Research and
Improvement
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)
This document has been reproduced as
received from the person or organization
originating it.
Minor changes have been made to improve
reproduction quality
Points of view or opinions stated in this
document do not necessarily represent
official OERI position or policy.
PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND
DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS
BEEN GRANTED BY
D. Imig
TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)
BEST COPY AVAILABLE
STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE IN
TEACHER EDUCATION
PREPARATION IN THE
ALVERNO COLLEGE
BY KENNETH ZEICHNER
WHEELOCK COLLEGE
BY LYNNE MILLER AND DAVID SILVERNAIL
Linda Darling-Hammond, Editor
STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE IN
TEACHER EDUCATION
PREPARATION IN THE
ALVERNO COLLEGE
BY KENNETH ZEICHNER
WREELOCK COLLEGE
BY LYNNE MILLER AND DAVID SILVERNAIL
Linda Darling-Hammond, Editor
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is a national, voluntary association
of colleges and universities with undergraduate or graduate programs to prepare professional educa-
tors. The Association supports programs in data gathering, equity, leadership development, network-
ing policy analysis, professional issues, and scholarship.
The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this monograph do not necessar-
ily reflect the views or opinions of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. The
AACTE does not endorse or warrant this information. The AACTE is publishing this document to
stimulate discussion, study, and experimentation among educators. The reader must evaluate this
information in light of the unique circumstances of any particular situation and must determine inde-
pendently the applicability of this information thereto.
Studies in Excellence in Teacher Education: Preparation in the Undergraduate Years may be ordered from:
AACTE Publications
4411.. 1307 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300
IIII Washington, DC 20005-4701
AACTE Tel: 202/293-2450
AM E RICAN Fax: 202/457-8095
ASSOCIATION
OF COLLEGES Web site: www.aacte.org
FOR TEACHER
EDUCATION Single copy: $20.95 AACTE members/$25.95 nonmembers
This three-volume series also includes:
Studies in Excellence in Teacher Education: Preparation in a Five-Year Program
Studies in Excellence in Teacher Education: Preparation at the Graduate Level
The National Commission on Teaching and
National Commission America's Future, initiated in 1994, was created to
on Teaching & America's Future identify the implications for teaching embodied in
current school reforms; to examine what steps need to be taken to guarantee all children access to
skilled, knowledgeable, and committed teachers; and to develop a comprehensive policy blueprint for
high educational performance. The Commission's work has been supported by grants from the
AT&T Foundation; BellSouth Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; the DeWitt Wallace
- Reader's Digest Fund; the Ford Foundation; the Philip Morris Companies Inc.; the Rockefeller
Foundation; the US Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement;
and the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the DeWitt Wallace - Reader's Digest Fund for support of
this publication.
© 2000 by National Commission on Teaching & America's. Future, New York, New York. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN No: 0-9654535-6-1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Ability-Based Teacher Education:
Elementary Teacher Education at Alverno College 1
Overview 2
The Alverno Philosophy in Action 5
The Overall Structure of Alverno's Elementary Teacher Education Program . . 9
Program Goals and Content 18
Perceptions of the Nature and Impact of the Program:
Graduates, Employers, Students 37
Critical Features of Alverno's Elementary Teacher Education Program 52
References 56
Appendix A: Methodology 58
Appendix B: Courses in the Elementary Education Program 60
Appendix C: Professional Group Discussion Assessment 61
Appendix D: Student Teacher Assessment Form 63
Appendix E: Correlation Between Campus Courses and Field Experiences 66
Learning to Become a Teacher: The Wheelock Way 67
Overview 68
The Undergraduate Program in Early Childhood Education Care 70
The Shaping of a Teacher: The Student Perspective 75
Freshman Year: Reframing Commitments 76
Sophomore Year: Empowering Oneself 79
Junior and Senior Years: Taking Charge 83
Reflecting on the Undergraduate Student Perspective 88
Beyond the Undergraduate Experience:
Learning from Experiences and Graduate Study 91
The Institutional Perspective 98
Concluding Remarks 103
References 104
Appendix A: Early Childhood Care and Education Program of Study 105
Appendix B: Master's in Elementary Education (Angela's Program) 106
Table 1: Wheelock Graduates' Perceptions of Teacher Preparation 107
About the Authors 108
About the Editor 109
FOREWORD
by Linda Darling-Hammond
This set of case studies about extraordinary teacher education programs
is one of three volumes being published by the American Association of
Colleges for Teacher Education in collaboration with the National
Commission on Teaching & America's Future. A cross-cutting analysis of
the cases, published separately, will describe the common features of these
seven programs that are distinguished by their success in preparing teach-
ers to practice in ways that we describe as both learner-centered and
learning-centered. By this, we mean that they prepare teacher to meet the
needs of very diverse learnersto teach in ways that are responsive to
individual students' intelligences, talents, cultural and linguistic back-
grounds, needs, and interests; and they prepare teachers to teach for
understandingto teach in ways that support active, in-depth learning
which results in powerful thinking and flexible, proficient performances
on the pail of their students.
These abilities are the foundation of new standards developed by the
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), the
Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC),
and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
(NCATE), along with professional associations engaged in developing
new standards for students. However, while there is increasing consensus
on what teachers and their students need to know and be able to do in
order to meet the more ambitious goals of 21st century schools, there is
not yet a well-developed knowledge base about how to prepare teachers
to do these things. Although teacher education has been much critiqued,
little research has been done to examine the kinds of learning experiences
that help beginning teachers acquire the knowledge and skills that under-
lie learner-centered and learning-centered practice.
That teacher knowledge is central to this mission is a new concept in
20th century school reform. After decades of trying to fix schools by chang-
ing curriculum packages, texts, tests, and management systems, most
reformers now agree that deepening teachers' knowledge and skills is criti-
cal to the success of ongoing efforts to reform American education. Only
very knowledgeable and skillful teachers who are able to respond differen-
tially and appropriately to students' interests and needs can enable diverse
FOREWORD /V
learners to succeed at much more challenging learning goals. These goals
include helping students learn to master ambitious subject matter content
and to think critically, create, and solve complex problems, rather than
merely to perform rote tasks. And teachers are being asked to achieve these
goals for all children, not just the 10 to 20 percent who have traditionally
been siphoned off into programs for the gifted and talented or "honors"
track. Furthermore, students are more diverse in their needs and back-
grounds and less supported in their communities than in the past. So
schools are being asked to take achieve higher goals for a broader group of
students with greater learning needs than ever before.
This collection of case studies seeks to answer a question that has not
yet been yet addressed by reformers: How can we prepare teachers for this
daunting mission? The study, conducted under the auspices of the
National Commission on Teaching & America's Future at Teachers
College, Columbia University, reports how seven teacher education pro-
grams have been able to prepare teachers to succeed at the kind of highly
demanding practice described above, and thus to create substantially
more successful and powerful learning experiences for students. It pro-
vides evidence about the outcomes of the programs as well as the content
they engage and the processes they employ. The goal of this work is to
provide greater knowledge that others in the field can build upon
knowledge that will help us understand what successful teacher education
models look like, what they aim for, what they do, and what their stu-
dents can accomplish as a result.
One motivation for this study was to counteract the widely shared set
of myths about teaching and teacher education. Among others, these
myths include the following: that good teachers are born and not made;
that good practice cannot really be taughtit can only be intuited
through trial and error; that few can ever really master complex teaching
practices or attend to the needs of individual learners (thus, teacher-proof
curricula should be continued targets of educational investment); that
there are no worthwhile teacher education programs anyway so the whole
process of preparing teachers should be abandoned. These myths, despite
their lack of grounding, drive much policy work and deflect attention
from needed investments in high quality preparation for teachers.
To provide evidence about alternatives, we set out to look at teacher
education programs that are so noticeably good at what they do that the
vi / STUDIES OF EXCELLENC
8 PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
distinctive practice of their graduates is obvious as soon as an observer sets
foot in the classroom. This phenomenon is one that I have noticed over
the years of my work in schools and teaching. In my years in New York,
for example, I could almost invariably identify the graduates of preservice
programs like those of Bank Street and Teachers College, Columbia by
seeing them teach and hearing them discuss their practice. Like the grad-
uates of other programs that we discovered by asking practitioners in
other parts of the country, these teachers' knowledge of curriculum and
assessment, their focus on and understanding of individual students, and
their capacity to use sophisticated teaching strategies for engaging diverse
learners were immediately evident. Furthermore, I found that in many
parts of the country I could find a high degree of consensus among prin-
cipals, superintendents, and teachers who operated schools that were
extraordinarily successful with diverse learners about where they liked to
hire their teachers. These excellent practitioners agreed on a very short list
of colleges in their vicinity (often only one or two) that they believe pre-
pare teachers from their very first moments on the job to shape powerful
learning experiences for their students and to understand their students'
learning and how to support it very, very well.
The seven programs in this study are by no means the only ones that fit
these criteria and the more formal parameters we ultimately used in devel-
oping the sample. The programs were selected from a much longer list of
candidates because they represent elementary and secondary programs in
public and private institutions serving different kinds of clientele in differ-
ent parts of the country. The programs were selected through an extensive
review of evidence, including national reputational sampling from
researchers, expert practitioners, and scholars of teacher education; local
evidence from employers about who they prefer to hire and why; and evi-
dence of outcomes from prior surveys of program graduates. To these data
about program outcomes, we added as part of the study a comparison sur-
vey of recent program graduates and a national random sample of begin-
ning teachers about their preparation and practices; a survey of the princi-
pals of program graduates about their views of the program graduates' abil-
ities and practice in comparison with those of other programs; and obser-
vations of graduates' classroom practice after graduation.
The sample institutions use very different models of preparation, some
are undergraduate while others are postbaccalaureate or five year (corn-
FOREWORD / VII
bined undergraduate and graduate); some have created professional
development school relationships while others organize student teaching
in more traditional ways; some use cohort models while others do not;
some attract current or recent college students while others attract mid-
career recruits to teaching. Thus, together they represent the gamut of
possibilities for teacher education currently found in the field:
Bank Street College in New York City offers a graduate school program
that is known for its long-standing commitments to progressive, dem-
ocratic practice and has the Bank Street School for Children as an on-
site lab school. We examined the programs for preparing elementary
and middle school teachers.
The University of California at Berkeley's Developmental Teacher
Education Program is a two-year graduate school model of early child-
hood education that is strongly focused on the application of develop-
mental' psychology to teaching.
University of Southern Maine's Extended Teacher Education Program
(ETEP) is a one-year graduate school model that is substantially school-
based. Almost all fieldwork and much coursework for both the elemen-
tary and secondary teacher education programs takes place in schools
that are professional development, school partners with the university
Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts is known for progressive
early childhood education, much like Bank Street. We examined the
undergraduate early childhood education program that is also a path-
way to a master's degree program required of all teachers in
Massachusetts before they receive a career teaching license.
Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is an undergraduate model
that organizes its work around a sophisticated performance assessment
strategy tied to its ability-based curriculum. We examined the elemen-
tary teacher education program that works in strong collaboration with
Milwaukee Public Schools.
Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas operates a five-year model that
/ STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: P4EIAATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
extends from undergraduate through graduate school in a blended pro-
gram that awards both a disciplinary bachelor's and a Master's in
Education for both elementary and secondary candidates. Trinity
adopted the major recommendations of the Holmes Group and has
organized all of its field work around professional development schools.
University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia is a five-year dual
degree program like Trinity's that does not rely upon professional devel-
opment schools. We examined the secondary education programs in
English and mathematics. These programs provide insights into the
preparation of high school teachers, an area that we found was prob-
lematic nationwide.
The study does three things:, First, it documents the goals, strategies,
content, and processes of teacher education programs that are widely
acknowledged as exemplars for preparing prospective teachers to engage
in skillful, learner-centered practice. Using a standard set of observation
and interview protocols, as well as survey instruments, a team of
researchers examined all aspects of the program of study and clinical prac-
tice engaged in by studentsby surveying graduates and their employers;
shadowing and interviewing students; visiting classes, seminars, profes-
sional development school sites, collecting record data (syllabi, assign-
ments, student work, program descriptions, and statistics) and observing
and interviewing university-based and school-based faculty about the
intentions, processes, and outcomes of their work.
Second, the study documents the capabilities of the prospective teach-
ers who graduate from these programs. This is done through examination
of the teachers' own work during teacher education and in the field (direct
observations as well as artifacts of practice: portfolios, exhibitions, lesson
plans, assignments, and samples of their own students' work); interviews
with faculty and administrators in the schools where graduates teach; sur-
veys of principals comparing the knowledge and skills of these candidates
to others whom they have hired; and record data from other surveys and
accreditation reviews. Finally, the study examines what policies, organiza-
tional features, resources and relationships have enabled these programs
to be successful, taking into account the university and state policy con-
texts within which these programs exist.
FOREWORD / IX
11
We sought to study a diverse set of programs because we believe the
findings will be more robust and useful if they characterize important fea-
tures of successful programs that exist in a wide range of contexts with
which other schools can identify. The goal of the study is not to suggest a
single cookie-cutter approach to preparing teachers, but to understand
the core features of a range of programs that make a difference for prepar-
ing teachers who understand their students and who can teach in ways
that develop deep understanding and high levels of competence. While
they conceptualize and conduct their work in different ways, these pro-
grams do have many common features. Among them are the following:
a common, clear vision of good teaching that is apparent in all course-
work and clinical experiences;
well-defined standards of practice and performance that are used to
guide and evaluate coursework and clinical work;
a curriculum grounded in substantial knowledge of child and adoles-
cent development, learning theory, cognition, motivation, and subject
matter pedagogy, taught in the context of practice;
extended clinical experiences (at least 30 weeks) which are carefully
chosen to support the ideas and practices presented in simultaneous,
closely interwoven coursework;
strong relationships, common knowledge, and shared beliefs among
school- and university-based faculty; and
extensive use of case study methods, teacher research, performance
assessments, and portfolio evaluation to ensure that learning is applied
to real problems of practice.
These features and others help these programs productively confront
many of the core dilemmas of teacher education: the strong influence of
the "apprenticeship of observation" candidates bring with them from
their years as students in elementary and secondary schools; the presumed
divide between theory and practice; the potential limitations of personal
X/ STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPA1A2N IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
and cultural perspectives each person brings to the task of teaching the
difficulty of teaching people how to enact their intentions in complex set-
tings for practice; and many more.
We hope that readers find the case studies to be generative for their own
research, thinking, and practical efforts with regard to the education of
teachers. If the illustrations provided here spark an idea or an initiative
that enables teachers-to learn more productively how to teach more pow-
erfully, our work will have been well rewarded.
Linda Darling-Hammond
Provence, July Z 1999
Note: The research team was led by Linda Darling-Hammond, then William F. Russell
Charles E.
Professor of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and currently
Ducommun Professor of Teaching and Teacher Education at Stanford University. It
included Julia Koppich, President of Julia E. Koppich and Associates, an education con-
sulting firm; Maritza B. Macdonald, Senior Research Associate, National Center for
Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia University;
Kay Merseth, Executive Director of the Harvard Project on Schooling and Children at
Harvard University; Lynne Miller, Professor and Director of the Southern Maine
Partnership at the University of Southern Maine; Gordon Ruscoe, Professor in the
Foundations of Education at the University of Louisville; David Silvernail, Professor and
Director of the Center for Educational Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation at the
University of Southern Maine; Jon Snyder, Associate Professor and Director of Teacher
Education at the University of California at Santa Barbara; Betty Lou Whitford, Professor
of Education and Director of the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools,
and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University; and Kenneth Zeichner, Hoefs
Bascom Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
13 FOREWORD / XI
Ability-Based Teacher Education:
Elementary Teacher Education
at Alverno College
BY KENNETH ZEICHNER
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
As I look for teachers, I most immediately look for Alverno applicants.
Integrating new teachers into the staff from Alverno is so much easier,
because of their high ability to be self-reflective,
their personally wide experiences with performance assessment
at the college level and their ability to apply critical research bases
to their classroo' experiences.
They are highly collegial unafraid to seek out all they need to know
from mentors and staff around them.
I'll take 10 more teachers like the two I've had this year.
-Principals' comments on Alverno teachers
14 1
OVERVIEW
Alverno College is a Catholic liberal arts college for women with an
enrollment of about 2,300 students located in the city of Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. It was founded in 1887 as a normal school to prepare teach-
ers for parochial schools, became a four-year teachers college in 1936, and
a four-year liberal arts college in 1946. Although all of the baccalaureate
degree programs are limited to women, some of the non-degree pro-
grams, such as post-baccalaureate teacher certification, are open to men as
well. A few men are enrolled in these programs. Of the approximately
2,300 students at Alverno, around 1,400 are enrolled in the Weekday
College and 900 are enrolled in the Weekend College. Education majors
(about 300 students) at Alverno College make up about 22 percent of the
Weekday College and about 14 percent of the total college enrollment.
About two-thirds of the students at Alverno College are from the
Milwaukee metropolitan area. Alverno is essentially a commuter campus
that has historically served first-generation college students. Faculty esti-
mate that over 50 percent of the current students are the first in their
immediate families to attend a higher education institution. A large per-
centage of students are employed; approximately 85 percent of students
receive some form of financial aid; and about 25 percent of students now
at Alverno are people of color. An increasingly older population attends
the Weekday College program; only about 39 percent of the students in
this program are under the age of 23, the average age of education stu-
dents at Alverno is 26 to 28; and many of the students in the classes we
observed were parents.
The education department at Alverno College offers teacher licensure
preparation programs, in early childhood education, elementary educa-
tion, secondary education, bilingual education, music education, art edu-
cation, and adult education. Elementary education majors can elect to
broaden their certification in grades one to six to include either early
childhood (N-K) or middle School (grades 7-9). Other certifiable support
areas available to elementary majors are bilingual education, computer
studies, dance, language arts, math, science, social studies, Spanish lan-
guage and culture, and theater.
The elementary teacher education program which is the focus of this
(-Ace study is the largest of the Alverno College teacher education programs.
Over the last four years, an average of 53 students have graduated with ele-
2/ STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPIR
5 ON IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
mentary certification each year. (There has been an average of 217 students
enrolled in elementary education over the last four years.) About one-third
of the 53 graduates per year were post-baccalaureate students, and about 40
percent were students who transferred into Alverno at some point.
Although Alverno offers a four-year undergraduate program leading to cer-
tification as an elementary teacher, only about 20 of the 53 students who
graduated from Alverno College during each of the last four years with ele-
mentary certificates actually spent four full years enrolled at Alverno. Also,
many students take more than four years to complete the program because
of the intensive demands of the program or because of their need to work
or care for their families. In order to complete the program in four years, a
student would need to take 18 credits each semester.
Faculty that we interviewed (see Appendix A) argue that a cohort
model which moves groups of students through a program in intact
groups is inappropriate for Alverno College because of the relatively older
working class population it serves. They feel that a cohort model would
make it impossible for many of their students to attend Alverno and that
the college meets many of the same goals of the cohort model (e.g., devel-
oping a supportive learning community) through other means. For exam-
ple, the fact that the program is embedded in an institutional culture that
places a high priority on teaching and teacher education leads to a situa-
tion where faculty spend a great deal of time getting to know their stu-
dents and working with them The absence of grades and a common lan-
guage for communication among faculty and students, provided by the
ability-based curriculum of the college, also promote a more noncompet-
itive and supportive learning environment.
In talking to students and faculty, we were informed that students
attend Alverno College for a variety of reasons. Some students are attract-
ed to Alverno College because of its reputation in the Milwaukee area as
an institution with a high-quality teacher education program. This repu-
tation was confirmed in our talks with area teachers and principals. They
like to hire Alverno College graduates because they feel that they have
been well nurtured and trained, and the word on the street, as one stu-
dent said, is that "Alverno teachers get jobs." Some students chose
Alverno College in part because they were attracted to the personal atten-
tion to students in small classes and direct contact with faculty rather than
teaching assistants. Other students chose Alverno because they felt that
16 ALVERNO COLLEGE /
their relatively lower grades in secondary school would not have allowed
them to get into other institutions. Alverno College allows any student
who has been admitted to the college to declare an education major upon
entering, and the first review process occurs after the first two semesters.
Finally, the desire to attend college in the Milwaukee area is a big factor
College. More than
in the decision of many students to attend Alverno
84 percent of the graduates of the college stay in southeastern Wisconsin
after graduation. In a survey of 96 graduates of the program over the last
fac-
four years, 77.1 percent said that the reputation of the program was a
"fit my
tor in their choice of Alverno. Other factors such as cost (5.2%),
(36.5%)
teaching philosophy" (32.3%), and geographical convenience
were also cited.
Alverno
A distinctive feature of all of the teacher education programs at
ability-based cur-
College is that they are designed around a college-wide
riculum which makes explicit the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that
students must demonstrate. Eight general abilities are used throughout
abilities are the
the entire college and five additional advanced-education
conceptual basis for the teacher education programs. Students receive
feedback as to their progress in all these abilities throughout the program.
grades at all at
(See Program Goals and Content section.) There are no
Alverno College. Narrative transcripts are provided to each student upon
graduation; these describe the nature and quality of their work in relation
to the abilities required.
developed during the peri-
This ability-based curriculum was initially
od 1969-73 and has been continually revised since then as outlined
includes both in-class
below. A performance-based assessment system that
various levels of
and external assessments of students' work related to
education-related abilities is an
competence regarding the general and
essential aspect of teacher education at Alverno College. Instead of
obtaining grades for various courses, students obtain "validations" of their
competence in particular levels of the abilities. There is also a strong
emphasis in the college on the responsibilities of a liberally educated per-
son to give service to the community.
There is a very high placement rate for the graduates of this teacher
education program (about 80-90 percent of the graduates are hired as
teachers). About 40 percent of the graduates who get teaching jobs end
urban dis-
up working in the Milwaukee public schools (MPS), a typical
4/ STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PR'EP1A ON IN THE UNDERCRADUTE YEARS
trict of around 103,000 pupils, about 78 percent of whom are of color
and about 71 percent of whom qualify for free and reduced-cost meal
programs. Because of the relatively small size of Alverno's teacher educa-
tion programs, Alverno graduates typically make up only about 8 percent
of the new hires each year in the MPS. Despite these relatively low num-
bers, the ties between Alverno and MPS are quite close because many of
the Alverno faculty are involved on a long-term basis in a number of sub-
stantial consulting projects in MPS. These include helping schools incor-
porate the performance assessment of pupils across the curriculum, inte-
grating technologies into the classroom, developing whole language liter-
acy programs in bilingual schools, and developing integrated curricula in
the arts and humanities. The links between MPS and Alverno are also
close because a number of the Alverno faculty serve on key MPS and
school-level committees such as strategic planning teams, and because
Alverno over time has recruited a number of former MPS teachers and
principals to join its faculty.
The elementary teacher education program at Alverno College has
been very successful over the years in preparing teachers to work in a vari-
ety of different schools. Survey data, interviews, and observations of pro-
gram graduates, interviews with and observations of the current students
and faculty, and surveys of and interviews with employers of Alverno
graduates all point to the noticeable impact that the program seems to
have on its participants. Unlike the portrait painted in the literature of
preservice teacher education programs as impotent and ineffectual
(Zeichner & Gore, 1990), the evidence gathered in this case study is very
strong that this program produces poised and confident teachers who
employ teaching strategies that are rich in learner-centered and learning-
centered practices, and who perceive themselves and are perceived by oth-
ers as successful and innovative teachers in a variety of settings, including
the public schools of Milwaukee.
THE ALVERNO PHILOSOPHY IN ACTION
At 8:30 a.m., following a half-hour informal period during which stu-
dents read some of the numerous trade books scattered throughout the
room and participate in a spirited recitation of the school creed by the
whole school, Berthina Johnson' gathers her 26 first-graders on the floor
1 All teacher and student names are pseudonyms. Actual names of Alverno faculty are used.
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 5
18
in front of the calendar. Adams School is located in one of the poorest
neighborhoods of the city of Milwaukee. About 93 percent of the 746
pupils in the school qualify for the free breakfast and lunch program and
the school has a mobility rate of 34 percent. All 26 of Ms. Johnson's pupils
(13 girls and 13 boys) are African American like their teacher (744 of the
746 students in the school are African American), and for several of the
pupils who are six and seven years old, first grade at Adams is the first for-
mal school experience.
Berthina graduated from Alverno College four years ago with a degree
in elementary education and is beginning her fifth year of teaching first
grade at Adams. She entered the teacher education program at the age of
28 after a brief career in the insurance industry. Berthina's classroom pres-
ents a bright and cheery atmosphere, with freshly waxed floors and walls
covered with colorful materials related to the alphabet, numbers, colors,
shapes, days of the week, and basic vocabulary words. Almost every inch
of wall space is used to review and reinforce concepts and words found in
the students' everyday world. -The students' desks are set up in two large
groups facing each other in a way that encourages social interaction.
Several learning centers are scattered throughout the classroom, providing
opportunities for children to work on basic math and reading skills with
computers, to write and draw, and to listen to a tape while following
along in a book.
One of Berthina's major goals for her first graders is to encourage them
to become more independent and responsible for their actions over the
course of the year. Throughout the morning, Berthina continually
reminds her pupils that they are first-graders and not kindergartners, so
they must do things like speak in complete sentences, and take responsi-
bility for their own behavior. Throughout the morning, she repeatedly
poses questions to the class as reminders of things discussed beforehand:
"How can we become good readers?" and invites a choral response from
the class: "By reading good. books." Berthina uses choral responses like
this frequently throughout the morning. Although the pupils are focused
intently upon the activity at hand the whole morning except for a brief
interlude of free-choice time at the centers, the class is lively and buzzing
with talk about the things students are working on.
On Wednesday mornings, the day of our observation, Berthina's class
meets from 8:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. without any formal breaks in the
6/ STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE 14P ARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
schedule. This morning Berthina uses the calendar-time block in her
schedule, a period of about one half hour, to review and reinforce with
her pupils basic ideas such as the date, the meaning of the words yester-
day, today, tomorrow, and weekend, and basic math algorithms and con-
cepts such as place value and counting forwards and backwards. The pace
is very quick and the expectations are high for student success. Berthina
poses one question after another and asks for a response either from an
individual child or the whole group. If a child or the group does not
answer a question correctly (e.g., How many ones are in the number 15?
What is tomorrow's date?), she keeps encouraging the children until they
are able to figure out the answer.
Upon finishing the calendar lesson, the class moves almost immediate-
ly to an activity involving the short a sound. The pupils cut out and color
a cap with the letters ap marked on it and slip in sheets of paper with con-
sonants and consonant blends and read the words together as a class and
then in pairs. Berthina encourages the children to take their materials
home that night and read the words to someone else. The rest of the
morning is spent working on penmanship skills and on math problems
involving place value and simple addition. For the addition problem, the
pupils are asked to draw a picture to show how they have solved the prob-
lem. Two pupils are then asked to draw their pictures on the board and to
explain to the rest of the class what they have done. The pupils have each
solved the problem using a different strategy, something which is com-
mented on favorably by Berthina. During the half hour when students are
free to choose to work at any one of the various learning centers in the
room, several students are sitting at computers working on games which
provide drills in basic math algorithms and phonics; some are drawing,
listening to tapes and following along in a trade book, or just reading.
Throughout all of the academic tasks, Berthina is very attentive to indi-
vidual children and their needs and is quickly on top of potentially disrup-
tive situations before they get out of hand. Two boys complain of feeling ill
and require individual consultations about whether they want to stay in
school or go home (both decide to stay) and a girl complains about her eye
hurting. Another young boy who is crying because he cannot find his pen-
cil also requires a few minutes of hugging and support. Several parents
come into the room at various times during the morning and speak with
Berthina about various matters. Each time she warmly welcomes them into
0 ALVERNO COLLEGE /
the room and spends a few minutes talking with them. In her responses to
knowledge of all of the spe-
her pupils throughout the morning, she reveals
children's homes. In one
cial circumstances involved with contacting the
case, an older brother is to be contacted to
pick up an ill child. In other
cases, Berthina refers to a child's
grandmother, uncle, mother, or father. She
seems to know in each case who needs to be contacted.
Alvemo into this
Berthina has carried much of what she has learned at
and modified it to
urban first-grade classroom, although she has adapted
of
address what she sees as the needs of her students and the circumstances
with trade books which
her work. For example, although her room is filled
that provide a variety
the children read on a daily basis and learning centers
she also takes
of activities for students to pursue in different subject areas,
help-
time regularly to teach particular phonics skills that she thinks will be
She describes her
ful to her children's development of reading competence.
practices advo-
program as involving a combination of the child-centered
methods in which skills
cated at Alverno and some of the more traditional
practices from her
are taught in isolation. She has picked up these traditional
while at Alvemo.
own education and from some of her field placements
isola-
Although Berthina makes time to teach specific skills and concepts in
these in relation to the
tion, she always attempts to have the children use
instead of just
events and circumstances in their everyday lives. For example,
of the week and basic
having the children fill out worksheets about the days
these in relation to
number facts, she continually asks them to talk about
things they have done or will be doing as a class and as individuals.
Berthina has made a conscious decision to blend "process" and "skill-ori-
from her col-
ented" instruction in her classroom despite some pressure
leagues and principal to employ a purer form of whole language instruc-
Alvemo, she has
tion. Consistent with the focus of her preparation at
focused first and foremost on what she perceives to be in the best interests
behalf. What we found in
of her pupils, and has stood her ground on their
and "skill" instruction
her classroom transcends the categories of "process"
the context of warm
and incorporates elements of both approaches within
each of her students.
and caring relationships between the teacher and
Along with the warmth and affection that were evident between Berthina
push her
and her students, there was also a clear effort on Berthina's part to
levels. For example, a
students to do their best work and to achieve at high
questions with phras-
number of the students would respond to Berthina's
8/ STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPA2T I N IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
es instead of complete sentences. Berthina was very persistent in pushing
the students in a friendly and supportive way to respond in complete sen-
tences and would stick with them until they did so.
Also, consistent with the focus of the Alverno program to prepare
teachers who will be leaders in educational reform, Berthina is a member
of the school district's assessment team and is involved in piloting the use
of portfolios to assess the work of her pupils. Finally, like many of the
other graduates from the Alverno College teacher education program,
Berthina remains involved with the program after her graduation by men-
toring the Alverno College field students who work in her classroom and
by talking about her teaching to Alverno College students on campus.
THE OVERALL STRUCTURE OF ALVERNO'S
ELEMENTARY TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM
The course of study in elementary education at Alverno College is
divided into three levels, each one highlighting a stage in the development
of the abilities of a professional teacher. The first three semesters (fresh-
man year and the first sophomore-year semester) emphasize the preprofes-
sional frameworks of the liberal arts disciplines as well as introducing
some pedagogical frameworks and experiences to students.
The middle three semesters of preparation focus on professional teach-
ing frameworks in relation to practice in the field. Here students take a
variety of education department courses and participate in field experi-
ences which help them plan, implement and assess their teaching from a
variety of different perspectives, such as invitational teaching. Invitational
teaching is one of a number of educational frameworks introduced to
students to help them master the core abilities in the program curriculum.
This particular framework focuses on the development of pupils' self-con-
cepts through the use of specific teaching practices that invite the partic-
ipation of all learners in the classroom. Consistent with the overall phi-
losophy of the Alverno program, invitational teaching works toward the
creation of an atmosphere of acceptance in the classroom that welcomes
and celebrates diversity (Purkey & Novak, 1984).
The final two semesters are designated as the beginning of professional
practice, where students complete student teaching and engage in reflec-
tive scholarship and other activities of teachers. (See Appendix B for a list
of the courses in the program.)
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 9
"12
Admissions and Advancement Policies
Students can declare an education major as early as their freshman year.
At the end of the first two semesters, students apply to the preprofession-
al level of practice, which includes the first of four pre-student teaching
field experiences. A faculty admissions and advancement committee han-
all of the
dles all of the decisions regarding continuation in the program at
various stages. Wheri students apply to the preprofessional level of the
program they must have completed a year of course work at Alverno
College, a required one-credit human relations workshop, and a portion
of the math content requirement, as well as present faculty with recom-
mendations from instructors.
After two more semesters and the completion of two of the pre-student
teaching experiences, students apply to be admitted to the professional
level of the program. Here they ,must show successful completion of the
first two field experiences (and present letters of recommendation),
demonstrate a specific ability (communication, level 3; see Program Goals
and Content section), meet the state-wide minimum cutoff scores on the
reading, writing, and mathematics sections of the pre-professional skills
test, and show successful completion of one of the several standard assess-
ment exercises that are spread throughout the program, the "Behavioral
Event Interview and Self-Assessment."
This exercise is an hour-long interview conducted in the second semes-
ter of field experiences. Each education department member interviews
two students each semester. The aim of the interview is to give students a
chance to talk about their actions and thinking in relation to working
with pupils. It focuses on stories elicited by questions (e.g., Can you tell
me about a time you came to a realization about children's development
through an experience with a child or children?). The students then are
asked to use their stories as data for a self-assessment process focusing on
the five advanced education abilities (e.g., Where do you see yourself
drawing upon x ability? Where do you see a need to strengthen this abil-
ity?) The interview is audiotaped and students take the tape with them to
complete a written self-assessment. They set goals for their next stage of
development in their teacher education program and then meet for a sec-
ond session with the faculty interviewer.
After the completion of two more semesters, including two more field
experiences, students apply for admission to student teaching, which is a
93 YEARS
10 , STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE
full-semester teaching experience matching the school (not the college)
calendar. Here students must have successfully demonstrated communi-
cation ability at level 4, and have successfully completed all four pre-stu-
dent teaching experiences and another of the standard assessment exercis-
es, "Professional Group Discussion Assessment" (see Appendix C).
Students also compile a portfolio that includes a videotape of their teach-
ing together with a written analysis of that teaching in relation to the five
advanced education abilities, cooperating teacher evaluations, etc. The
student then participates in a half-day interview with principals and
teachers from area schools who are part of a pool of over 400 educators
helping to assess students' readiness for student teaching. In reality, very
few students are prevented from entering student teaching on the basis of
this performance assessment.
The careful monitoring of students' progress through the program is a
significant characteristic of this teacher education program. I doubt that
there is a teacher education program anywhere that gives such careful atten-
tion to assessment of its students. In addition to requiring checkpoints in
the education program outlined above, the whole program is built on the
idea of students demonstrating competence in ("getting validations on")
specific levels of the eight general-education abilities and the five advanced-
education abilities. From their very first day at Alverno, when they are
required to make a videotape of themselves giving a short speech to their
peers, students are constantly assessed in relation to these abilities. During
one of our visits, we saw a film that showed the progression in a few stu-
dents' communication abilities over their four years at the college by pre-
senting brief clips of their taped speeches each year. The growth over time
in students' abilities to give a public speech was quite striking.
The admission and retention of minority students is a college-wide
commitment at Alverno College. The 25 percent minority enrollment at
Alverno is one of the highest percentages of minority student attendance
at a post-secondary education institution in Wisconsin. The college does
outreach activities to local high schools and to paraprofessionals in the
Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). There are also special remedial cours-
es and services to address the academic weaknesses of students who have
experienced an inferior K-12 education. Alverno College, along with the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, participates in one of the Pathways
to Teaching projects funded by Dewitt Wallace and coordinated by Bank
2 ALVERNO COLLEGE / 11
Street College. These programs are designed to recruit paraprofessionals
of color) into teaching.
and emergency licensed people (especially those
participated in this pro-
During the 1995-96 year, 20 Alverno students
participants.
gram. The program pays two-thirds of tuition for
The Faculty and Institutional Culture
There are 15 full-time faculty and a total teaching
staff of 35. Of the
the documentation
15 full-time education department faculty listed in
for the 1995 NCATE review of Alverno's teacher education programs,
four others were in the
seven had a doctoral degree in education and
department fac-
process of completing doctoral degrees. Sixteen adjunct
education
ulty were also listed in this report; all 16 had master's degrees in
degrees. Of the total
and two were in the process of completing doctoral
for
professional' education faculty listed in the NCATE documentation
Hispanic, one is Native
1994-95, three are African American, one is
faculty, except for six
American, and the rest are Caucasian. All of these
are female.
vision of
The education department faculty and staff share a common
teacher education that is made explicit through an ability-based curricu-
language for faculty to talk
lum. This curriculum provides a common
with each other, with students, and with their school-based collaborators
Cooperating teachers are intro-
about teaching and teacher education.
supervising teacher
duced to this language and vision during a course on
education students that meets a state requirement specifying course
introduced to the spe-
preparation for cooperating teachers. Students are
of
cialized language of the ability-based curriculum and the philosophy
admitted into the preprofes-
teacher education at Alverno when they are
sional level of study during the second semester of their sophomore year.
in the language of abil-
All of the students with whom we met spoke to us
such and
ities that is used at Alverno, speaking of "getting validations" on
takes two to three years
such in various courses. Faculty estimate that it
and feel comfortable in it
for a new faculty member to learn this system
because of its uniqueness.
teacher education is a high pri-
It was clear to us during our visits that
teacher education is
ority in this institution. A lot of work related to
12-credit per semester
required of all faculty in the program. There is a
teaching load, a minimum of two hours per week spent in departmental
YEARS
12 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: rjkEIMRATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE
0,..
meetings continuing the development of the program, and time that is
spent in administering and evaluating the various assessments that are
placed at specific points throughout the program. For example, each year,
many faculty members in the education department are assigned to write
the
a narrative transcript for about two students who have just completed
often
program. This involves reviewing all of the students' records and
includes an interview with the students to verify the accuracy of the tran-
script. One faculty member estimated that she spends about six hours
completing each of the transcripts that she writes.
In addition to departmental meetings, each faculty member is assigned
to a committee that is responsible for continual program development
work on a specific part of the program. Recently all of the methods cours-
and the
es had been redesigned to be integrated across content areas
human relations workshop was currently undergoing a substantial revi-
sion. Faculty also serve on interdepartmental committees that are con-
structed around the eight general abilities (e.g., social interaction) or a
particular cross-cutting issue such as technology, and meet every other
week for several hours on Friday afternoon, when there are no classes
scheduled. These committees provide regular contact between education
faculty and their liberal arts colleagues, focused on substantive issues of
teaching and learning.
Several faculty told us that to successfully work in the education depart-
ment at Alverno College you must, want to work as part of a team and
participate in the ongoing refinement of the program's vision. Some of
those who do not believe in this vision or who want to work on their own
without extensive participation in the culture of collaboration end up
leaving, usually on their own. There is a syllabus for every course in the
program (including the field experiences) that makes explicit the specific
expectations for students in relation to the abilities, and the learning activ-
ities that are designed to help students gain competence in them. Many
of the assignments within ,courses indicate which levels of the abilities
they help students meet. Coherence is assured by agreements about what
is taught in specific courses, and faculty regularly share materials with
each other that are used in the courses. Many faculty told us that they
work extremely well together as a group: "What is distinctive about
Alverno is that all faculty work together . . . you have a group of people
frame-
who are all going in the same direction because they have the same
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 13
work and belief system (Sister Armella Weibel, Bonnie Kotvis, and Muriel
Plichta, personal communication).
It is unusual for faculty to interact with the teacher education program
as much as we have seen in this case. The result of all of this interaction
about what
is an unusually coherent program with a great deal of clarity
is expected of students at every point. Faculty seem to know what is cov-
ered in all of the different courses in the program even if they do not teach
those courses. Almost all faculty time is devoted to teaching and the
teacher education program as well as to consulting work in local schools.
The research and writing that is done by faculty focuses mostly on their
teaching and their teacher-education program. There is a lot of talk by fac-
ulty and in the program materials about the scholarship of teaching. This
scholarly attitude toward teaching is a college-wide perspective and forms
the basis for the faculty reward structure.
One good example of the scholarly attitude toward teaching and of the
priority given to faculty development at Alverno College is the institute
Three times per year, once
program that exists for all faculty in the college.
in August for three to four days, in January for three to four days and in
May for a week .or two, all faculty in the college get together and study
thinking,
some aspect of teaching. Recent institute topics include critical
group discussions, and integrated curriculum.
Faculty are very serious here about continuing to learn about teaching
and improving their work. For example, in 1993-94, faculty undertook a
concentrated effort to learn about gender issues, to incorporate their
understandings of these issues into their own teaching, and to make this
work explicit in the teacher education curriculum. Two faculty attended
the
a workshop on this issue and shared what they had learned at one of
institutes. A teacher education task force on gender equity then was
formed to explore how the issue of gender equity could be integrated into
all courses. The course for cooperating teachers also included work on
gender equity in schooling that was informed by the faculty self-study
work in the area.
Department faculty are also involved in ongoing, collaborative
inquiries into student learning in relation to the program's teaching and
assessment practices. For example, as new procedures were
introduced
and the
into an interview-based self-assessment in 1993, the department
college's Office of Research and Evaluation analyzed student performanc-
14 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PRrOkkrION IN THE UNDERCEADUTE YEARS
es to learn about how students took up self-assessment activities and how
they understood the curriculum's advanced outcomes (Alverno College
Office of Research and Evaluation, 1995).
The cooperation among faculty, together with the absence of grades,
according to the students with whom we spoke, leads to a noncompeti-
tive learning atmosphere in the college where students feel they are
"allowed to be who they are" and where the environment encourages
them to fulfill their potential. A number of students told us that the non-
competitive environment in the program was a key factor in the growth
as teachers that they were able to achieve. For example:
With a graded system, I don't think that I would have been
where I am now with the confidence and the strengths that I
have now I've been able to demonstrate them not only on paper
but through other means. It has made me a rounder person and
a better teacher. It has also given me direct feedback to where
my strengths and weaknesses are and then I know what to focus
on . . I work well in a cooperative atmosphere. To me it
brought out my strengths and abilities. In a graded program, I
would just be your average line person because I'm not into
competition. I would not have been as successful.
Many of the students we interviewed feel that they receive very per-
sonalized attention in the program from faculty, who they think are very
accessible. Students feel that the faculty really know them and the entire
teacher education curriculum (not just the particular courses they teach):
"I've never been in a class where they didn't say "remember in your other
class . . . They'll name a class and they know what's going on in the other
classes, even if they don't teach it." Another student said:
They don't have a factory model of a teacher that they try to
stamp out like some schools do. Each student teacher is really a
different person and their personality comes through in their
teaching, their beliefs and perspectives . . . . What I think is real-
ly unique to Alverno is that, they let students be who they are.
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 15
Because of the relatively small size of the college and the personalized
attention that students feel that they receive from' the faculty, students
describe the atmosphere at the college as "family-like," where everybody
knows and supports everyone else. This intimacy has been achieved with-
out the deliberate pacing of students through the program in cohorts.
Almost all of the instructors in the program know you on a first
name basis. It's almost like a little intimate family here at
Alverno . . You walk in the hallways and you basically know all
of the people. . . . It's very intimate.
Many of the faculty at Alverno are closely involved with area schools in
a variety of consulting projects. One
faculty member told us that she does
everything she can to find opportunities to get into the schools. Faculty
consulting
serve on school and school district committees and provide
expertise to schools in areas such as assessment, whole language instruc-
tion, integrated curriculum and technology.
Alverno College does not
have professional development schools (PDSs) as they
have been
does have
described in the literature (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 1994), but
development relationships" with a number of teams of
teachers and schools in MPS and three partnership elementary schools.
The difference between the Alverno approach and some PDS approach-
these
es is that Alverno faculty work with some, but not all of the staff in
schools. Also, there is no formal partnership contract between Alverno
and the school as is the case in many PDS partnerships.
Current faculty involvement with schools includes a Joyce Foundation
funded Assessing Learning Project that will, upon completion, have
involved all middle schools and high schools in MPS in the incorporation
the curricu-
of performance assessment and portfolio assessment across
lum. There is also an Ameritech project in which Alverno College facul-
of tech-
ty are assisting two elementary schools in incorporating a range
with all of the 21
nologies into the classroom. Other faculty have worked
P-5 schools in MPS (elementary schools serving high concentrations of
children in poverty) in designing performance-based assessments.
In the
consulting
three partnership elementary schools, faculty have provided
services to the schools in a number of specific areas (e.g., the development
Teachers in these
of whole-language programs in bilingual classrooms).
YEARS
16 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE
2t-1
advisory council
schools serve as cooperating teachers in the program, as
members, and as participants in the portfolio assessment that takes place
for admission to student teaching.
Faculty feel that these ongoing contacts with the schools give them
teachers should be used as
much important information about which
cooperating teachers for field-experience students and student teachers.
cooperating teachers to the
They pass information about potentially good
the placements; she keeps
faculty member (Susan Stang) who makes all of
had the
a notebook with information about particular classrooms. We
impression in talking with most of the faculty who work in the elemen-
what is going on in
tary education program that they are in touch with
the local schools, especially those in MPS.
Several of the principals that we interviewed said that unlike the other
specific number of placements at
campuses they work with who request a
particular grade levels, Alverno College requests
specific teachers to work
principal contacts, the
with particular student teachers. According to our
for their students is char-
care with which Alverno faculty select mentors
acteristic of the care with which they do everything related to their pro-
have been
gram. It seemed to these principals that the important details
addressed and structured in some way for the benefit of Alverno students.
A principal said:
Alverno is one of the few universities that really hand picks the
cooperating teachers. They really know who they are. At some
of the other universities they'll just say I've got four student
teachers . . . will you take them? And then it's at the principal's
discretion to put them wherever they want . . . What they try to
do, I think, is to really look at the cooperating teachers and
match them with the most appropriate person . . . Every time
they've called me they've identified the teachers that they want.
Consistent with the importance of teaching and teacher education in
the culture of Alverno College, the faculty pay a great deal of attention to
potential faculty members' teaching backgrounds in
K-12 schools and to
their current capability to work effectively with teacher education stu-
dents in a way that is consistent with the philosophy of the Alverno pro-
said:
gram. Mary Diez, teacher education coordinator at Alverno,
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 17
We look for people who have preferably had recent experience
in K-12 schools and solid experience. . . people who have been
successful as teachers themselves . . . We are looking for people
who are wanting to teach and focus their research on improving
their teaching (Mary Diez, personal communication).
The careful attention that the faculty pays to hiring people who not
only prioritize teaching, but who will also fit in with the philosophy of
the program, is illustrated by the following description of an exercise that
was assigned to two finalists for a faculty position:
When we hired X, we had them (the two finalists) view a tape
of a student teacher, a recent student teacher . . . They viewed
the tape of the student teacher and then we videotaped them
giving feedback to that person . . . . The first candidate sat down
with the student and said, "Well, you should have done this,
you should have done that. X sat down with the person and said
"Tell me what you were thinking as you designed the lesson and
carried it out," and just drew from the student every point the
other woman gave her . . . The other woman talked as if she
believed in constructivism. But when you saw her interacting
with the student, it was telling. We hired the second candidate
(Mary Diez, personal communication).
PROGRAM GOALS AND CONTENT
The General Education Abilities
The most significant aspect of elementary teacher education at Alverno
College is its ability-based curriculum which clearly states what program
graduates are expected to know, be able to do, and hold as dispositions to
successfully complete the program and be certified as elementary teach-
ers. The Alverno faculty have defined an ability as "including a complex
integration of knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and self-per-
ceptions." (Diez, Rickards, & Lake, 1993, p. 9). Between 1969 and 1973,
the faculty redefined the baccalaureate degree and liberal arts education
for all majors as the demonstration of eight abilities (Alverno College
Faculty, 1996). Each of these abilities, which cut across the disciplines,
was subdivided into six developmental levels specifying increasingly com-
18 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
plex knowledge, skills, and dispositions which students are expected to
demonstrate in all of the courses and field experiences in the program. To
fulfill the general education requirements of the program, students must
demonstrate their competence on levels 1-4 of each ability. Levels 5 and
6 of the abilities are addressed within the students' major areas of study
such as nursing, management, and education. (For additional informa-
tion on the general education program see, Alverno College Faculty,
1992). The education department has developed a set of five advanced-
education abilities to address levels 5-6 of the general education abilities.
Each department course makes clear which particular general education
validations are offered in the course, but states the specific outcomes in
terms of the advanced education abilities. The eight General Education
Abilities follow:
CommunicationThe effective communicator habitually makes
meaning by connecting with everything involved in communication:
people, ideas, texts, media, and technology. She integrates a variety of
communication abilities (speaking, writing, listening, reading, quanti-
tative and media literacy) to meet the demands of increasingly complex
communication situations.
AnalysisThe competent analyzer is a clear thinker. She fuses experi-
ence, reason, and training into considered judgment.
Problem SolvingThe competent problem solver defines problems
and integrates a range of abilities and resources to reach decisions, make
recommendations, or implement action plans.
Valuing in Decision MakingThe responsible decision maker is
reflective and empathic in approaching the value issues in her life. She
habitually seeks to understand the moral dimensions of her decisions
and accepts responsibility for the consequences of actions taken in all
facets of her life. She understands and is sensitive to a variety of per-
spectives and experiences in making her own decisions.
Social Interaction The competent interactor knows how to get
things done in committees, task forces, team projects and other group
efforts. She elicits the views of others and helps reach conclusions.
Global PerspectivesThe person who takes multiple perspectives
articulates interconnections between and among diverse opinions,
ideas, and beliefs about global issues. She makes informed judgments
and tests out her own position.
ALVERNO COLLEGE /
3 t9i
Effective CitizenshipThe effective citizen makes informed choices
and develops strategies for collaborative involvement in community
issues.
Aesthetic ResponsivenessThe aesthetically responsive person artic-
ulates informed responses to artistic works which are grounded in
knowledge of theoretical, historical, and cultural contexts. She is able
to engage in and to make meaning out of artistic experiences and to
articulate reasons for her choice of aesthetic expressions. (Alverno
College Faculty, 1994b)
When the college moved to the ability-based curriculum, all of the
the
courses were redesigned to ensure the systematic development of
knowledge, skills, dispositions, and attitudes implied by the abilities. All
of the course syllabi at Alverno make explicit which developmental levels
of the abilities they address and the learning activities and assessments
that are provided to help students acquire the abilities and to judge how
well they have learned them. Several levels of the abilities require valida-
how the
tions in several different contexts. Following is an example of
ability of social interaction has been conceptualized in terms of develop-
mental levels. All of the other abilities have a similar developmental
framework associated with them:
Level 1Identify own interaction behaviors utilized in a group prob-
lem solving situation.
Level 2Analyze behavior of others within two theoretical frameworks.
Level 3Evaluate behavior of self within two theoretical frameworks.
Level 4Demonstrate effective social interaction behavior in a variety
of situations and circumstances.
In majors and areas of specialization:
Level 5Demonstrate effective interpersonal and intergroup behav-
iors in cross-cultural interactions.
Level 6Facilitate effective interpersonal and intergroup relationships
2, 4)
in one's professional situation. (Alverno College Faculty, 199413, p.
(Alverno College
A college-wide philosophy of "assessment as learning"
curriculum. Here faculty
Faculty; 1994a) underlies Alvemo's ability-based
good sense of why
believe that learning occurs best when the learners have a
PARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
20 STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE.
they are setting out to learn something, of the specific standards that they must
meet to accomplish this learning, and a way of seeing what they have learned.
The faculty believe that the best way to determine how well the stu-
dents have developed the abilities is to assess behavior that is associated
with them and demonstrates their mastery; such as writing, speaking,
conducting inquiry, etc. They believe that assessment enhances learning
through feedback provided by instructors and students' self-assessments
on learner strengths and weaknesses.
In 1976, Alverno began a systematic and continuing program of edu-
cational research and evaluation studies of its curriculum, involving stu-
dents, alumnae, and other professionals who are not Alverno graduates.
The program employs multiple methods to address a range of inquiries
from broad faculty concerns (e.g., Do individual students achieve over
time as a result of the curriculum? How do assessment practices con-
tribute to learning?) to targeted questions of practice (e.g., Will students
apply the skills learned in integrated language practice to subsequent
coursework?) (See, for example, Mentowski & Doherty, 1984). This work
has provided a basis of validation for the college's outcomes and has sup-
ported the continued development and refinement of the curriculum
(Mentowski, 1988; Mentowski & Loacker, 1985; Loacker & Mentowski,
1993). The assessment system and the procedures themselves have been
an important part of these inquiries (Rogers, 1994).
The emphasis in the program's curriculum is on putting knowledge to
use. The faculty work to ground students'
understanding of a variety of
theoretical frameworks in realistic experiential applications that include
actual classroom performance, analysis of case studies, and performance
in situations that simulate important aspects of the teacher's role. The fac-
ulty further believe that the abilities are transferable to varied situations in
students' lives and provide multiple opportunities for them to demon-
strate their competence. This perspective has been fundamental in the
assessment program and has been validated in inquiries of students and
alumnae (Mentowski & Rogers, 1993).
Professional Education Abilities
Based on a review of the literature and on their own experiences as
teachers in a wide variety of contexts, the faculty in the Education depart-
professional
ment, together with faculty from the liberal arts and other
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 21
34
disciplines developed a set of five professional education abilities. These
abilities, developed in the context of a study over a number of years begin-
ning in the late 1970s, represent a complex integration of knowledge,
skills, and dispositions. The abilities define the kind of teachers which the
program seeks to prepare (Diez, 1990). They include:
Conceptualizationintegrating content knowledge with educational
frameworks and a broadly based understanding of the liberal arts in
order to plan and implement instruction.
Diagnosisrelating observed behavior to relevant frameworks in
order to determine and implement learning prescriptions.
Coordinationmanaging resources effectively to support learning
goals.
Communicationusing verbal, non-verbal, and media modes of
communication to establish the environment of the classroom and to
structure and reinforce learning.
Integrative interactionacting with professional values as a situa-
tional decision maker, adapting to the changing needs of the environ-
Faculty,
ment in order to develop students as learners. (Alverno College
1996, p.2).
Following the identification of these advanced education abilities, the
faculty went on to create detailed conceptual maps of the five abilities
which describe knowledge, skills, and dispositions expected of profes-
sional performance at three different points in a teaching career: expecta-
tions for the beginning teacher (those aimed for in the preservice pro-
gram), expectations for the developing teacher with classroom experience,
and expectations for the experienced professional teacher. For example, a
few of the expectations for beginning teachers with regard to the ability
of conceptualization are:
Developing sensitivity to learners as individuals within the group as a
whole.
Making links between developmental theory and concrete individuals
in order to use appropriate depth of subject matter.
Recognizing the impact of differences (in culture, gender, learning pref-
erences, etc.) in order to plan instruction that meets the needs of indi-
viduals and the group.
Planning material both to meet learners' current needs and to lead to
22 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PICIPteRATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
the next level of development (e.g., preparing developmentally appro-
priate activities, relating subject matter to previous work) (Alverno
College Faculty, 1996).
Goals are stated in all of the individual courses and field experiences
based on the five abilities, and performance assessments have been devel-
oped related to all of these goals. In the general education courses taken
during the first two years of study, the goals are stated in terms of the eight
abilities. For example, a few of the goals stated in the syllabus for the
course United States History in the Twentieth Century are:
To demonstrate how gender, race, ethnicity, and class affect historical
interpretation of the American past and to strive for a more complex
and inclusive understanding of U.S. history. (Global Perspectives,
Analysis, level 3).
To formulate historical interpretations based on a critical analysis of
primary and secondary historical sources and an awareness of your own
and other historian's perspectives (Communications, Analysis, Global
Perspectives, level 3).
To understand and evaluate the impact of industrialization and the
application of technology on Americans' values, attitudes, and ways of
life (Valuing, level 3).
In the education department, a sixth semester course, Integrated
Reading 3, has stated the following goals for students.
The student:
Analyzes and applies learning theory in designing and implementing
literacy instruction.
Assesses literacy development of intermediate students and prescribes
appropriate teaching strategies.
Uses knowledge of writing workshop and reading workshop strategies
and implements workshops in the intermediate classroom.
Evaluates trade books for use with intermediate learners.
Integrates technology to enhance the writing process in the classroom.
Shows refined communication skills to support professional growth.
Demonstrates knowledge of classroom research with understanding of
the dynamics of the classroom and of how to improve practice (Alverno
College Faculty, 1996, p. 7).
COLLEGE / 23
focuses
This third literacy methods course in a series of three courses
focus on
on the intermediate elementary grades. The two previous courses
literacy instruction in grades K-1, and 2-3 respectively.
The articulation of specific goals for each course related to the abilities
education abilities creates a
of the professional teacher and the general
specialized language which enables faculty, students,
and cooperating
about what is expected to
teachers to communicate clearly and precisely
successfully complete a course or field experience. It also ensures that
base about teaching. One
teachers encounter a well-developed knowledge
Theory and Critical
faculty member described her course, Language
Thinking, required for all elementary education majors, as follows:
It's a sophomore level course . . . Analysis at level 4 is offered in
that class. They can take speaking and writing validations
through level 3 and 4 . . . They can also get a validation at level
take a problem
3 on global perspectives because they're asked to
teach that infus-
of global significance and put together a unit to
es critical thinking and what they learned about language.
(Diane Gardner-Gletty, personal communication)
In addition to the five advanced-professional education abilities, the
faculty have identified five essential concepts
that are integral to those
abilities:
Developmental needs of learnersframeworks to promote the suc-
cess of all learners.
Diversitypromoting learning in a climate of positive regard and suc-
cess for all.
Professionalismpracticing ongoing inquiry to inform teaching.
of schooling in a
School and Societyfocusing on the purposes
democracy and a belief that everyone can be educated.
Media and Technologyusing technology in planning, instructing
and assessing. (Alverno College Faculty, 1996)
Students are provided with a handbook when they enter the program
abilities and
that shows how these key concepts are related to all of the
education component of
how they are infused into the entire professional
each of the essential
the program. The program philosophy in relation to
YEARS
24 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERCRADUTE
37
concepts is expressed in the context of this discussion. For example, the
discussion of the concept of diversity reveals an action-oriented and
proactive view of teaching for diversity:
The view of diversity your faculty wants you to develop goes
beyond having background knowledge of cultures to developing
a proactive stance, which includes looking at the role that culture
plays in society and its institutions, such as schools. It means
working actively to negate stereotypes and taking actions that
move toward the full inclusion of all learners. You will do this by
reviewing literature for bias, by examining your own teaching
performance for actions that neglect one group or individual,
and by planning for the infusion of diversity throughout the cur-
riculum. (Alverno College Faculty, 1995, p. 27).
Consistent with the program emphasis on the use of the abilities in
realistic situations, their handbook also presents students with nine teach-
ing stories written by teachers who work with Alverno students. The stu-
dents are asked to examine the stories to see how the five education abil-
ities are reflected in them.
Student Advising and the Supervision of Field Experiences
When students enter the college as freshmen, they are advised by aca-
demic staff who specialize in student advising. When students enter the
education program as education majors (usirnlly during their third semes-
ter), they are assigned a faculty advisor in the department who advises them
for the rest of their stay in the program. Faculty advisors meet regularly
with their advisees to go over their progress in mastering the different
aspects of the ability-based curriculum and to make plans for the following
semester. They also are responsible for reviewing their advisees' portfolios
before they are given to the external assessors the semester before student
teaching, and will usually be the ones who write the narrative transcript for
their advisees at the end of their program. Faculty see their advising role as
also giving students advice about plans beyond graduation such as job
opportunities and graduate school study. A typical advising load for a fac-
ulty member is around 15 to 20 students. The main difference between the
advising system in this program and others is the tremendous amount of
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 25
information that advisors have about their advisees' work in the program.
Advisors are routinely sent information on the validations achieved in var-
ious courses, and field experiences by their advisees, the results of their per-
formance on the external assessments, as well as other information. In most
programs, advisors have very little information about their students beyond
the names of the courses they have completed.
All of the faculty participate in the supervision of practicums and stu-
dent teaching and are given load credit for this work based on the num-
ber of students supervised. The responsibility of supervising includes the
teaching of weekly seminars in which students analyze and discuss their
school experiences. The assessment .of student work during these clinical
experiences is closely tied to the ability framework. Supervising faculty
usually make a minimum of two visits to each student during the first
practicum, one visit during each of the next three practicums, and four
visits during student teaching, 'including at least two visits in which the
student teacher, cooperating teacher,, and university supervisor complete
and discuss the student-teacher assessment form (see Appendix D).
Performance Assessment
An elaborate performance-based assessment system has been developed
both within and outside of the courses and field experiences to enable stu-
dents and their teacher educators to know how well the abilities are being
mastered by students. Here the focus is on the quality of students' con-
ceptual integration of the components of the abilities: knowledge, skill or
behavior, attitudes, and values. Students are asked to apply their knowl-
edge and skills in realistic contexts. Some of the assessments are related to
meeting the goals for specific courses and field experiences. Others are
used to enable students to progress through the different stages of the pro-
gram, such as to qualify for student teaching. Each semester that they are
in the program a matrix is prepared for use by students and their advisors
which shows the validations that have been achieved by students in par-
ticular courses (e.g., Valuing, level 1 in Psychology 101). These matrices
are used to plan a student's program for the following semester.
Within the program courses and field experiences, a wide variety of
assessments are utilized, such as essays, letters, position papers, case study
analyses, observations of events, talks to simulated audiences, producing
a video, developing curriculum materials, simulated events such as par-
26 / STUDIES OF EXGELLENCE:,PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
ent-teacher conferences, etc. (For additional perspectives on performance
assessment, see Diez, Rickards, & Lake, 1993).
In addition to these in-class assessments, there are a series of external
assessments that enable students to pass from one stage of the program to
another. For example, in a fifth-semester external assessment which inte-
grates learning from several courses, students are asked to take on the roles
of teachers from a school district. In the scenario they are presented with, the
teachers have been called to a group planning meeting to review the district's
mission statement. In this simulation, they study background materials
regarding the district's philosophy and complete readings on several issues,
such as curriculum integration and multicultural education. In preparation
for the assessment, students review the criteria for the abilities of social inter-
action and effective citizenship by which their performance will be assessed.
Students meet in groups of five to six and their meeting is videotaped.
Following the simulation and before receiving feedback from faculty, they
view the tape of the meeting and complete a self-assessment response form.
Throughout the program, all of the assignments and assessments in the
various courses include a self-assessment component. This emphasis on
self-assessment is designed to help students develop the habits of mind and
skills to be reflective about their teaching. The specific criteria for the eval-
uation of all class assignments are presented to students beforehand and
they always complete a self-assessment before receiving feedback from fac-
ulty. For example, in the third integrated language arts methods course, stu-
dents are required to develop and use a rubric to assess intermediate grade
students' writing samples. They analyze samples for strengths and areas of
need and plan appropriate teaching strategies based on their analysis. The
students work in groups and collaborate on developing their teaching
plans. Before they begin this task, students are given a list of the specific cri-
teria that will be used to assess their performance. The student:
1) Assesses the developMental level of the learner's performance and pro-
vides sufficient evidence to support the judgment.
2) Diagnoses areas requiring attention/instruction and provides an appro-
priate teaching plan.
3) Contributes to the group discussion of the process.
4) Assesses own performance on all components of the task. For addi-
tional work on self-assessment and its role in the education curriculum,
see Alverno College Office of Research and Evaluation, 1995.
40 ALVERNO COLLEGE / 27
One of the major external assessments, the portfolio interview assess-
ment, occurs at the end of the pre-professional stage of the program and
is used as a gateway to student teaching. Here students create their own
portfolios by reviewing their work in all of their courses, including their
general education courses. They collect examples of written work, lesson
and unit plans, videotapes of their work with pupils, and instructional
materials they have created, and make decisions about what represents
their strengths. Included in the portfolio is a written analysis of a video-
taped lesson based on the five abilities. The portfolios are reviewed by stu-
dents' faculty advisors and then by teams of principals and teachers from
area schools on a special assessment day. The principal and teacher asses-
and areas
sors provide feedback to students about their areas of strength
of needed growth as demonstrated in the portfolio and make a recom-
mendation to Alverno about the students' readiness for student teaching.
Specific goals are formulated for student teaching by the students with
input from the school assessors.
Program Courses
During the preprofessional stage of the teacher education program
(semesters 1 through 3), students complete a variety of courses both with-
in the
in and outside of the department of education including courses
humanities and fine arts, natural sciences, mathematics, social sciences,
and inte-
general and developmental psychology, small group interaction,
grated communication. During this first year and a half of study students
also complete four professional education courses, a one-credit human
relations workshop, courses on instructional design and educational com-
puting and their first of four field experiences.
During the second phase of the program (semesters 4 through 6), stu-
dents continue to take courses in the liberal arts, such as U.S. history, but
increase their focus on the study of professional education frameworks.
They complete a series of three integrated language arts methods courses,
and methods courses in the arts, social studies, science/health, and math-
ematics. They also complete the three remaining pre -student teaching
field experiences and a course on exceptional learners that includes an
additional field experience.
During the third and final phase of the program, the students complete
weeks of stu-
a course in integrating the elementary curriculum, do eight
28 / STUD OF EXCELLENCE: PREP RATI N IN THE UNDERCRADUTE YEARS
PREPARATION
dent teaching, take part in a coordinating seminar, and take a culminat-
ing course in the philosophy of education.
Field Experiences and Student Teaching
Because of the strong belief ofthe faculty that knowing and doing must
be closely interrelated, field experiences are an important part of each of
the four semesters preceding student teaching, beginning with the first
semester of the sophomore year. The Wisconsin Department of Public
Instruction requires a minimum of 100 clock hours of field experience
prior to student teaching. Because the Alverno program is based on the
demonstration of abilities, the actual time spent in these fields by Alverno
students sometimes exceeds 100 hours.
Each of these field experiences includes at least 25 hours a semester in
a school classroom (two to three hours per week) and includes a 50
minute weekly seminar led by an Alverno faculty member. Students are
observed by an Alverno faculty member twice in the first field experience
and once in each of the others. During student teaching, they are
observed twice during each of their two nine-week placements.
In each of the field experiences, students complete weekly "reflective
logs" in which they are asked to make observations and draw relationships
between what they see and do in the classroom and the various theoreti-
cal frameworks they learn about in other courses in the program. These
logs are submitted weekly to faculty for review and comment. A mini-
mum of 12 logs is required in each of the field experiences. Following is
an example of the guiding questions in a field experience log. This par-
ticular log is the third one completed during the first field experience.
Weekly LogFocus on the Teacher
A. Conduct an interview with your cooperating teacher addressing the
following issues:
1. What are some important qualities of a good teacher?
2. How does a teacher determine the needs of a class?
3. What are some general expectations for students at this age?
4. Give some examples of how you might use support staff members
in your school. If you are in art or music, what services do you pro-
vide for the rest of the school? What unique problems do specialty
teachers face?
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 29
5. How is cultural diversity recognized at this school?
B. Refer to #5 above and reflect upon your personal experience as well
as your experience in ED116 (The Human Relations Workshop). In
your opinion, does this school appropriately meet the diverse cultural
needs of this school population? (Alverno College Faculty, 1992)
The faculty provide the reflective logs to structure the field experiences
for their students to insure that all students have certain kinds of experi-
ences and the opportunity to develop particular abilities while in schools.
This structuring of students' time in the field is in stark contrast to the
most common situation where students and their cooperating teachers are
left to make decisions about the use of teacher education student time
based at most on a set of very general guidelines. The reflective logs indi-
cate a particular developmental sequence in the acquisition of abilities
over the four semesters of field 'experiences.
We give so much personal direction with our field placements.
It's not that they go into a school and are on their own . . . Our
fields are so developmental. We know what is developed in the
first field, and what we can expect in the second, third, and
fourth. So there is a real developmental framework that we can
rely on to help guide the students. (Nancy Jelen and Susan
Stang, personal interview)
In addition to the reflective logs within each of the fields, each field is
coordinated with campus courses in the program. For example, when stu-
dents are doing their first field, they are always enrolled in a principles of
instructional design course and a course on educational computing. All of
the courses which are coordinated with field experiences require students to
carry out some of the assignments in their field placements (see Appendix
E). The determination of placement sites, which is handled by faculty mem-
ber Susan Stang, is a purposeful activity that insures that all students experi-
ence a variety of grade levels, geographical and physical settings, socioeco-
nomic and cultural groups, and various types of educational approaches.
The Human Relations Code of the Wisconsin Department of Public
Instruction requires all newly certified teachers in the state to complete (in
addition to studying various issues related to race, class, and gender in
30 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREP43N IN THE UNDERCRADLITE YEARS
T's
their courses) a minimum of 50 documented hours of direct involvement
with adult and pupil members of a group whose background the student
does not share and including at least one of a designated set of ethnic
minority groups.
At least two of the four fields and one of the two nine-week student
teaching placements for all students are in the Milwaukee Public Schools.
All placements are made with teachers who have successfully completed a
preparation course for cooperating teachers that is offered three times per
year. Over the course of the four fields, students gradually assume more
and more responsibility for instruction and interacting with pupils.
The mentoring and assessment of field students and student teachers
by their school and college teacher educators is closely tied to the ability
framework. During student teaching, student teachers videotape a teach-
ing sequence in each nine-week placement and share it during their week-
ly campus seminar, assessing how and to what degree the five advanced
abilities are demonstrated in the sequence. Feedback from peers is direct-
ed toward the five abilities as well.
During the fields, students are assessed on particular abilities in a devel-
opmental sequence that progresses over the four field experiences. For
example, during our observation of one of the seminars for the first field
experience, the instructor told the students that she would be observing
each of them in the next two weeks for a validation on level four of the
social interaction ability. Students were provided before the observation
with a sheet listing the criteria associated with this particular validation in
relation to both the general education abilities and the professional edu-
cation abilities. Some of the criteria on this sheet are:
Demonstrates ability to integrate theories of learning and human devel-
opment with the teaching/learning process (conceptualization, coor-
dination, diagnosis).
Gives evidence of considering the predisposition of the learner for a
particular learning task (social, intellectual, developmental).
Uses learning experiences appropriate to the developmental state of the
learner.
Uses a sequential step-by-step approach to learning, moving from sim-
ple to more complex levels of understanding.
Challenges the learner to higher levels of thinking through effective
questioning. (Field Experience 1 Syllabus, 1996)
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 31
44
Additional Program Themes and Program Pedagogy
Beyond the articulation of the general education and professional edu-
cation abilities that form the basis of the teacher education curriculum,
faculty expressed to us a particular point of view about the kind of teach-
ers they hoped to prepare. The major theme that came through in the
interviews was the desire of faculty to prepare "child-centered" teachers
who focus on pupils as individuals and adapt their teaching to meet the
needs of the pupils rather than try to force pupils to fit a rigid and
unbending classroom.
We really focus on child-centeredness. We hope that they look
at the child as an individual, and look at what that child has as
far as strengthsknowing about backgrounds and knowing
how they can support them as learners, rather than writing
them off because they don't have something teachers who look
at what they (pupils) do have and work with them. (Maggie
Sneed and Kathy Henn-Reinke, personal communication)
In addition to this focus on child-centeredness by faculty, there was also
an emphasis on providing all pupils with access to powerful kinds of
learning experiences. There was a general feeling expressed by faculty that
they want students to see that "ability is abundant" among pupils and a
strong rejection of the cultural deficit view that some pupils cannot learn
high-level problem solving and thinking skills and so on because they are
different in some way (e.g., culturally, physically). As one student in the
program told us, "We were taught not to label, to try to recognize differ-
ences rather than saying this person can't do x, y, or z . We were taught to
learn to work with differences."
Faculty told us that they encourage students to do whatever is neces-
sary to accomplish this goal of powerful learning experiences for all
pupils. According to several faculty, the courses in the program encourage
students to go beyond the textbook and to employ thematic teaching and
an integrated curriculum which promotes a lot of student-student inter-
action in the classroom. Both the faculty and the students told us about
the emphasis on whole-language teaching in the sequence of three litera-
cy courses which integrate the study of the teaching of writing, reading,
speaking, listening, and children's literature. The faculty expressed a par-
32 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPAitjA40.1.8". THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
ticular concern that their students have opportunities to see these prac-
tices at work in the city schools so that they don't get the idea that they
can only be used with middle-class kids in the suburbs. Because these
practices are less commonly found in MPS than in the suburban schools,
it has been a continual challenge to try to make sure that Alverno students
learn how to integrate these "holistic" practices into MPS schools.
One of the difficulties in helping Alverno students to become commit-
ted to and competent at teaching in a more holistic way is that few of
them have ever experienced this kind of teaching apart from the model-
ing that goes on in this teacher education program. One strategy that has
been used to overcome- some of the limitations of the students' prior
socialization in more traditional images of teaching has been to develop
ways to have more concentrated periods of time with students. The devel-
opment of a coherent set of three language arts methods courses, with a
developmental sequence covering three semesters to replace several sepa-
rate courses, is an example of this strategy.
We really felt that the more we had access to those students, the
more likelihood that they're going to take on this other philos-
ophy. Because none of them have been taught throughout their
K-12 experience in what would be called learner-centered class-
rooms, no matter what the surveys show. Very few of ours have
had anything that would be considered a child-centered class-
room. So . . . to help them see there is a better way of doing it,
we figured we needed them for a longer period of time. The old
sequence was that they might have had reading here, language
arts methods there . . . It was just kind of a smattering of things.
This way, it's very sequential. We know what happens the
semester before, so we can build on that . . . we keep trying to
build on those experiences. Another thing that we did is to
break it up so we have them twice a week (instead of once).
Again the idea of seeing them more often. (Maggie Sneed and
Kathy Henn-Reinke, personal communication)
Another important element in the hopes of faculty for their students is
the emphasis in the program on preparing teachers who are open to shar-
ing what they know with their colleagues and who are inclined to go to
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 33
46
their colleagues for help when they have problems. This focus on teach-
ing as a collaborative activity is one among a number of the themes in the
program that we found to be modeled by the faculty in the way they
implement the teacher education program. Many of the courses in the
program are team-taught by faculty, and students are very aware of all of
the collaborative program development work that the faculty do. The
structure of many of the methods courses involves an integration of con-
tent across disciplines. Most of the classes that we observed were domi-
nated by a high degree of student to student interaction and actively
involved students in the activity at hand. In the nine classes that we
observed, we saw very little evidence of faculty lecturing students. A num-
ber of faculty told us how important it was to them and to the program
as a whole to model the kind of student-centered and interactive teaching
that they hoped to develop in their graduates:
We want to model how you want to work with your students.
You want to take from your students and find out what they
want to know and how they learn, and go from there (Geri
Langman & Ginny Schuldenberg, personal communication).
My practice should be consistent with the philosophy that I
want them to have. So my classroom has to be inviting. I have
to be tuned into students who are not understanding and I have
to find a way to bring them in and address a variety of learning
perspectives. I have to put learning at the center (Diane
Gardner-Gletty, personal communication).
The faculty believe that it is not only important to model the practices
that you want your students to use, but also to be explicit about the fact
that you are doing so. In our interviews with students, cooperating teach-
ers, principals and graduates there was continual reference to the fact that
Alverno faculty practice what they preach.
One example of the deliberate modeling of learner-centered practices
in both the form and content of the program is found in the integrated
science and health methods class. On the day that we observed this class,
several students were teaching 12 to 15 minute segments of lessons that
they had developed. The lessons where based on interviews the students
34 STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PdP7ATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
had conducted with children in their field placement classrooms to find
out what questions they have about the natural world. The Alverno stu-
dents were, required to develop an integrated and "hands on" unit that
addressed some of the questions of their pupils. During the class period
we observed, the Alverno students taught a lesson from their unit as if
they were in an elementary school and then received comments and feed-
back from the students and two faculty in the class. All of the peer teach-
ing that we observed actively involved the "pupils" in investigations relat-
ed to the topic under study. The following week, the students were going
to teach the lesson in school, informed by this feedback. They were then
going to bring a videotape of the lesson back to class with a self-assess-
ment of the tape made according to specified criteria and receive further
feedback from their peers and professors.
In addition to the modeling of a student-centered and interactive approach
to teaching for prospective teachers, one can also see from this brief example
the intensity of focus on assessment that characterizes this program. In much
of what we saw, there was an attempt to encourage students to place the same
degree of emphasis on assessment in their own teaching in elementary
schools. The focus in all of the situations that we observed was on assessment
as a learning tool rather than just as a way of giving grades.
For example, in our observation of Geri Langman's Integrated Reading
Curriculum 3 course, the students who had previously analyzed the writ-
ing of some of the pupils from their field placements were discussing in
small groups aspects of this writing (e.g., use of figurative language, para-
graphing, varying sentence structure, etc.). They were looking for ele-
ments that could be used as the basis for "mini lessons" with their pupils,
using assessment as a tool for learning.
Although many of the classes that we observed contained a very strong
practical emphasis on the application of ideas to the elementary school
classroom, something one would expect in a program where many of the
faculty were hired right out of the classroom and where there was a stat-
ed emphasis on the use of knowledge, this does not mean that there was
an absence of "deep thinking " about complex and difficult issues. For
example, in the philosophy of education course taught by Julie Stoffels
that we observed, students were engaged in a lively discussion about alter-
native perspectives on multicultural education that were contained in the
readings that they had done for the class. These fifteen students, who had
4g ALVERNO COLLEGE / 35
already completed their student teaching, were grappling with the impli-
cations for the classroom of papers on multicultural education by James
Banks, Lisa Delpit, bell Hooks, and Ricardo Garcia.
One unusual aspect of the modeling of student-centered instruction that
occurs at Alverno is that there is a college-wide desire to model good teach-
ing. A number of factors have contributed to this college-wide collaboration
on preparing teachers. The ability-based curriculum has provided a com-
mon language to talk about teaching. In addition, the strong emphasis on
faculty development at the college results in professional education and gen-
eral education faculty coming together for intensive periods of study at least
three times per year to discuss their teaching. Furthermore, liberal arts fac-
ulty participated in the development of the five advanced-education abilities
and continue to work on a regular basis with them in the biweekly interdis-
ciplinary meetings which focus on the teaching of the abilities. Thus, an
understanding of desirable teaching practices and an institutional culture
that values inquiry into practice have developed throughout the college.
The State Policy Context
Despite a very stormy relationship between the Wisconsin Department
of Public Instruction and many teacher education institutions in
Wisconsin a decade ago (Prestine, 1992), recent years have seen close coop-
eration between individual institutions and the state. Alverno College has
been a key player in this cooperation. On the one hand, many of the poli-
cies of the Department of Public Instruction have supported the efforts of
Alverno to make school-based studies an important aspect of the teacher
education curriculum. As mentioned previously, the department has
required cooperating teachers who work with student teachers to complete
a course or workshop on mentoring student teachers. In addition, 100
hours of field experience are required prior to student teaching, lengthened
to approximately 18 weeks to match the public school calendar.
Also, with regard to Alverno's effort to prepare teachers to teach all stu-
dents to high academic standards, the state human relations code requires
all teachers certified in Wisconsin to study certain topics related to race,
class, and gender equity, and to have documented cross-cultural experi-
ences in the field. In addition to the documented field experience with
desig-
groups different from oneself and who are members of one set of
nated ethnic "minority" groups, students are required to fulfill seven code
36 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPA'R'AT4 THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
points in the human relations code by studying certain topics. One of
these code points requires the study of the psychological and social impli-
cations of the forces of discrimination, especially racism and sexism, and
their broader impact on relationships among members of various groups
in American society. Various professional education courses and liberal
arts courses at Alverno meet all seven of these code points.
In the area of performance-based assessment in teacher education,
Alverno has played an important role in transforming teacher education
in Wisconsin. Mary Diez, the former chair of the education department
at Alverno, and Peter Burke, the state director of teacher licensing at the
department of public instruction, were both members of the working
group which developed the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and
Support Consortium (INTASC) standards for beginning teachers
(Ambach, 1996). Within the context of this state involvement with the
INTASC experience and Alverno's many years of developing the idea of
performance-based assessment in teacher education, the Wisconsin
department of public instruction recently initiated a major revision of the
state code for teacher preparation and certification. The new code, which
will be fully implemented by the year 2000, calls for the elimination of
most state requirements for teacher education program content and the
specification by each teacher education program in the state of the knowl-
edge, skills, and dispositions that they seek to develop in their students
and an assessment system that demonstrates that they have been achieved.
In Alverno's case, the state policy context has largely been supportive of
its efforts to implement their ability-based approach to teacher education.
PERCEPTIONS OF THE NATURE AND IMPACT
OF THE PROGRAM: GRADUATES, EMPLOYERS,
STUDENTS
A Survey of Graduates' Perspectives
A survey of 96 graduates of the elementary teacher education program at
Alverno College in the past four years indicates that they strongly feel that
they have been well prepared for the demands of teaching (92.4 percent felt
that they were very well or well prepared). At the time they completed the
survey, 88.3 percent of these graduates were teaching. Of these, 69.9 percent
were teaching in urban schools, 24.7 percent in suburban schools, and 5.5
percent in rural schools. Nineteen percent of the respondents are of color.
50 ALVERNO COLLEGE / 37
The survey responses further indicate that the graduates feel that they
have been prepared to be the kind of reflective, learner-centered and
learning-centered teachers that the Alverno faculty say they want to pre-
pare. For example, many of the items on the survey relate specifically to
how well students feel they were prepared to teach in a learner- and
learning-centered way. These include questions as to how well graduates
feel they have been prepared to understand how different students in
their classrooms are learning; develop a curriculum that builds on stu-
dents' experiences, interests, and abilities; use instructional strategies
that promote active student learning; teach students from a multicul-
tural vantage point; evaluate curriculum materials for their usefulness
and appropriateness to students; use a variety of assessments to deter-
mine student strengths, needs, and programs; and help students think
critically and solve problems. Eighty-five percent or more of the gradu-
ates felt that they had been well or very well prepared to do these and
similar things and almost no students felt poorly prepared. This was in
comparison to a randomly selected group of 410 graduates of teacher
education programs from across the country, where only about 50 to 70
percent of respondents felt that their program prepared them well or
very well in the same areas. The average difference per item between the
percentage of Alverno graduates who felt that they had been very well or
well prepared to teach in a learner and learning-centered way and grad-
uates from the other programs across the country who felt similarly well
prepared was 26 percent.
In some areas, the differences between the Alverno graduates and the
comparison group were very large. For example, 93.5 percent of the
Alverno graduates felt that they were well or very well prepared to teach the
knowledge and skills of their disciplines as compared to only 33.6 percent
of the comparison group. Similarly, 83.9 percent of the Alverno graduates
felt well prepared to use technology in the classroom as compared to only
39.6 percent of the comparison group. When the ability to be articulate
and reflective about one's teaching was considered, the Alverno graduates
once again evaluated their program very highly. For example, when asked
how well their program prepared them to evaluate the effects of their
actions and to modify their plans accordingly, 92.5 percent of the respon-
dents said very well or well, compared to only 63.3 percent in the compar-
ison group. Similar results were obtained for questions related to how well
38 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PRE5AION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
the program prepared them to provide a rationale for their teaching deci-
sions to students, parents, and colleagues (80.6 percent vs. 61.9 percent in
the comparison group) and to conduct inquiry and research to inform their
teaching (79.3 percent vs. 47.3 percent for the comparison group).
The survey also confirmed what we were told during our site visits
about the importance placed on the preparation of teachers at Alverno to
work collaboratively with their colleagues in providing leadership for
school reform. When asked how well their teacher education program
had prepared them to plan and problem solve with colleagues, 77.4 per-
cent of the Alverno graduates said that they were well or very well pre-
pared as compared to only 44.5 percent of the comparison group.
Similarly, 81.8 percent of the Alverno graduates felt well prepared to
assume leadership positions in their school as opposed to only 52.4 per-
cent of the comparison group. When asked questions related to how
much they actually collaborate with their colleagues in their current jobs,
the Alverno graduates indicated a high degree of collaborative activity. For
example, 82.7 percent of the graduates indicated that they shared ideas
about instructional approaches with other teachers, and 86.3 percent of
the group indicated that they consult with their colleagues as a part of
their reflection on their own teaching.
There were only a few items on the entire survey of 41 items where the
Alverno graduates did not feel as positive about the preparation provided
by their teacher education program.'One area of particular concern to the
graduates relates to preparation to teach in ways that support new English
learners. Here only 30.4 percent of the Alverno graduates felt well pre-
pared and 20.7 percent felt poorly prepared. The comparison group
respondents felt even less well prepared than this with 21.4 percent
reporting they were well prepared and 26.1 percent saying they felt poor-
ly prepared. Other areas where Alverno graduates identified less adequate
preparation although still better -than the comparison group, were prepa-
ration to work with parents and families to better understand students
and support their learning (59.1 percent of Alverno grads felt well pre-
pared vs. 45.4 percent of the comparison group), and preparation to
maintain discipline and an orderly and, purposeful learning environment
(58.1 percent of Alverno graduates felt well prepared vs. 55.6 percent of
the comparison group). Fifteen percent of the respondents to the survey
wrote that they felt the program needed to include more content related
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 39
to classroom management and maintaining discipline. This was the most
frequent response in an open-ended part of the survey which asked for an
identification of program weaknesses.
It is useful to compare these results with the college's own studies. In
Rickards & Diez (1992), there is strong evidence that students are per-
forming according to the faculty's expectations. At the same time, there
are areas specifically related to the context of urban schools that the fac-
ulty identified for further development (e.g., working with students
achieving significantly below grade level).
In summary, the survey of 96 Alverno graduates over the last four years
revealed that they are highly satisfied with the preparation they received
for teaching in Alverno's elementary teacher education program. 93.3 per-
cent of the 96 respondents said that they probably or definitely would
choose the same preparation program again, if given the opportunity.
This preparation, from the point of view of the graduates, has promot-
ed the development of reflective teachers who are able and disposed to
assume leadership positions in their schools and work closely with their
colleagues to implement a learner centered approach to teaching that
seeks to have all students achieve high standards. These teachers as a
group are very confident about their ability to teach all students to high
levels (84.8 percent agree or strongly agreed with this statement) and 96.7
percent of the Alverno graduates agreed or strongly agreed that they are
confident that they are making a difference in the lives of their students.
Furthermore, contrary to the popular image that formal teacher educa-
tion programs contribute very little to teacher learning, the Alverno grad-
uates attribute a lot of what they know about teaching to what they
learned in their teacher education program. 85.9 percent of the Alverno
graduates agreed or strongly agreed that they learned much of what they
know about teaching from their teacher education program as compared
to only 63.5 percent of the comparison group.
Employer Perspectives
In addition to the survey of the teacher education program graduates,
we also surveyed 29 employers of the graduates. Here we asked a group
of school principals with direct knowledge of the teaching of Alverno
graduates how well they felt the Alverno graduates had been prepared in
comparison with graduates of other programs in the same areas that had
40 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREP /LAWN IN THE UNDERCRADUTE YEARS
been included on the graduate survey. The employers' responses general-
ly agreed with that of the graduates with regard to the areas of perceived
strength. On most of the items that related to preparation to engage in
reflective and learner and learning-centered teaching, the principals rated
the quality of skills brought to teaching by the graduates as very high . For
example, with regard to how well has the teacher education program pre-
pared the teacher to understand how different students in his or her class-
room are learning, 82.8 percent of the employers felt that the program
had prepared students well or very well. For the question, "how well do
you think the teacher education program prepared this individual to pro-
vide a rationale for their` teaching decisions to students, parents, and col-
leagues," 78.6 percent of the principals said very well or well as compared
to 80.6 percent of the graduates.
Interestingly, the employers were more favorable than the graduates on
the items where the graduates perceived weaknesses in their program. For
example, with regard to the item that asked about preparation by the pro-
gram to teach in ways that support new English language learners, 58.3
percent of the employers said it was very well or well done as opposed to
only 30.4 percent of the graduates. On the items noted earlier related to
preparation to work with parents and families and to maintain discipline
and an orderly and purposeful learning environment where the graduates
were relatively critical of their program, the employers were more positive.
75 percent of the employers felt that the program prepared students well
or very well to work with parents and families (as compared to 59.1 per-
cent of the graduates) and 75.8 percent of the employers felt that the pro-
gram prepared teachers well or very well to maintain an discipline and an
orderly and purposeful learning environment (as compared to 58.1 per-
cent of the graduates).
A focus group interview with seven school principals from the
Milwaukee Public schools generally confirms the positive picture present-
ed in the survey about employer views of the quality of the Alverno ele-
mentary teacher education program. These elementary and middle school
principals consistently told us that the graduates of Alverno are well pre-
pared to come into city schools as student teachers and beginning teach-
ers. They are perceived as very poised, confident, reflective and able to
critically assess their teaching. They are also seen as very open and accept-
ing to different points of view and to reaching out to families, as using
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 41
pupils' prior knowledge in their teaching , as good team players, and as
very competent and serious about their work.
If I had my choice, it would probably be an Alverno graduate.
My perception is that if a student is a graduate of Alverno, that
student has gone through the rigor of preparedness and is ready
to meet the challenges of teaching. (principal interview)
One principal felt that Alverno graduates come into the Milwaukee city
schools "a step ahead" of graduates from other teacher preparation insti-
tutions because of the careful way in which they are nurtured and sup-
ported in their program by Alverno faculty.
I think it is the structure of the program that makes the difference.
It's how you work with the students when you bring them into the
program. If you are going to enroll the students and leave them on
their own, which many large universities do, then the likelihood of
these people becoming excellent teachers (unless you have it inside
to be a teacher) is far less than in a setting like Alvemo. Alvemo has
more of a nurturing kind of program. It takes its students and actu-
ally follows them from the freshman year. They are really support-
ed by their supervisors and advisors. (principal interview)
The Milwaukee principals made it clear that they felt many graduates
from other institutions are able later to develop some of the skills of teach-
ing and reflecting about teaching that Alverno graduates bring from the
beginning. They feel that the rigor of the Alverno program with the con-
stant demand to demonstrate competence through performance, and the
repeated practice associated with this performance-based assessment is
responsible for the relatively high skill level and ability to self-reflect
brought to teaching by Alverno graduates.
They constandy reflect on their instruction and they're very
open to suggestions or to changing a lesson. They're very able to
assess the actual lesson they've taught and in a fairly critical
manner. They have the skills to do thatthe ongoing assess-
ment of lessons. That's not to say that other students are not
42 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARAT&5I THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
able to pick it up. It's just that Alverno students seem to come
with that knowledge. They've been forced to practice it on an
ongoing basis so they have refined it. (principal interview)
The principals also told us that although Alverno College could be
doing a better job in hiring a more ethnically and racially diverse faculty,
that they were very pleased with both the numbers of student teachers of
color who worked at their school as part of their training at Alverno and
with the general ability of all of the Alverno students they had worked
with to "be involved with folks of different ethnic backgrounds or differ-
ent cultures than themselves." One principal told us that she had received
more student teachers of non European backgrounds from Alverno than
from any other institution and another described to us how the Alverno
student teachers who had worked in her school were more willing than
students from other institutions to go out into the community with their
cooperating teachers to make home visits and that they seemed to have a
better handle than students from other institutions on interacting with
parents and on trying to pull them into the school program.
Observations and Interviews of Program Graduates
In addition to our observation and interview with Berthina, a fifth-year
teacher in MPS and graduate of Alverno, we also spent a full day with
each of three other Alverno graduates who were teaching in Milwaukee
area schools: Kim, a third-year kindergarten teacher in a suburban school
serving primarily white middle class pupils; and two fourth-grade teach-
ers in the same MPS elementary school serving a primarily low income
African American population, Anita, a second-year teacher and Sarah, a
third-year teacher.
All three of these Alverno graduates were very confident about their
teaching abilities, believed that they had gained a lot of useful and practi-
cal information about teaching from Alverno, and felt that they were suc-
cessful teachers. When asked to assess the impact of their teacher educa-
tion program on their current teaching practices, these graduates identi-
fied a number of areas where they felt the Alverno program had made an
impact on their lives. First, all three teachers indicated that the constant
demand in the program for self-assessing their teaching practice had car-
ried over into their current jobs. They felt that they were now very skilled
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 43
at examining and learning from their practice. In one case, Kim told us
that this practice of emphasizing student self-assessment had carried over
to how she treats her own pupils.
Alverno was always trying to get us to go a little bit deeper. And
so when we're asked to go a little bit deeper, I think we ask that
of our students . . . They always gave you a set of criteria. So if
I was doing a paper or a speech or some kind of project, we
always had to follow these criteria. At the end of the paper, at
the end of the project, or at the end of the speech, we were asked
to reflect on whether or not we thought we met the criteria. You
couldn't just hand in a paper and say "here it is." There was
always a top sheet that you had to attach checking off the crite-
ria that you used in your ,paper or speech with an assessment
type comment... The most important thing that I've gotten
from Alverno is the constant questioning, you question your-
self, you question others, you seek information. You do all' of
these things to better yourself and your profession. (Kim, per-
sonal interview)
Anita told us that the structure of the Alverno program based on assess-
ment of performances and the constant pushing by the faculty to analyze
and become better at the abilities embedded in the curriculum helped her
move from being a very poor writer to someone who now sees writing and
the teaching of writing as areas of major strength. She feels that the indi-
vidual attention that she was able to receive from a faculty member was a
key factor in her personal transformation as a writer.
I did this one paper, I swear for three semesters. Because I hand-
ed in the paper and it wasn't up to the level that it was supposed
to be up to. And she kept saying poor sentence structure and
poor this and poor that. And I hadn't the slightest idea of what
she was talking about . . . So I worked on it with her and I did
this paper for three semesters. I think that's what changed me
into an expert writer, coming from not knowing how to write
at all. I think that was the point that I understood writing when
I was able to work with her one-on-one. And then they asked
44 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARA53VIN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
me to become a writing teacher for incoming college students.
(Anita, personal communication)
Alverno's emphasis on a learner-centered approach to teaching where
teachers spend a great deal of time getting to know their students and
building curriculum around student interests and needs was another area
where the graduates felt the program had a lasting influence. They felt
that they really knew how to get to know their pupils as whole people and
to then construct learning activities for their classrooms based on what
they learned.
I feel very confident in my ability to look at children as a whole.
I do a lot with kids outside of school so that I get the big pic-
ture... I spend every Saturday with a group of students. Just by
watching them, what they do in their free time, tells me what
kind of learner they are. I feel like I really know my students.
(Sarah, personal communication)
I believe that I am very in tune with the children's interests . . .
How I learn about their interests is just by positioning myself in
various areas and just taking in what they are doing and enter-
ing it in as I see it . . . Although we are required to teach certain
things and topics according to the curriculum that was given to
us... I can still bring things in as I look at the children's interests
and try to make connections. (Kim, personal communication)
Sarah then told us about a unit on the solar system that she had
planned and taught based on her students' interests.
This unit on the solar system came about because we were study-
ing dinosaurs . . . With, our study of dinosaurs the kids got inter-
ested in comets and asteroids because they learned that is maybe
how the dinosaurs became extinct. They became so interested
that I decided to plan the unit on the solar system. So first I lis-
ten to what is going to pique their interest and from there I try
to set my goals. I try to find ways to get to all of the skills that
I'm required to cover. (Sarah, personal communication)
/ 45
58 ALVERNO COLLEGE
There were important differences in the way that the Alverno philoso-
phy was applied by the graduates in Kim's suburban kindergarten class-
room serving mostly white middle class students and in the three MPS
classrooms of Anita, Berthina, and Sarah, which served mostly poor
African American students. While all four of the graduates told us about
how the conditions of their work sometimes prevented them from doing
all of the things that they learned how to do and wanted to do (e.g., hav-
ing enough time to do all of the authentic pupil assessments that they
would like to do), there was a particular way in which the teachers in the
city schools combined the child-centered and whole language philosophy
they learned about at Alverno with some more traditional practices of
teaching skills in isolation. The city teachers told us that they felt that it
was necessary to adapt the Alverno philosophy in this way because of the
needs of their pupils. Anita estimated for example, that of the 75 fourth
graders at her school, only about 23 were at or above grade level in the
language arts and felt that it was important to use a variety of approach-
es so that the needs of all of her students would be met.
This adaptation did not involve a rejection of what they learned at
Alverno and a total retreat to a deadening "drill and kill" teaching with
low expectations for students that characterizes so many urban classrooms
across the country. All three of the city classrooms were lively and inter-
esting places for children where there was abundant evidence that the
teachers were using real literature, were building on children's interests
and varied styles of learning, and were expecting all of their pupils to
achieve at high levels.
Nor did this integration of progressive and more traditional methods
involve a submission to the pressures of colleagues who were committed
to traditional approaches. In Sarah and Anita's school for example, there
was a strong school wide commitment to whole language teaching and
"reader's workshop" and Anita referred to a time when she had been crit-
icized in one of her teaching evaluations for her critical attitude toward
"reading workshop" as a single school wide approach to teaching reading.
Sarah and Anita's decision to incorporate more traditional skill teaching
and teacher directed activities into their classrooms, along with their use
of activities based on a whole language and student centered philosophy,
actually went against the grain in their schools. In Berthina's case , her
integration of traditional methods with the more child centered methods
59
46 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
learned at Alverno moved her towards the more traditional approach to
teaching that was dominant in her school. All three of these teachers had
decided that an exclusive focus on a single approach to teaching reading
(and writing and math) through a workshop approach was not meeting
the needs of all of their students. It was a very pragmatic decision demon-
strating independent thinking, that attempted to respond to situations
where some children were not succeeding with the dominant approach.
I changed my belief and now feel that sometimes old fashioned
teaching methods aren't wrong. When I started this year, every-
thing was a big workshop approach and groups were here and
groups were there . . . I almost lost my mind. And then I realized
there is nothing wrong with the teacher standing up in front of the
room sometimes and directing. (Sarah, personal communication)
This critical perspective on whole language teaching and reader's work-
shop is exactly the kind of behavior one would expect from teachers who
were prepared to focus on their students and their needs and to adapt the
school program to meet those needs so that all students would have access
to high level learning experiences. It is exactly the kind of attitude that one
would expect from teachers who were taught to be analytic and reflexive
about educational approaches in general and about their own practice.
There was plenty of evidence in both the survey and in our observations
and interviews that Alverno graduates who teach in the city of Milwaukee
utilize many of the practices that were advocated in their teacher education
program. For example, there was much evidence of the planning of inte-
grated units around themes associated with pupils' interests , the use of var-
ious forms of portfolio assessments and small group work which encour-
aged student- student interaction. This child-centered philosophy was
played out however, in a way that did not ignore the need to adopt a com-
bination of different approaches for students who were not succeeding.
Delpit (1995) argues that those teachers who are most skillful at edu-
cating black and poor children do not allow themselves to be placed in
the skills or process boxes, but understand the need for both approaches.
This is exactly what we found with the three Alverno graduates we visit-
ed in the Milwaukee public schools and to a lesser extent with the one
graduate we visited in the Milwaukee suburban school.
6p ALVERNO COLLEGE / 47
Other Research on Program Impact
Studies conducted by Alverno College's Office of Research and
Evaluation are consistent with the findings gained through our survey and
interviews. For example, the results of two studies indicated that gradu-
ates of Alverno's teacher education program do demonstrate the five
advanced professional education abilities as evidenced in assessment data
gathered during student teaching and in first year follow-up studies.
Student teacher performances were judged strong or satisfactory on 96
percent of the performance criteria by cooperating teachers, college super-
visors, and in self-assessments. In the graduate follow-up study, principals
rated the graduates as strong across the descriptors related to the five abil-
ities (Rickards & Diez, 1992).
Student Teacher Perspectives
As part of our visits to the Alverno campus, and in addition to the
numerous informal interviews conducted with students before, after and
during our observations of Alverno classes, we conducted two focus group
interviews with nineteen current students who were at various stages in
their program. The findings from these interviews with regard to program
impact are consistent with the data discussed above from graduates,
employers, and from other research. While students who were enrolled in
the program at the time of our visit consistently told us about the care and
concern that they experienced with the faculty whom they felt knew them
and their beliefs well, they also told us about the very high expectations
for their performance by the faculty despite the absence of formal grades.
The well developed ability to be self-reflective about one's teaching that
was pointed out by the employers of Alverno's graduates is not surprising
given the great emphasis on self-reflection throughout the program.
You're in a system that expects you to continually grow and to
continually do better at your work. And when teachers know
you like they do here, they will call you on things. It may be a
pass/fail system, but it is still expecting a very high quality of
performance.
They're always asking you how you could have done it differ-
ently, how you could have done it better, what are some changes
48 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREZAJON IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
you would have made? They always throw the ball in your court
at Alverno. They are asking me to be just better and better, to
constantly revise and reassess.
In addition to the high expectations for student performance by the
faculty, the explicitness of the criteria that are used to evaluate students'
performances on the various abilities which the curriculum aims to devel-
op seems to contribute to the impact of the program on students. One
student told us that she has begun to use this practice of stating explicit
evaluation criteria in her own classroom:
Our teachers give us criteria before we do something. When we
have a project or a visit to do or something, they give us crite-
ria, what we have to do to successfully complete the task. I'm
doing that in the classroom, letting my students know what is
expected before they start on something. Then there is no fuzzy
area. They know right away what is expected.
Students described to us various changes that they had seen in them-
selves as people since enrolling in the program. Because of the great
emphasis in the program on social interaction skills and on teaching in
urban schools, some of the changes reported by students are related to
these areas. For example, on their, first day as freshmen students are
required to make a video tape of themselves giving a short speech. This
speech is evaluated by the students according to explicit criteria related to
the communication ability and each semester that they are in the program
the students are required to do the same thing- give a short speech which
is videotaped and then self-evaluated. In addition, students also videotape
various lessons that they teach in the four field experiences. By the time
students are ready to assemble their portfolio and be considered for
admission to student teaching, they have accumulated a whole series of
tapes which show their public speaking and teaching abilities at different
points in their development. A number of students and graduates com-
mented to us about the growth they saw in their public speaking and
teaching abilities over time when they analyzed their videotapes (as
required) prior to student teaching. The way the task was structured, to
have students focus closely on their behavior according to criteria, pushed
62 ALVERNO COLLEGE / 49
them to see things in their behavior that they don't think they would have
seen otherwise:
You see a lot of growth. When you come in you give, a speech .
. . talking into this camera. At first, it was really intimidating for
me. I don't want to see myself on camera. How is this going to
help me? But then you get to look for evidence of a lot of crite-
ria. Did you make eye contact? Did you pause when someone
asked a question? Did you have voice inflection? Did you
answer questions while you were speaking? You can watch it
again and again and see things that you miss. It's unbelievable.
Another student commented to us about how Alverno's policy of
requiring all students to complete several field experiences in the
Milwaukee public schools helped her to overcome the stereotypes that she
brought to the program about city schools and what could be learned in
school by city students.
I grew up in a suburb and heard all these horror stories about what
it would be like teaching for MPSthat there are all these terri-
ble schools and the children aren't learning and that you have to
take a crummy car and all these terrible things. And now I have
been in a number of city schools and have not seen these things
in any school. I've seen children learning. I've seen teachers active-
ly engaged and a lot of really good things going on. And now I
take that back to my friends and relatives and say "no, you're only
pointing out one side of the picture. Did you know that this is
happening and that is happening?" I am in a school now that
teaches toward reform and I would like to be part of that.
The comments of the students we interviewed in the two focus groups
clearly confirmed the emphasis on a learner-centered approach to teaching
that was stated by faculty and written in program documents. Here we
were told that all of the courses in the program emphasized getting to know
your students well and then modifying the classroom program to fit the
needs and learning styles of students rather than having a set curriculum,
"At Alverno, they've taught us how to look at your students, assess their
50 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: ON IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
needs, and to make the material fit with your students rather than asking
your students fit with the material (Student interview # 2, p.5)."
Students also generally felt that there was open acknowledgment by the
faculty that some of the schools in which they worked during their pro-
gram did not always exemplify the learner-centered philosophy of the
program. Here they felt that they were being encouraged in their program
to be teachers who would be at the cutting edge of reform and help lead
their schools toward a more learner-centered and learning-centered
approach, one student said: "And they're instilling into us, how can we be
different than the teachers who taught us? How can we really meet the
needs of all of the children in our classrooms?"
Unlike other reform-oriented programs discussed in the literature that
have emphasized "tearing down" what now exists in the schools to replace
it with something better (e.g., Cochran-Smith, 1991), the Alverno pro-
cooperative approach to
gram, according to its students, emphasizes a more
reform where reform-minded teachers work to understand and respect dif-
ferent points of view while trying to accomplish their goals. Both the fac-
ulty interviews and student interviews indicated that the program works on
developing diplomacy skills in students so that when they go out into
schools and want to create changes they have the ability to persuade others
about their point of view and mobilize support. Students are provided with
placements that expose them to a variety of teaching styles throughout the
program to help them develop the ability to work with different kinds of
people in all kinds of settings. The students repeatedly expressed the view
that they felt they could learn something valuable from any situation:
They teach us how to express our ideas and they always tell us
as a school you have to work together. It's not just you against
them. It's part of being on a team and working together. So you
have to share your ideas and listen to everyone else's ideas at the
same time.
They have taught us to be sensitive to teachers who may not
teach like we teach. Just because they don't do things like I
would want them done doesn't mean that I can't hear what they
have to say and then work with them.
64 / 51
ALVERNO COLLEGE
Similar to the comments of the MPS principals indicating that they felt
Alverno prepared teachers who were in step with some of the innovative
practices being implemented in MPS, such as performance assessment,
the Alverno students felt as a group that Alverno graduates have gone out
after graduation and been influential in creating reforms:
If you were to go into MPS schools, anything that you saw
that excited you probably was started by an Alverno grad. At
X elementary school, they have a student production where
the students do the news everyday and that was started by an
Alverno grad. And she was the one who got all of the other
members of the faculty excited about this. It's been going on
for two years now
CRITICAL FEATURES OF ALVERNO'S
ELEMENTARY TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM
A number of key aspects of Alverno's elementary teacher education pro-
gram have led to its success in preparing individuals for urban schools
who are confident and who see themselves and are seen by others as suc-
cessful and innovative teachers. First and foremost is the seriousness with
which both teaching and teacher education are taken by the faculty on the
Alverno campus. Historically, teacher education has been a low-status
enterprise in higher education, and there have been few incentives for fac-
ulty to spend time developing and implementing good programs. On
many campuses, faculty are actually penalized in the reward structure for
such work (Goodlad, 1990). At Alverno, it is expected that faculty will
work hard as part of a team to develop and implement the best possible
teacher education program and the institutional reward structure encour-
ages such work. Some of the consequences of a reward structure that
places high value on teaching and teacher education are that faculty spend
a great deal of time in getting to know their students and in being respon-
sive to their needs, and in continually developing the program to make it
better. Faculty continually try to find more time to work with their stu-
dents and to work in schools. Their knowledge of each individual stu-
dent's strengths and weaknesses is comprehensive and striking.
Second, there is an unusual degree of coherence in this program across
-.%
52 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: IE FSAATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
the entire college, in part because of a culture of collaboration among fac-
ulty that encourages substantive interaction about teacher education and
Students experience a great
teaching across program levels and disciplines.
deal of consistency across the program and faculty have detailed knowl-
edge of the whole program curriculum, not just of their own piece.
Unlike many other institutions, this collaboration often involves interac-
tions between liberal arts and education faculty about how to prepare
teachers. This culture of collaboration encourages work that benefits the
"common cause" of the institution rather than glory for individual facul-
ty. There is a great deal of pride by the faculty in the results of their com-
mon efforts and not a lot of evidence of faculty seeking individual recog-
where faculty
nition for their work. This is in contrast to many programs
rather than for the
primarily seek individual recognition for their work
institution and the common educational mission.
place within the
The teacher education reforMs at Alverno have taken
of
context of overall institutional reform. This institutional climate
environment for the
reform and focus on teaching-has created a favorable
development of the teacher education program. The institution has
invested an unusual amount of effort in developing faculty with its pro-
determin-
gram of faculty institutes. Faculty have played a strong role in
ing both the wider institutional reforms and in the teacher education
reforms. This active involvement by faculty in creating the reforms has
contributed to their unusually strong sense of the whole.
Another factor contributing to clarity about program goals and vision
and to the impact of the program on students is the ability-based cur-
riculum and performance-based assessment system, which have provided
both a common language for faculty, students, and cooperating school
personnel to talk in dear and precise ways about teaching and learning
and also clear expectations for student performance. Cooperating teach-
knowl-
ers and principals who work with Alverno seem to be unusually
edgeable about the content of the campus component of the program.
The constant and rigorous demands on students to analyze their own
practice and to have it analyzed by their peers and teacher educators accord-
ing to explicit criteria seems to develop habits of inquiry about one's own
teaching that carry over into at least the first few years of teaching.
the program the
The faculty's deliberate and explicit efforts to model in
students consider is
kinds of teaching practices they hope to have their
66 ALVERNO COLLEGE / 53
another factor that seems to strengthen the impact of the program. Because
the Alverno students have not experienced many of the ideas and practices
in their own K-12 schooling they are exposed to in their program, such as
integrated curriculum work and performance assessment, and because
some of the practices are not widespread in area schools, this modeling by
faculty provides students with an important opportunity to see what the
ideas look like when implemented and how learners experience them.
Another critical feature of the program is the unusually strong connec-
tions between the campus and field components of the program. Many of
the faculty are involved in local schools on a regular basis working to pro-
mote the same kind of reforms that are embedded in the teacher education
curriculum. A number of the faculty came to Alverno right from positions
as teachers or principals in elementary or secondary schools and were hired
because of their potential to do innovative work in teacher education that
is in line with the program philosophy. The involvement of the faculty in
the schools has resulted in the building of networks of potential cooperat-
ing teachers who are supportive of the program's goals. Around 24 percent
of the program graduates who responded to this survey indicated that they
had continued their involvement with teacher education at Alverno after
graduation by serving as members of various teacher education advisory
groups, going into Alverno classes to talk about their teaching, participat-
ing in the portfolio assessment screening for student teaching, or by serv-
ing as cooperating teachers for Alverno students.
The program also tries to involve graduates of their program as teacher
educators whenever possible. The elaborate school-based studies curricu-
lum which includes over 40 reflective logs and additional activities, rep-
resents a very uncommon case of college teacher educators treating
school-based studies in teacher education as seriously as any other course
in the program.
Finally, an important factor in the Alverno program has been the pres-
ence of a recent state policy largely supportive of the efforts of faculty to
reform their program. Several state requirements in the areas of human
relations and school-based studies have supported Alverno's efforts to
build strong connections between the college and cooperating schools
and to prepare teachers to teach all pupils to high standards. There have
been few state regulations in recent years that have interfered with the
process of teacher education reform at Alverno and in fact, the State
54 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: 6 E6..RATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
Department of Public Instruction has looked to Alverno faculty for lead-
ership in transforming the rest of the teacher education institutions in the
state to an ability-based approach.
As this report is being written, Alverno College's elementary teacher
education program continues to be developed by the faculty. The inten-
sity of the commitment of the faculty to improving their program is inspi-
rational. While some of the continuing challenges in the program have
been pointed outchallenges such as recruiting a more ethnically and
racially diverse faculty; finding placement sites in city schools which
exemplify some of the practices advocated in the program; and preparing
teachers to work with new English language learners, there is little doubt
in our view that this is a highly successful undergraduate preservice
teacher education program that deserves serious study by teacher educa-
tors across the country.
68
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 55
REFERENCES
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Alverno College Institute.
Alverno College Faculty. (1992). Handbook for cooperating teachers of Alverno College
field work students and student teachers. Milwaukee, WI: Alverno College.
Alverno College Faculty. (1992). Liberal learning at Alverno College. Milwaukee: Author.
Alverno College Faculty. (1994a). Student assessment as learning. Milwaukee, WI:
Alverno College.
Alverno College Faculty. (1994b). learning program. Milwaukee, WI:
Alverno College.
Alverno College Faculty. (1995). Handbook for education students, part two:
Conceptual frameworks. Milwaukee, WI: Alverno College.
Alverno College Faculty. (1996). Ability-based learning program: Teacher education.
Milwaukee, WI: Alverno College.
Alverno College Office of Reseaich and Evaluation. (1995) Self assessment in key
teacher education assessments. Milwaukee: Author.
Ambach, G. (1996). Standards for teachers: Potential for improving practice.
Kappan, 78 (3), 207-210.
Cochran-Smith, M. (1991). Reinventing student teaching. Journal of Teacher
Education, 42 (2), 104-119.
Darling-Hammond, L. (1994). (Ed.) Professional development schools. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Delpit, L. (1995). Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New
York: The New Press.
Diez, M. (1990). A thrust from within: Reconceptualizing teacher education at
Alverno College. Peabody Journal ofEducation, 65 (2), 4-18.
Diez, M., Rickards, W., & Lake, K. (1993). Performance assessment in teacher
education. In T Warren (Ed.) Promising practices: Teacher education in liberal arts
colleges. Lanham, MD: University Press of America and Association of
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Goodlad, J. (1990). Teachers for our nation's schools. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
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Loacker, G. & Mentowski, M. (1993). Creating a culture where assessment
improves learning. In T.W. Banta & Associates (Eds). Making a difference:
Outcomes of a decade of assessment in higher education. (pp. 5-24). San Francisco:
Jossey- Bass.
Mentowski, M. (1984). Careering after college: Establishing the validity of abilities
learned in college for later careering and professional performance. (Final Report
to the National Institute of Education). Milwaukee, WI: Alverno Productions.
(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 239 556).
Mentowski, M. (1988). Paths to integrity: Educating for personal growth and profes-
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search for higher human values in organizational lift. (pp. 89-121). San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Mentowski, M. & Doherty, A. (1984). Abilities that last a lifetime: Outcomes of
the Alverno experience. American Association of Higher Education Bulletin, 36
(6), 11 -14.
Mentowski, M. & Loacker, G. (1985). Assessing and validating the outcomes of
college. New Directions for Institutional Research, 47, 47-64.
Mentowski, M. & Rogers, G. (1993, Summer). Connecting education, work, and
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Prestine, N. (1992). The struggle for control of teacher education. In H. Gideonse
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Purkey, W. & Novak, J. M. (1984). Inviting school success: A self - concept approach to
teaching and learning. (2nd edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
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Rogers, G. (1994, January-February). Measurement and judgment in curriculum
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7Q
ALVERNO COLLEGE / 57
APPENDIX A: METHODOLOGY
A total of eight visits from one to two days each were made to the
Alverno College campus and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, area schools during
the 1995-96 academic year and in fall 1996. In total, the study team (I con-
ducted all of the interviews with and observations of program faculty, coop-
erating teachers, students, principals, and one of the program graduates.
Bernadette Baker, Rosemary Griffith, and Peter Youngs conducted obser-
vations of and interviews with the other three program graduates that we
studied.) interviewed 14 faculty (some more than once), 19 students who
were then enrolled in the program, seven principals from the Milwaukee
public schools, and five cooperating teachers. We also interviewed and
observed, for one full school day, four graduates who had finished the pro-
also
gram within the last four years. Nine different program courses were
observed for a full class period as was one regularly scheduled meeting of
the education department faculty and staff. The classes observed included
methods classes, foundations classes and field seminars for pre-student
teachers and student teachers: Additionally, a survey sent out by NCREST
staff obtained the views of another 96 individuals who had graduated from
the elementary teacher education program at Alverno during the last four
years as well as those of their building principals.
The teacher survey attempted to assess how well the graduates felt their
teacher education program prepared them to teach in various areas associat-
ed with learner-centered and learning-centered education, how often they
think learner-centered and learning-centered practices occur in their class-
and
rooms, their opinions about the Alverno teacher education program,
their sense of efficacy as teachers. The principal survey asked the respondents
learner-cen-
to evaluate the Alverno graduates on the same dimensions of
tered and learning-centered education in comparison with graduates of
other teacher education programs who have similar length of experience.
and its
We also reviewed numerous documents about Alverno College
docu-
programs, listed at the end of this appendix, including all of the
mentation that was prepared for the 1995 National Council for
Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) review of the college's
teacher education programs. Finally, we met with Marcia Mentowski and
Bill Rickards of the Alverno College office of research and evaluation to
discuss the research that the college has conducted relative to the validity
and effectiveness of its ability-based teacher education curriculum.
58 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: 7 a.
R RATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
Additional Documents Reviewed
In addition to these papers, we also examined course syllabi from many
of the professional education and liberal arts courses including the field
experiences.
Alverno College Faculty. (1992). Liberal learning at Alverno College. Milwaukee,
WI: Alverno College.
Alverno College Faculty. (1993). The proof is in the performance. Milwaukee, WI:
Alverno College.
Alverno College Faculty. (1994). Ability -based learning program: The history major.
Milwaukee, WI: Alverno College.
Alverno College Faculty. (April, 1995). Institutional report to the National Council
for Accreditation of Teacher Education. Milwaukee, WI: Alverno College.
Alverno College Faculty. ( 1995). Ability -based learning program: The psychology
major. Milwaukee, WI: Alverno College.
Diez, M. (1990). A thrust from within: Reconceptualizing teacher education at
Alverno College. Peabody Journal of Education, 65 (2), 4-18.
Edgerton, R. (1984). Abilities that last a lifetime: Alverno in perspective. American
Association for Higher Education, 36 (6), 3-4.
Loacker, G. & Mentowski, M. (1993). Creating a culture where assessment
improves learning. In T.W. Banta and Associates, Making a difference: Outcomes
of a decade of assessment in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mentowski, M. (1991). Creating a context where institutional assessment yields
educational improvement. Journal of General Education, 40, 255-283.
Mentowski, M. & Doherty, A. (1984). Abilities that last a lifetime: Outcomes of the
Alverno Experience. American Association fir Higher Education Bulletin, 36(6), 5-14.
Mentowski, M. & Loacker, G. (1985). Assessing and validating the outcomes of col-
lege. In P.T. Ewell (Ed) Assessing educational outcomes. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Milwaukee Public Schools. (1996). Directions: Important school selection information.
Milwaukee, WI: Author.
Riordan, T (1994). Beyond the debate: The nature of teaching Milwaukee, WI:
Alverno College.
Schereer, M. (1995). How Alverno shapes teachers: A conversation with Mary
Diez. Educational Leadership, March.
Sneed, M.C. & Henn-Reinke, K. (July, 1992). The integrated reading curriculum:
Creating a student-centered environment in preservice methods courses. Presented at
the 14th World Congress on Reading, Maui.
72 / 59
ALVERNO COLLEGE
APPENDIX B: COURSES IN THE ELEMENTARY
EDUCATION PROGRAM*
Semesters 1-3
Humanities and Fine Arts
Natural Sciences
Mathematics
Social Sciences
General and Developmental Psychology
Small Group Interaction
Integrated Communication
Human Relations Workshop
Principles of Instructional Design
Introduction to Educational Computing
Field Experience 1
Semesters 4-6
Humanities and Fine Arts
U.S. History
Language Theory and Critical Thinking
Integrated Reading Curriculum 1, 2, 3
Methods (Science, Social Studies, Arts, Mathematics)
Field Experiences 2-4
Exceptional Learner
Semester 7-8
Integrating the Elementary Curriculum
Student Teaching and Seminar
Philosophy of Education
Coordinating Seminar
*This list does not include courses taken in a students speciality area.
60 STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
APPENDIX C: PROFESSIONAL GROUP
DISCUSSION ASSESSMENT
During their third semester of field work, students take part in a profes-
sional group discussion. This assessment asks them to take the role of a
teacher in a district called upon to meet with other teachers in a planning
meeting to make a recommendation (e.g., regarding a gender equity poli-
education,
cy for the district, a plan for inservice related to multicultural
changes in the curriculum related to the Columbus quincentennial, etc.)
Assessment focuses on the student s ability to draw upon aspects of the
teacher education curriculum (i.e., multicultural education principles and
developmental frameworks) and to apply their abilities, especially in con-
ceptualization and integrative interaction. The group discussions are video-
taped and students review their tapes as they complete a self assessment.
The following criteria are used for the professional group discussion:
1. Shows awareness of current interpretations of the issue
interprets the task from more than one perspective
articulates conflicting cultural perspectives
accurately infers perspectives of others through discussion
recognizes and articulates relevant frameworks
interprets information according to framework(s) of others
2. Analyzes relationships between the issue and her own philosophy
articulates the purpose of the task
articulates own position or perspective with respect to the task
accurately infers the position of perspective of others
recognizes assumptions embedded in different points of view
points out implications of ideas and assertions presented
3. Demonstrates understanding of school district organization in terms of
how individuals work with and through others to achieve common goals
compares organization s goals and values to her own
articulates an understanding of how the school district functions
identifies strategies to engage other district wide teachers in the process
articulates impact of decisions on others in the organization
74 61
ALVERNO COLLEGE /
4. Shows openness to perspectives different from her own
demonstrates flexibility in discussing opposing ideas
follows up on, or elaborates on, ideas expressed by others
revises viewpoint in light of new evidence
synthesizes the thinking of others
identifies assumptions, beliefs and biases in state positions
clarifies positions and actively seeks information to resolve conflict of
participants
5. Demonstrates social interaction skills appropriate to achieving the task
uses a range of task-oriented behaviors to complete the group task
attends/responds to nonverbal messages or cues in support of task
communicates enthusiasm for the task(s) of the group
encourages members who withdraw
listens to others, without interrupting, who present opposing ideas
contributes a fair share of ideas
reflects on strengths and areas of improvement as participant
62 STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERCRADUTE YEARS
Student Teacher Assessment Form This form Is to be completed Woe for each ptomain'.
once met the mid-point and once at the end. The
Alvemo College members of the three-person tarn (student cooperat-
ing wecher, endwise. supervisor) complete the
assessment.
Check one: Sell-Assessment
Student School
___ Cooperating Teacher Assessment
College Supervisor Assessment
Cooperating Teacher Subject/Level
Placement Period: Fall, 199 SPAM. 199--
College Supervisor First placement Second placement Date of Report:
DIAGNOSIS (Circle one overall descriptor for this abffity)
CONCEPTUALIZATION (Circle one overall descriptor for this ability)
Strong Satisfactory Needs growth Unsatisfactory
Strong Satisfactory Needs growth Unsatisfactory
Descriptive Evidence of Performance:
Descriptive Evidence of Performance:
1. Shows command of subject matter 1. Collects Information through
2. Uses appropriate depth of subject matter observation of classroom interaction
3. Uses logic In the development of subject 2. Uses questions to refine Information
3. Weighs observations against varied
Miner frameworks of student development
4. Sets appropriate context for lesson and behavior, e.g.. learning style.
5. Plans material both to meet learners'
current needs and to lead to next level of cultural background. etc.
development 4. Makes judgments about student
8. Relates today's subject matter to that of teaming needs
previous classes 5. Uses assessment processes
7. Integrates a variety of learning experi- appropriate to learning outcomes
ences In planning Instruction 6. Evaluates student performance.
8. Relates student behavior to frameworks using appropriate criteria and
providing focused feedback
from developmental psychology
9. Relates student behavior to understand- 7. Integrates awareness of student
ing of cultural contexts needs into planning
10. Understands the relationships between 8. Assesses own performance
motivation and student behavior a. rethinking decisions in relation-
11. Helps students to relate subject matter to ship to theoretical bases
b. identifying needs for own ongoing
real fife experiences
12. Changes plans appropriately in response professional development
to the unaxpected 9. OTHER specific goal
13. Understands school structure and role
relationships
14. Assesses own performance
a. evaluating plans In relation to actual
class outcomes
b. analyzing the effect of class 'Strong: designates outstanding performance lo beginnirq Nether
activities on both Individuals and the
class as a whole 'Sallslactorf designates perfonnnce that moots the expected level fora beginning teacher
15. OTHER specific goal 'Needs Chowth' inricates some need for imptovement growth or development, although the
overall performance meets the expected level for beginning teethe,
"Unsalisfactore Inc:Scabs that the overall performance Is not acceptable. for beginning leacher
'7 6
BEST COPY AVAILABLE
Student Teacher Assessment Form - page 2
COORDINATION (Circle one overall descriptor for this ability) COMMUNICATION (Circle one overall descriptor for this ability)
Strong Satisfactory Needs growth Unsatisfactory Strong Satisfactory Needs growth Unsatisfactory
Descriptive Evidence of Performance:
Descriptive Evidence of Performance:
1. Seta clear goals and objectives 1. Makes goal of class activity dear
2. Uses resources appropriate to 2. Presents material in a manner which
learning goals holds student attention
3. Uses class tine appropriately 3. Communicates clearly through
4. Structures teaming environment to spoken words
provide for needs of students 4. Communicates clearly through
a. by establishing suitable routines written words
b. by creating variety In activities 6. Communicates Information accu-
5. Collaborates with other persons In rately
providing for learning 6. Uses examples or Illustrations to
8. Brings In and relates students' other support learning
environments to classroom environ- 7. Uses environment to support
ment learning
7. Monitors the progress of learners 11. Shows enthusiasm for subject
toward goals matter
8. Maintains clear records 9. Uses suds-visuals sidiffully (e.g.,
9. Shows sell-confidence through chalkboard, overheads, slides,
Initiative and flexibility tapes, movies, charts, demonstra-
10. Relates appropriately and effectively tion objects
with parents, teachers, administra- 10. Uses voice effectively through
tors, and school as a system proper volume, pitch, speed, and
11. Assesses own performance padng
a. monitoring use of resources over 11. Maintains eye contact
time 12. Reinforces Ideas through posture
b. planning for ways to extend links and physical movements
with colleagues 13. Assesses own performance
12. OTHER specific goal a. developing &Nemeth's explana
torn to meet student needs
b. gaining sense of own classroom
presence and of need to modify
that presence, e.g., In manner,
dress, grooming, confidence, etc.
14. OTHER specific goal
' Strong' designates outstenclIng padonnance for beginning teacher
' Salisfaclorf designates parbunence that meets Ifw especial level for beginning teacher
' Needs Grower Indicates some need for Improvement, growth or development. although the
overt performance meets the expected Neel for beginning teacher
' Unsalslactonf Indicates that the overall performance Is not acceptable for beginning teacher
BEST COPY AVAILABLE
Student Teacher Assessment Form - page 3
INTEGRATIVE INTERACTION (Circle one overall descriptor for this ability) Additional Comments
Strong Satisfactory Needs growth Unsatisfactory
Descriptive Evidence of Performance:
1. Shows rapport with studenti
2. Shows Interest In students' Ideas,
concerns, experiences, Interests
3. Demonstrates an adequate under-
standing of individual differences,
especially cultural and psychological
differences
4. Shows respect for varied student
perspectives
S. Encourages Individual participation
while effectively directing group activity
6. Stimulates students to question and
respond
7. Gives satisfactory answers to stu-
dents' questions and comments
B. Guides Interstudent discussion
9. Guides pace of teaming activities
10. Uses feedback to assist student to
become a sell-starting learner
11. Deets with range of classroom
situations with confidence and calm
12. Shows ability to make decisions and to
take responsbility for them
13. Assesses own performance
a. dealing with individuals in a way
that recognizes their personal
qualities
b. recognizing students personal
backgrounds and reading their
nonverbal communication In order
to respond eppropriately
c. gaining a sense of the Interaction of
the group as affecting learning
d. designing learning to best relate to
the characteristics of the group and
Individuals within it
14. OTHER specific goal
'Strong' designates outstanding performance for beginning teacher
Salstactont desisnatesperfonnance that meets the expected level for beginning teacher
'Needs Growth" indicates some need for knprovement, growth or development, although the
overall performance meets the expected level for beginning teacher
'Unsettles-brae intIceles that the overall Woman*, Is not acceptable bra beginning teacher
78
BEST COPY AVAILABLE
APPENDIX E: CORRELATION BETWEEN CAMPUS
COURSES AND FIELD EXPERIENCES
The following represents a typical pattern from the way campus courses
are linked to field experiences. This list does not include courses taken in
a student's speciality area.
Semester Field Experiences Courses and External Assessments
3 ED210 Field Experience CS210 Introduction to Educational
Computing; ED222 Principles of
Instructional Design and other courses
4 ED215 Second Field ED220 Interview Assessment; ED225
Experience Integrating Reading Curriculum I; ED396
Introduction to the Exceptional Learner
and other courses
5 ED310 Third Field ED320 Group Interaction Assessment;
Experience ED325 Integrated Reading Curriculum II
and other courses
6 ED315 Fourth Field ED345 Integrated Reading Curriculum III;
Experience ED420 Portfolio/Interview Assessment
and other courses
ED445 Student Teaching ED453 Integrating Elementary
Curriculum; ED475 Student Teaching
Seminar
79
66 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
Learning to Become a Teacher:
The Wheelock Way
BY LYNNE MILLER AND DAVID SILVERNAIL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MAINE
I firmly believe I would not have become who I am,
either professionally orpersonally
without the experiences I had at Wheelock.
-Wheelock Graduate
I had a very challenging classroom with many
diverse needs in my first year of teaching.
I feel that because of my education at Wheelock,
I was able to be successful.
-Wheelock Graduate
I feel very strongly that Wheelock College
prepared me to be a positive asset to any classroom.
-Wheelock Graduate
6Q
67
OVERVIEW
These words capture the positive feelings that Wheelock College grad-
uates have about their undergraduate experience and their preparation for
teaching. In a recent survey, over 83 percent of the respondents reported
that they thought the College had prepared them very well for a teaching
career. Employers agree. As one principal, reflecting the views of many
others observes, "Wheelock does a better job of preparing early childhood
teachers than any place I know."
Why is Wheelock College so successful in preparing teachers? To
answer this question we conducted a case study of Wheelock College
its faculty, students, and alumni. This case study depends on a variety of
sources and evidence. During five site visits throughout the 1995-1996
academic year, we interviewed the president, vice president, undergradu-
ate and graduate deans, several, directors of support services, and 22 fac-
ulty members. Interviews were also conducted with 35 students, ranging
from freshmen to graduate students. Classes both on campus and during
field placements were observed. Observations of Wheelock graduates
teaching in the greater-Boston area were also completed. In addition, sur-
vey data collected from over 150 graduates and principals were analyzed,
along with committee reports, NCATE review materials, division reports,
and syllabi of all courses in the teacher education programs.
We discovered that part of the answer of why Wheelock College is so
successful lies in what the students 'encounter in the way of curriculum
and field experiences. And, part of the answer lies in the shared assump-
tions and explicit practices of the college and its faculty.
Wheelock's president describes the institution as "A private college with
a public mission . . . "We] can speak in a powerful public voice because
we are in an institution unencumbered by doubt about our purpose"
(Bakken, 1994).
Founded in 1888, the college has always had a dear and unambiguous
focus. Its original charge was to "plant in the land of children whatever you
wish to put into the life of our times," (Wheelock College, 1995), and its
missionthe improvement of the quality of life for children and their fami-
liesremains unchanged today. Then, as now, it offered programs in only
three areas: child life (hospital-based child services), teaching, and social work
Wheelock College was founded by Miss Lucy Wheelock Born in
Cambridge, Vermont, in 1857, Wheelock was the daughter of Edwin
68 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PR A 1 TION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
Wheelock, a minister, superintendent of schools, and state legislator, and
Laura Pierce Wheelock, a teacher in a small Vermont school. While
attending the Chancy-Hall School in Boston, Lucy Wheelock visited a
kindergarten class, a visit which had a profound impact on her life. She
later described this experience:
A brief visit one day . opened a door to me into the land of
. .
childhood, a place I desired to enter and where I have always
loved to stay. . . . It seemed to me that he gates of heaven were
open and I had a glimpse of the kingdom where peace and love
reign . . . I had found my kingdom (Wheelock, n.d.).
In 1888, the Boston school board established kindergarten as part of
the public school program, and at the urging of William Ladd, principal
of Chancy-Hall, Lucy Wheelock opened Miss Wheelock's Kindergarten
Training School. With a year-long curriculum steeped in the tradition of
Froebel and the developmental psychology of Stanley G. Hall, Miss
Wheelock graduated her first class of six women in 1889.
Today, Wheelock College graduates approximately 150 students yearly
from its four-year undergraduate teacher preparation programs in early
childhood care and education and elementary education and another 75
students from other undergraduate programs in teaching, social work,
and child life. In addition, it grants degrees to 200 students in its gradu-
ate division.
The college is still firmly rooted in a developmental point of view and
holds itself to the standards set by Wheelock more than a century ago. In
the words of the president:
Everything grows from the child. You are the curriculum builders.
You watch, you look, and you see, you create. You allow the child
to create. Methods are not so important as the child. The child
comes first. The curriculum of the college clearly reflects the com-
mitment to a human development perspective. (Bakken, 1994)
Wheelock College is located in Boston's Riverway in close proximity to
several colleges, universities, hospitals, and medical schools; the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts; and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 69
82
Approximately 75 percent of the 700 undergraduates live in the college's
five residence halls. The college offers Bachelor of Science and Bachelor
of Arts degree programs for students preparing for teaching and child life
careers and a Bachelor of Social Work degree. These 134 credit-hour
degree programs are designed specifically to prepare students for entry-
level professional positions in early childhood and elementary education,
child life, or social work.
In addition, the college enrolls 550 graduate students in master's and
advanced degree programs in child care and education; human develop-
ment and family studies; and leadership, policy, and administration. Both
the B.S./B.A. and M.S. degree programs are accredited by the National
Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), and the social
work program is accredited by the Council of Social Work Education.
THE UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM IN EARLY
CHILDHOOD EDUCATION CARE
The foCus of this study is the undergraduate program in early child-
hood care and education. The program prepares students to work with
children from birth to 8 years old and leads to what the Massachusetts
Board of Education calls "provisional certification with advanced stand-
ing as a K-3 teacher." As the dean of undergraduate studies describes it,
the program is designed to prepare teachers who are "children-centered,
family-focused, and community-oriented" by combining subject-matter
knowledge, study in pedagogy, and supervised clinical practice.
All of Wheelock's undergraduate teacher preparation programs have two
distinct components: subject-matter preparation and pedagogic mastery. The
subject-matter focus is based on the completion of college-wide courses, tra-
ditional distribution requirements, and the completion of an academic arts
and science major. All students must satisfy the distribution requirement of
36 credit hours by taking courses in arts and humanities (16 credits), natural
sciences and mathematics (8 credits), social sciences (8 credits), multicultur-
alism (4 credits), developing problem-solving skills (4 credits), visual and per-
forming arts (4 credits), and human growth and development (8 credits). The
major consists of 32 hours of coursework in one of four interdisciplinary
fields: arts, human development, humanities, or mathematics and sciences.
Each of the four majors is designed to meet two ends: to provide stu-
dents with common interdisciplinary experiences and to allow them to
70 i STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PRE A ON IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
develop individual interests and concentrations. The arts major offers
multi-disciplinary studies in music, theater, and the visual arts. Students
gain a broad understanding in all three areas and then concentrate in one
area for deeper understanding and competence. The human development
major is the most popular major in the college. Rooted in the traditional
disciplines of psychology, sociology, and anthropology, it offers students a
common experience-in the required eight credit-hour human development
course and then provides the opportunity to focus on one of three per-
spectives: (1) personality and individual differences; (2) life-span develop-
ment; and (3) human ecology, the study of family, society, and culture.
The humanities major is organized around the disciplines of history,
literature, and philosophy. Students take courses that combine at least two
of these disciplines and then select from courses that focus exclusively on
one of them. The mathematics and sciences major provides a basis for
understanding three broad content areas: mathematics, physical sciences,
and life sciences. Coursework in this major emphasizes the connections
among the disciplines and their relationship to the larger world.
Though separate in disciplinary focus, all four majors are conceived in
a multicultural perspective and offer a variety of multicultural courses and
experiences.
Pedagogic Study
Pedagogic study takes place in a set of required courses, including
Principles of Inclusive Early Childhood Care and Education, and at least
one course in literacy and numeracy. Two other courses which may be
taken in the sophomore or junior year, either before or in conjunction with
the first of two required practica, are in multicultural teaching and learning
and in the assessment of young children. Two integrated curriculum cours-
es are required, each linked to a practicum, one with children from birth to
five years old and one with children in K-3 age group. The culminating
experience is a senior capstone course on the history and philosophy of
education that covers pedagogy, philosophy, and advocacy. See Appendix A
for a representation of the major components of the program.
The pedagogic coursework does not occur in isolation from practice.
Almost all courses are intrinsically linked to supervised field placements,
from the freshmen year through graduation. For instance, all students
enroll in a course titled Children and Their Environments. The course goal
84 WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 71
is to provide students with "an overview of the environmental and devel-
opmental issues relevant to understanding children and their lives" (PRO
120 course syllabus) using an ecological model of human development.
Course assignments are designed to help students understand children and
families from a multicultural, multisocial, and multiethnic perspective.
The course also includes a 30-hour fieldwork component, a field placement
designed to help students acquire first-hand knowledge and appreciation of
diversities and to help them sharpen their observation and analytical skills.
This field placement is selected by the director of field placement after she
interviews students and matches them to field sites. For 10 weeks, students in
groups of two spend three hours each week in a field setting as participant
observers and prepare weekly journal entries in response to instructor-chosen
prompts. These prompts ask students, for example, to observe and write about
the social and physical environment of their placement and the environment
surrounding the placement, as well as their interactions with children and fam-
ilies, and the children's supervision. A typical assignment might be:
What have you learned about the life of the children in your
placement? What family interaction do you see? If none, discuss
why you don't see family interaction. What effects do either of
these have on the children? What systems in the ecological
model do these questions refer to and how do you know? (PRO
120 course syllabus)
The required eight-credit course in human growth and development
also makes explicit connections between theory and practice by weaving
together coursework and field experience. Three credit hours each semes-
ter are devoted to helping students learn about theories and research on
human development. The focus of the first semester is conception
through early childhood; the second semester is middle childhood
through adulthood. Students explore patterns of development using mul-
tiple theoretical frameworks: biological-motivational, environmental
learning, universal constructionist, and cultural context. In addition, one
credit hour each semester is devoted to field work where theory and prac-
tice are examined through guided observations, class discussions, and
small tutorial meetings. Students develop a field placement journal
designed to help them record and analyze children's, or their own, behav-
?"'
11,1,
72 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPA TT6N IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
ior, and explicitly relate their observations to the developmental frame-
works and research discussed in classes. For example, one journal assign-
ment for the first semester focuses on awareness of race:
Children are aware of racial differences at a very early age.
Observe and record behavioral events which illustrate your
focus child's (or any child's) awareness of race. Think about
developmental theories and research about children's awareness
of race (see Cole & Cole, 1993, Chapter 10; Derman-Sparks,
Higa & Sparks, 1980; Hale, 1991; Harrison, 1985). Analyze
each behavioral event record for what it shows your about the
child's understanding of race. Also, analyze the ways in which
your placement site responds to children's awareness of race, and
develops in all children a respect for racial differences. (HD
202-03 course syllabus)
During' the second semester of the course, students are given a two-part
assignment dealing with the description and analysis of middle childhood
experiences:
The purpose of this paper is to help you get started thinking and
writing about the kind of common, everyday experiences that
developmental psychologists study. You will use "data" from the
person whose development you have consistently participated
inyourself! Your task is to describe in some detail (1-2 pages) a
personal experience/event that occurred while you were in the
period of development we will refer to as the "middle childhood
years." Study your description and the questions below, with the
knowledge of development in middle childhood you've gained
through reading and class discussions in your mind.
To keep your focus on development, (a) think in terms of spe-
cific areas of functioning (physical, cognitive, and psychosocial);
and (b) relate specific behaviors (in thought and action) of your-
self and others in your story to developmental theories and con-
cepts discussed in class and readings that are useful in explain-
ing these behaviors. (HD 202-03 course syllabus)
86 WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 73
Supervised Clinical Practice
The supervised clinical practice component of the program culminates
in two major field placements or practica, one lasting 300 hours and the
other 150 hours, in the last two years of study. By design, one of the major
practica takes place in a multicultural setting. Also, at least one setting
must include special-needs children.
The first practicum is actually part of an integrated core consisting of
three courses that students take concurrently. These are a course in cur-
riculum development for inclusive early childhood settings, a seminar,
and the 300-hour practicum in either a birth-to-5-year setting or a K-3
setting. The integrated core is taught on a rotation basis by several facul-
ty members each semester and uses a common syllabus. Students spend
at least 27 hours each week in their field placement sites, where they
assume increasingly greater responsibilities as the semester progresses for
"managing the learning environment, using varied teaching strategies,
facilitating play, developing an integrated curriculum, and relating to par-
ents and other professionals" (ED 445 course syllabus).
Supervision in the practicum is by full-time faculty who teach the inte-
grated core and who visit each student a minimum of three times during
the semester. During each visit, time is allotted for a pre-conference which
involves the cooperating teacher, the student, and the college supervisor.
This is followed by an observation, which in turn is followed by a post-
conference between the supervisor and the student.
The second major practicum is also part of an integrated core of courses.
This 150-hour practicum is taken concurrently with a course in curriculum
development in inclusive child care and educational settings, and a second
seminar. The field placement is either in the birth-to-5-level setting or the
K-3 setting, depending upon which setting was selected for the first
practicum. In either the 300-hour or the 150-hour practicum, students
must have some experience working with children with special needs. As in
the first practicum, students are given increasingly greater responsibility over
time for the preparation and management of the early childhood setting.
This overview of the early childhood program presents a brief outline
of the Wheelock approach to teacher education. At first glance this
approach may not appear very different from many undergraduate
teacher preparation programs--core distribution requirements, a liberal
arts major, professional education courses, and a series of field experi-
74 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: NOTION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
ences. What, then, makes the Wheelock approach different? What makes
it stand out as an exemplary program? To explore these questions, we
present two perspectives on teacher preparation at Wheelock College.
The first is from the vantage point of the student; the second is from the
point of view of the institution.
THE SHAPING OF A TEACHER:
THE STUDENT PERSPECTIVE
In order to present the student perspective, we have developed a com-
posite profile of a student we will call Angela. She represents the journey
of a Wheelock student from the time she enters the college, through her
four years of pre-service preparation, and into her second year of teach-
ing, when she enters a master's degree program at Wheelock. This com-
posite derives from interviews with students and alumni, as well as from
classroom observations and document analysis.
Angela entered Wheelock as a young woman from a suburban middle-
class family. A solid student with a consistent B average, she "knew from
the time I was five that I wanted to be a teacher." She applied only to
Wheelock College because it seemed a perfect match for her commitment
to children and because, "Here they let you interact with children from
the beginning. They let you work hands-on with children the first year.
Most other places you have to wait," she said.
Angela was particularly drawn to Wheelock because of its mission: the
improvement of the quality of life for children and their families. She
commented on how often the phrase appeared in college publications and
how many times it was referred to in her interview and her conversations
around the college. She states, "Everywhere you go, every brochure you
see has pictures of children. From the president to the janitor, everyone
seemed to care about children."
Angela is fairly typical of the high school graduates who apply to
Wheelock College. The director of admissions reports that a majority of
applicants are from the New England area, with about 50 percent from
Massachusetts, and 13-15 percent representing students of color. Most
are female public school graduates who maintained a B average in high
school. A majority graduated in the top half of their senior classes with
combined SAT scores of 850 or above. All have had quite extensive child
care experience as day-care workers, camp counselors, community club
WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 75
0°8
leaders, and private tutors. Approximately 15-20 percent of the applicants
are denied admission to Wheelock in any given year, principally because
of weak basic skills or lack of extensive experience with children.
Once Angela enrolled as a freshman at Wheelock, she found that she
was not alone in her feelings about education as a career. She met other
students who shared a commitment to children and a certainty about the
kind of professional life that they wanted to pursue. They were eager to
start immediately on their preparation to become teachers. They were
drawn to Wheelock because of its location, its size, its singleness of pur-
pose, and its reputation. In a recent survey, over three-fourths of Angela's
classmates said they selected Wheelock College because of its reputation
for preparing good teachers (Silvernail, 1997). One recent graduate com-
mented, "Wheelock College's reputation was a factor in my being hired.
Both schools that I've taught at were very impressed with where I gradu-
ated from. I feel Wheelock prepared me very well for teaching."
Some students had heard about Wheelock from guidance counselors.
More often, they were referred to Wheelock by a teacher or family friend.
A few stumbled onto the College by browsing through a catalogue and
"instantly fell in love with the place." Many, like Angela, had applied to
Wheelock and nowhere else.
FRESHMAN YEAR: REFRAMING COMMITMENTS
True to their wishes, Angela and her classmates began working with
children immediately upon entering Wheelock. Each student was
assigned to a field placement as part of the Children and the Environment
course during the first semester. These placements were specifically
designed to place students in multicultural settings and to challenge them
to look at their assumptions about race and class.
Angela worked with middle-school students in a Roxbury after-school
center. Others worked in hospitals, community centers, Big Sister pro-
grams, and Head Start classrooms. They checked in with their instructor
once a week and wrote responsive journals. Students were asked to ana-
lyze the social and physical environments of their field placements, to
observe children, individually and in groups, to interview their supervi-
sors, and to write about these things in light of class discussions and read-
ings. A typical assignment might be:
80
76 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
Look at the physical environment of the setting. Obtain an
impression from your eye level, then get on your knees and look
again as if you were looking from a child's eye level. What feels
different? How does it feel different? What are the best and
worst features of the environment, and why? Consider the
space, the color, the heat, the light, and any other variables that
you think are important. How does the environment affect the
children? How does it affect you? (PRO120 Course Syllabus)
Students also had ample opportunity to meet with their professors
individually as well as in class. These early placements were assigned by
the director of field placement with no student input. At first, many stu-
dents felt they were mismatched. But later, they realized that the place-
ments were selected specifically to broaden their thinking and their expe-
riences with children and their environments.
In fact, the director of field placement takes great care in selecting
placements for students. Through a review of applications and interviews,
the director, working with faculty, selects placements that fit the particu-
lar needs of students, challenge some of their preconceptions, and expand
their understanding of children. For some, this may mean placement with
children much older than those they have worked with before. For oth-
ers, it may mean working in a community youth center, and for still oth-
ers, it may be their first experience in a multicultural environment.
Angela's field placement marked the first time she had been in a predom-
inantly non-white environment. She said:
In the beginning,,I had fear about going into the neighborhood.
Now I know and appreciate the strength of the community. I'm
very proud of all of us. If you're going to work with children, you
need to know their neighborhood. You can't be a teacher halfway.
This early immersion in an unfamiliar and personally challenging set-
ting with children had a powerful impact on Angela and her cohort
group. As one young woman put it, "There's more to teaching than I ever
anticipated. I learned in Children and the Environment how all aspects
[of education] affect a child's life. That raised a lot of issues I never
thought about before.
WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 77
Not all of the initial placements were positive. Angela had a close friend
the first year who had a somewhat negative experience. She felt that she
was never accepted by the children or their parents because of her privi-
leged background. This young woman commented later in her Wheelock
career, "There seemed to be a ratio of good to bad placements and I just
learn-
got a bad one. But I learned something. All of the placements were
ing experiences. They just wanted to get us out in the world and have us
test our dreams."
Academic work in other areas reinforced the challenges that the early field
experiences presented. In the course Angela took to meet the requirement on
multiculturalism, Multicultural Teaching and Learning Styles, she was asked
to deal with issues of identity and culture as part of her academic work. For
instance, she was asked to describe in a reflective essay what she considered to
be major influences that shaped her own cultural identity. Because of these
kinds of academic and field experiences, Angela and the students who entered
Wheelock with her underwent some powerful changes by the end of their
first year. They discovered that a desire to work with children was a necessary,
but not sufficient, condition for success, as Angela said,
I used to think that teachers only have to love children. Now I
see a teacher as a moral and physical presence who knows chil-
dren inside and outside of the classroom and values where they
come from and what they know before they ever get to school.
They learned that their own experience of school was not enough to
power their careers as teachers. "I always had successful school experiences
as a student. I've always loved children. Now I know that much more goes
into teaching. It's just deeper than I thought," said one student.
And they learned that they had to understand and value the diversity
of student backgrounds and the integrity of cultures other than their own.
"This is not about political correctness. It's about being sensitive. It's
about understanding children in a variety of ways. It's about being a
teacher who can and should teach all children."
In many ways, the freshman year at Wheelock for Angela and her class-
mates began a process of reshaping beliefs and reshaping self. During the
first year, they made the transition from adolescence to young adulthood
and from idealizing teaching to beginning to grasp its complexity.
78 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: t-bvrA RTION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
SOPHOMORE YEAR: EMPOWERING ONESELF
It was during sophomore year that Angela had what she termed her "piv-
otal experience." She had taken the Principles of Inclusive Early Childhood
Education course concurrently with Literacy and Numeracy. These were,
by themselves, very demanding courses. Taken together, they caused a cri-
sis of confidence. in Angela and many of her classmates. She said:
The teachers expected so much. It was like they were weeding
out who should be a teacher and who shouldn't. You really
began to doubt yourself. You had to work very hard and you
had to do it all yourself. As I look back, I realize it helped me
become a better teacher, but there were many times I wasn't sure
I had what it takes to be a Wheelock graduate.
The experience shattered many of the illusions that Angela held about
herself. She, realized that teaching was going to be harder work than she
imagined, that she would have to stretch herself to meet the challenges
that would be placed before her, that she had to rely on her own resources
more than she ever expected, and that she needed to develop the ability
to work well under pressure and to balance her time to get the work done.
Having faced her own fragility, Angela felt she emerged from the experi-
ence with renewed strength and commitment:
In the end, I think they re-empowered us after we almost all
broke down. They re-empowered us so we could empower chil-
dren. After I finished the year, I felt I could do anything that
anyone asked. I felt I was ready to be a Wheelock teacher.
In addition to the principles and Literacy and Numeracy courses, all
sophomores took the required eight-credit-hour Human Growth and
Development course. This course was considered critical to the develop-
ment of a Wheelock teacher because it was here that students were intro-
duced in a formal way to what students call the "Wheelock Way." At
Wheelock the understanding of human development extends beyond the
traditional notion of individual movement through a sequence of stages.
Rather, the concept is broadened to include the diverse influences that
affect learning and development. Students learn to look at children in the
g2_ WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 79
context of their families, communities, and cultures. They are encouraged
It was
to develop sensitivity to differences and a multicultural awareness.
in this course that students encountered the notion of "student-centered,
family-focused, community-based education" and began to understand
its importance in their lives as teachers.
placements. As in ear-
The course required three hours per week of field
lier placements, the assignments were made by the director of field place-
The placements were in group set-
ments in consultation with instructors.
tings with young children during the first semester
and with older chil-
Head Start center
dren in the second semester. Angela was assigned to a
her first semester and to a Girl Scout program the second semester. She
was required to make observations
and journal entries as part of the
coursework. A typical assignment asked students to identify a
child who
would be the focus of their work and to observe and record two or more
behavioral events. In each event they were to focus on the child's emo-
tional, language, physical, social, and cognitive development.
The Wheelock emphasis on close integration of classroom learning with
experience from the field placements took the form of classroom observa-
tions. Students were asked to identify examples from their placements and
directly relate their observations to theories and research discussions in
class. For example, after reading about different theories of physical and
cognitive growth in young children and examining some of the research
and record
findings of muscle development, students were asked to observe
at least two behavioral events of a child and analyze the events as follows:
The goal of your analysis is to construct an understanding of
focus
your focus child's physical abilities. As you analyze your
child's behavior, think about what you have learned about the-
ory and research on physical development. In analyzing the
behavioral-event records, use the information about theory and
research on physical development discussed by Cole and Cole
(1993, Chapters 5 & 6), and by Poest, Williams Witt and
Atwood (1990), as well as other course materials.
Here are some questions to ask yourself as you begin your analysis:
What do the child's locomotion and large muscle coordina-
tion show you about her or his perceptual-motor develop-
YEARS
80 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE:93RATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE
ment? What do the child's behavior and vocalizations reveal
about her or his awareness of body, time, space, and direc-
tion, and visual and auditory cues? How does the child's level
with
of large muscle control influence her or his interaction
objects and with other people? (See Cole & Cole, 1993, pp.
183-184, 213; Poest et al., 1990)
What do the child's fine hand movements and small muscle
coordination show you about her or his perceptual-motor
development?
Does the child seem to be developing "normally" in the phys-
the same age
ical domain compared with other children of
and gender? If so, how do the child's physical abilities differ
from what would be expected of a younger child, and of an
older child?
Do you think the child's level of perceptual-motor develop-
ment is due to experience or maturation, or both?
them as
As you answer these questions, consider why you answer
you do. What behavioral evidence do you have to support your
analysis of your focus child's physical abilities? What develop-
mental research supports your analysis? You might also consider
her or his per-
how the child's height and weight might relate to
ceptual-motor coordination. (HD202-03 Course Syllabus)
asked to observe and ana-
In other cases, Angela and her classmates were
and another child as
lyze a child as she learned English as a second language
Angela had
she developed a growing awareness of race. In her journal entries,
research, and also:
to relate her observations to developmental theories and
Analyze the ways in which your placement site meets this child's
needs and develops in all children respect for languages differ-
ences, and . . . analyze the ways in which your placement site
all chil-
responds to children's awareness of race and develops in
Syllabus)
dren a respect for racial differences. (HD202-03 Course
observers of children
The practice of helping students to become expert
ground their analysis in
and their development and asking students to
the development
theory and research is a hallmark of the core courses in
94. WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 81
of a Wheelock teacher. And it is one of the principal reasons Angela and
her classmates believe that Wheelock prepares them in child development
and learning in a way that is superior to the preparation of their teaching
colleagues. For example, one Wheelock graduate writes,
Based on observing other teachers and working with these
teachers and their knowledge and styles, I truly believe
Wheelock College has given me the opportunity to develop an
understanding and ability to teach children in a fashion that
respects their background, abilities, and interests.
Further evidence of this belief may be found in the results of the sur-
vey of graduates. Approximately 94 percent of the respondents indicated
that Wheelock had prepared them well in understanding "how students'
social, emotional, physical and cognitive development influence learning"
and 89 percent felt well prepared in understanding "how factors in the
students' 'environment outside school may influence their life and learn-
ing" (Silvernail, 1997). This percentage was significantly higher than that
reported by a comparable group of graduates from other teacher prepara-
tion programs throughout the country (see Table 1).
Angela enjoyed the Human Development course, and at the end of her
sophomore year declared herself a human development major. This major
is particularly suited to students like Angela who want to deepen their
understanding of children and who want a more generalist liberal arts
program. In the major, as well as in her liberal arts course taken to fulfill
distributional requirements, Angela saw explicit links between content
and pedagogy, teaching and learning. "There is some lecture, but most of
the teaching is what we call good teaching," she reported.
Her liberal arts courses were characterized by an emphasis on critical
thinking and on developing the ability to express oneself clearly in written
language. She remarked on the quantity of written work that was required
and how ill-prepared she felt for this level of scholarship and reflection. Her
professors became role models for hen "I want to challenge and engage
7,
children the same way my professors have challenged and engaged me.
Another student remarked, "I like the way in which many of the pro-
fessors model their classes after the teaching styles that are used in the ele-
mentary classroom Large portions of Angela's courses were team-taught
82 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE
5 ARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
and team-planned. She reported that her teachers were always accessible
after class and that most gave out their home phone numbers at the
beginning of each semester.
For Angela, the sophomore year was a time when "things began to
come together." She had established a major, survived a crisis of confi-
dence, learned to think and write critically, and stretched herself further
through her field placements. She felt that she had acquired the tools and
the strength to take responsibility for shaping herself as a teacher. In her
freshman year she had encountered the Wheelock Way and tried it on for
size. By the end of her second year, she had grown more comfortable and
more confident in the wearing of the mantle.
JUNIOR AND SENIOR YEARS: TAKING CHARGE
Angela's third and fourth years at Wheelock were, if anything, more
intense than the two that preceded them. Practical experience and aca-
demic work were combined in a series of companion courses. The 300 -
hour practicum was paired with a course in inclusive curriculum devel-
opment and a three-credit seminar. The 150-hour practicum was paired
with a one-credit seminar and a course in inclusive curriculum. While
both practica provided students with important real-world experience, it
was the 300-hour segment that provided them with the opportunity to
ultimately assume responsibility for a classroom of their own.
The semester-long 300-hour practicum is an extended student teach-
ing experience in one classroom with guided supervision from Wheelock
faculty and under the auspices of a selected cooperating teacher. Angela
was assigned to a kindergarten classroom with a cooperating teacher who
was a 'Wheelock graduate. Over the course of the placement, Angela
assumed increasing responsibility for planning and managing the class-
room until she was fully in charge of the work.
During the practicum, her Wheelock supervisor, who was a tenured fac-
ulty member, visited her five times. During each visit, there was a three-way
pre-conference involving Angela, the cooperating teacher, and the supervi-
sor. This was followed by a 60-minute observation by the supervisor, fol-
lowed by a 1 1/2 hour evening post-conference between Angela and the
supervisor. This close supervision was personalized even further when
Angela joined other practicum students for a four-hour combined seminar
and curriculum class that was team-taught at the College.
83
96 WHEELOCK COLLEGE /
Angela kept a reflective journal
As part of the practicum and seminar,
The interaction that the
that her supervisor read and commented on.
her thinking and come up with
journal provided helped Angela clarify
Angela particularly remem-
appropriate responses to difficult situations.
about how to discipline children.
bered a problem she had with thinking
In her journal, she had written,
opportunity to spend the
Every Thursday, I have been given the
This has given me
morning in another kindergarten classroom.
teaching
the opportunity to see the difference in class structure,
look at every child as hav-
styles, as well as discipline. Though I
class has a range of students
ing special needs, this kindergarten
with noticeable special needs, including Down's Syndrome,
Even though I can in no
autism, and severe behavior problems.
the discipline taken in
way compare this classroom to my own,
My first day here I wit-
the other classroom is really different.
for hitting a boy in
nessed a child being dragged out of a class
there in shock over
the face and making his nose bleed. I sat
make [a] false
how the behavior was treated. I do not want to
judgment because I have not been in the class long enough to
this one class has so many
do so. What I wonder about is why
issues. I would think
issues to deal with, while mine has minor
in one
that instead of putting all these special needs children
would
classroom, they would be shared among the classes. That
make more of a balance.
thoughtful comments in the mar-
Angela's supervisor responded with
knowledge and definition of
gins. She wrote: "You are expanding your
"How would you have dealt
inclusive classroom." And then she queried:
with the situation?" Angela replied,
when I first entered the
I would have set limits a long time ago,
exist in my classroom.
class. I would not allow such behavior to
of them
The children will know in advance what is expected
and what will not be tolerated.
The supervisor asked for more detail:
dARATION IN THE UNDERCRADUTE YEARS
84 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE:
What percentage of the class represents children with special
needs? Did you ask the teacher what she was trying to accom-
plish? Did you talk about this to your practicing teacher? Are
you aware of how the school groups children in classes?
This quality of back-and-forth interaction between Angela and her super-
visor continued for the duration of the practicum. It is characteristic of the
interactions that occurred throughout all of her field experiences. Angela
credits these conversations with providing the challenge and support she
needed to become aware of school-wide issues. They also helped her develop
the habit of focusing on what she could do to make her own practice better.
In addition to the journaling, Angela was expected to prepare detailed
lesson plans and to share them with her supervisor, cooperating teacher,
and fellow classmates for feedback and critique. Each plan had to include
activity information, purpose and rationale, main ideas and concepts,
learning objectives, necessary space, materials, resources, and procedures
to be followed. Angela considered the development of these plans to be a
tool that she carried with her into her first teaching assignment.
As a result of the practicum/seminar combination, Angela assimilated
the Wheelock Way from a variety of sources: her cooperating teacher, her
supervisor, and her peers. From her cooperating teacher, she acknowl-
edged learning to listen more and talk less, to manage children's behavior,
to use outside resources (especially parents), to build curriculum, to bal-
ance student needs and teacher planning, and to focus on the needs and
interests of individuals. Angela especially appreciated having a Wheelock
graduate as her mentor and model. "It was encouraging to see a Wheelock
grad and what she can do. It made me feel that I can do it too, that here
is the kind of teacher that I have the potential to become," she said.
Angela credited her college supervisor with imbuing her with a sense of
professionalism, remaining child-centered, focusing on the diversity of
the classroom, and getting her into the habit of reflecting critically on her
work and figuring out how to make it better. She checked in with her
supervisor regularly and often called her at home. Angela also learned the
value of collegial interaction from her practicum/seminar. She found that
meeting every week with a group of people who were experiencing the
same things she was and being expected to talk with them about common
issues was an important part of her formation as a teacher:
98 WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 85
My classmates were very supportive and I learned a lot from
them. It's important to have at least someone you can talk to
other than your family. I've learned to look for one person I can
share with in my school.
By the end of the 300-hour practicum, Angela believed she had truly
learned the Wheelock Way. The 150-hour practicum and accompanying
seminar and course in inclusive education working with pre-K children
further deepened her beliefs and helped her define her thinking and her
practice, as did discussions in the capstone course, taken the last semester
of her senior year. Angela, like her classmates, entered the second
practicum having already made the shift from student to professional. She
learned to be a peer evaluator and teacher researcheralways looking
carefully at her own practice.
As she prepared to graduate, she felt she could explain and demonstrate
what it meant to be a Wheelock teacher. After four years, Angela could
explain the Wheelock Way as having the following dimensions:
Learning from one's students and developing curriculum from Icnowl,
edge of students, families, and cultures.
Using resources to follow-up on children's interests, scrounging the
community for these resources.
Constructing curriculum as interests and needs emerge; being flexible,
responsive, and resourceful.
Knowing how to observe and listen to children.
Being sensitive to diversity and knowing how to teach multiculturally.
Being professional all the time.
Integrating curriculum across disciplines, using themes and projects to
teach content.
Being comfortable about advocating for inclusion.
Identifying and working on student strengths.
Working hard, planning well, researching thoroughly.
As she approached graduation, Angela said she felt ready to teach:
I knew I was ready for my own classroom. I knew I could go
into any school and teach well. Because I was taught to be artic-
ulate about where I came from, it's a lot easier. The philosophy
86 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PRErrnON IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
qj
was so much a part of who I was that I didn't even realize it.
What I learned was not how to do reading and math, but how
to articulate my beliefs, how to find the resources to build a cur-
riculum, and how to stand for something. I compare myself to
friends who went somewhere else. I honestly think I can do
what's required and more.
One of Angela's classmates summed up her experience by writing,
"Wheelock College was the best possible place I could have attended. I
feel more prepared than most of my colleagues who went other places,
especially when it comes to teaching students from backgrounds that are
different from my own."
Results from a survey (Silvernail, 1997) of graduates of the seven exem-
plary teacher education programs included in the National Center for
Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching (NCREST) study sup-
port the views of Angela and her cohorts about the level of preparedness
they felt they had acquired at Wheelock. The survey collected data from
the graduates of the seven programs that NCREST identified and their
employers and compared them to a representative sample of non-
NCREST identified programs. As mentioned earlier, nine out of 10
Wheelock graduates reported that they thought Wheelock had prepared
them well or very well in understanding how children learn and develop,
and an equal number felt prepared to- develop curricula and instruction
that builds on students' background, experiences, and abilities.
Table 1 reports other views of Wheelock graduates. The survey results
also indicate that almost 90 percent said they learned how to use instruc-
tional strategies to promote active student learning and to help students
think critically. Approximately four out of five graduates believed
Wheelock had prepared them to set challenging and appropriate expecta-
tions of learning, and to help all.students achieve high academic success.
In addition, four out of five agreed that they were prepared to evaluate the
effects of their actions, to modify plans accordingly, and to conduct
research that informs their decisions. Finally, 85 percent stated that they
believed that Wheelock prepared them to teach students from a multi-
cultural perspective. This is particularly significant when one considers
the views of graduates of other teacher education programs (comparison
group), where only a little over one-half of those questioned thought they
100 WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 87
had been prepared to teach multiculturally.
The survey asked Wheelock graduates about many other aspects of
their teacher preparation program. With the exception of technology
training, the oeverwhelming majority of Wheelock teachers feel well pre-
pared. Overall, they were more than twice as likely as the national sample
to say they felt very well prepared for teaching.
REFLECTING ON THE UNDERGRADUATE
STUDENT PERSPECTIVE
Angela's story presents a description of a four-year process that shaped
her and her classmates as teachers. Angela entered Wheelock with a com-
mitment to teaching and a love of children. By her own account and those
of her peers, she left with much more: an appreciation of the complexity of
teaching, an understanding of her own strengths and weaknesses, a strong
knowledge base in content and pedagogy, solid classroom experience, infor-
mation about resources and how to get them, respect for diversity, knowl-
edge about children, their families, and their communities, and the capac-
ity to ask questions, build curricula, and solve problems as needs emerge.
Unlike more selective programs that screen for "the best and the bright-
est" in academic terms, the Wheelock experience screens for commitment
to children and a willingness to learn. The college takes as its task the
transformation of potentially good caregivers into competent and knowl-
edgeable professionals. It does this by-transmitting a clear message about
purpose and principles. The program is grounded in themes of a devel-
opmental perspective, multicultural sensitivity, inclusive practice, family
and community connections, and reflection and inquiry. The process of
transformation is deliberate, intense, and comprehensive.
What is it about the Wheelock approach that works? How are students
transformed into teachers over the course of four years? From Angela's
point of view, we can identify seven characteristics of her undergraduate
education that combined to prepare her to teach in the Wheelock Way:
There was a match between AngelA personal goals and the mission of
the college. Angela was certain when she graduated from high school that she
wanted to prepare to be a teacher. She chose Wheelock because it advertises
itself as a place where the care and education of children is primary. As noted
earlier, the college mission statement dearly and unequivocally places improve-
ment of the lives of children and families at the center of its agenda. For
101
88 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
Angela, this was a refreshing change from the other colleges she considered,
where the teaching profession was not so highly and explicitly promoted. As
one faculty member remarked about Wheelock, "We value what is not valued
in the world." As a high school senior, Angela sensed that who she was and
what she wanted to be was valued at Wheelock; she was not disappointed.
Angela experienced an integrated and coherent educational pro-
gram. The Wheelock program is structured to ensure that its students
understand and experience an explicit connection between learning to
become a liberally educated adult and learning to become a teacher. The
interdisciplinary major provides a model on the college level for what
Wheelock expects on the primary level: the integration of disciplines in a
coherent program of study. From Angela's perspective, the study of peda-
gogy was not disconnected from the study of liberal arts. She was encour-
aged to view all of her classes as laboratories for learning about teaching.
Her study of pedagogy was not limited to her courses in education. She was
encouraged to study pedagogy everywhere she found itin her courses,
her field experiences, and her formal professional preparation. Theory and
practice, content and process, academics and application were all intrinsi-
cally interwoven for Angela throughout her four years at Wheelock.
There was consistent modeling of good practice. Angela deemed her-
self fortunate that she was a witness to good teaching as a student at
Wheelock. She did not experience the disconnection of many education
students elsewhere, as she said: "My, friends at other places complain that
their teachers only lecture." At Wheelock, Angela experienced lectures, but
she also spent time in group projects, field placements, seminars, hands-on
design and construction, critical oral and written dialogue, independent
and collaborative research, and applications of theory to practice. She com-
mented on the time and effort her instructors put into their teaching and
how hard she had to work to fulfill their expectations. She had multiple
opportunities to experience team teaching and came to understand the
benefits of team planning and collegial work. She, in short, learned to teach
in the Wheelock Way by being taught in the Wheelock Way.
There was early, appropriate, and continuous access to challenging
field placements. When Angela entered Wheelock, she was eager to
begin her work with children. The college's program satisfied that desire
and she was immediately placed in an after-school program with young
adolescents. She commented later that she was pleased that she "didn't
WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 89
102
have to wait to work with kids." She could begin immediately preparing
for what she saw as her life's work.
Her field placements were highly structured and sequenced over the
course of her program. They were designed to introduce her to diverse
populations and to challenge her beliefs and assumptions while offering
support for growth and learning. All were coordinated with coursework
and closely supervised by full-time Wheelock faculty. There was no tradi-
tional "front-loading" of courses, no disconnected stint as a student
teacher. All of the placements, from early involvement in coursework
requirements to a full semester of classroom practice, were organized and
assigned by a separate office of field placement. Angela received a clear
message that field experiences were important and that the college spent
time and resources on their design and implementation.
Angela experienced a highly personalized and personal education.
The accessibility and concern of faculty was an ongoing source of support
for Angela and her peers. Wheelock faculty not only held regular and
extended office hours but they also posted their home phone numbers for
students and expected them to call when they needed advice or counsel.
Instructors knew all students by name and could comment on their
strengths and the areas that they needed to improve upon. Relationships
were central to instruction. Whether in classes or field placements, Angela
felt that her teachers knew her well and cared about her as a person and
as a professional. Much of the interaction that occurred was between a
teacher and an individual student. Responsive journals, individual con-
ferences, and one-on-one conversations in class were all ways that Angela
connected with her teachers and they with her.
There was equal emphasis on acquiring knowledge and on accessing
knowledge and resources. Angela often commented on how demanding
she found the coursework at Wheelock, especially the expectations about
writing. She was acutely aware that she was expected to acquire knowledge
about her content area, about children, and about how to teach. But she
was also aware that she could not know everything that she needed before
she began each new lesson or unit. Wheelock taught her that while having
content knowledge was important, it was not sufficient. She had to learn
to find and use resources as well. She felt that in her coursework and in her
placements, she was encouraged to scour the neighborhood, hunt down
resources, and use them in the interests of her students.
103
90 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
Angela knew what kind of teacher Wheelock wanted her to become.
The notion of the Wheelock Way is taken very seriously on campus.
Angela referred to it as a unifying theme of her four years at the college.
Earlier, we explained what Angela meant by the term. She saw it enacted
faculty, and in her field place-
in her coursework, in her interactions with
and super-
ments. She heard it talked about by the president, her teachers
visors, and by Wheelock graduates. She saw it in print in college publica-
tions. Angela learned early on that the college stands for somethingnot
and families but for a
only for the improvements of the lives of children
best taught. Her edu-
particular perspective on how children learn and are
judgment about good
cation was not based on relativism; it was based on a
teaching that is commonly held and commonly taught at the college.
BEYOND THE UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE:
LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCES AND
GRADUATE STUDY
Upon graduating, Angela had two options. She could seek employ-
all teach-
ment or she could enter a master's program. In Massachusetts,
ers need to earn a master's degree within five years of initial certification.
graduate work until she
Angela decided to enter teaching and to postpone
had more experience. She was successful in
securing a kindergarten posi-
tion at a local urban elementary school with a diverse student population.
with colleges and
The principal who hired her had substantial experience
universities in the area and commented,
If Wheelock College is part of someone's background, I put the
application at the top of the pile. I've been connected with
Wheelock since 1974 and what has always impressed me is the
quality of the teaching. Wheelock is rooted in what it means to
be looking at early childhood education from a developmental
perspective and to build a program from that.
the Wheelock pro-
The principal acknowledged that there were parts of
technology education,
gram he would like to see strengthened: notably
about the sociology
the recruitment of more minority students, learning
Nevertheless, he con-
of the school, and how to be an agent for change.
of the best early child-
tinues to believe that Wheelock graduates are some
104 WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 91
hood teachers he can hire. The principal was true to his word. Among his
staff were four Wheelock alumni; Angela increased that number to five.
Angela's experience of being hired immediately after graduation is the
norm rather than the exception for Wheelock graduates.
Wheelock placement office data report that, "Within six months of
graduation, 93.8% of our B.S. graduates seeking employment were work-
ing. Of that pool, 92.7% were employed within the field of teaching,
social service, child life, or other related positions" (Axelrod, Geraty, and
Gora, 1995).
Evidence from the survey of recent graduates indicated that approxi-
mately two-thirds of these Wheelock alumni are working in public ele-
mentary, middle and secondary schools, and over 40 percent are working
in urban settings (Axelrod, Geraty, and Gora, 1995).
By the middle of her first year of teaching, Angela had created a kinder-
garten class that reflected her commitment to "create a culture that sup-
ports each student." Her room was very spacious, and she used the space
in a variety of ways. Work tables were distributed throughout the room
for small group and individual projects. She had designated learning areas
for block building, listening to tapes, reading big books, writing, dress-up,
arts, computers, and science/animals. There was a large carpeted area for
morning meeting and whole-group instruction. She had recently installed
a sand table in the arts center. Along the top of the wall was a streamer
with the letters of the alphabet. Throughout the room posters with say-
ings such as, "This room is your room," and "Treating children equally is
not teaching each child the same; it is giving each child what he or she
needs", and "Children have great expectations and so should we."
Angela began each day on the carpet with a calendar activity and a
guessing game. The children would sit quietly in a circle as she introduced
the activities for the day. She often used student-created objects as the
basis for discussion and would carefully balance student-selection with
teacher direction for assignment to the learning areas. She made it a point
to call on children by saying something special about them. For example,
she would say, "This person has a sister named Josie," or "This person has
a brother in the school," or "This person just had a birthday."
Throughout the day, Angela maintained her enthusiasm about what
she taught and the children she taught. She planned for large-group,
small-group, and individual work. She would demonstrate numbers by
92 / STUDIES OF EXCELLEN In
: i'IR. ARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
having the children count off quantities of food. She would teach science
by having children observe the classroom pets. She rarely seemed ruffled,
kept a watchful eye on each student, and took time to interact with each
child in the class individually. She made it a special point to acknowledge
children's achievements: "I was so surprised that Teddy would make a
book. He usually learns through play. I made sure to celebrate his book
with him and his family. I didn't want to overlook his accomplishment.
Angela made every effort to involve parents and community members
as resources for her classroom. She had parents come in and read with
children and share their special knowledge. One afternoon, she invited a
parent who was a carpenter to show the children how he built a puppet
theater for them. The children sat rapt as Molly's father measured and cut
the wood, planned his next steps, and talked out loud about what he was
doing. Angela was delighted with the result:
This was important for the class and for Molly. The class got to
see hOw math is used in everyday life on the job, and Molly got
to see how important her dad is. She tends to be very shy, but
she spoke out confidently about what he was doing. She saw
that she can make a contribution and that she can be a leader.
Angela credited her preparation at Wheelock for helping her become
the teacher she is. She believed that Wheelock gave her the knowledge
and confidence to construct the kind of classroom she believed in. She
referred to the concept of learner-centered, family-focused, community-
based education she had learned at Wheelock and felt that she was just
now understanding its importance and its impact.
At the end of that first year of teaching, Angela began to plan her strat-
egy for earning a master's degree. Angela was motivated by more than
state mandates. She felt a need to continue her education because she
wanted to get better at teaching: "Wheelock kept telling us to be life-long
learners and that is what I am." She decided to complete one more year
of teaching "to get some more experience under my belt" and then return
to Wheelock as a part-time graduate student.
Similar to many of the early childhood graduates interviewed for this
study, Angela felt the need to expand her teaching repertoire to include
the intermediate grades. She wanted to learn more about teaching in
.1, 6 WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 93
grades four through six, so that she would have more teaching options as
well as a greater understanding of the whole elementary school experi-
ence. She was particularly interested in learning more about literacy devel-
opment, from its emergent stages in kindergarten through its applications
in the later grades.
Since she intended to complete her studies while she continued to
teach, Angela's optiOns were limited. She could not enroll in the graduate
school's internship program through the Learning Teaching
Collaborative. This program, based on a professional development school
model, requires full-time matriculation and is geared more to liberal arts
graduates with some life experience than to recent undergraduates with
an education degree. Angela chose instead to enroll in the elementary
teacher (grades 1-6) program that leads to standard certification. Angela
was very clear about what she needed to learn next:
I felt I needed to know more specific techniques. In undergrad,
I learned how to understand children and their learning and
how to construct curriculum based on their needs. Now I want-
ed to learn more about teaching in the content areas of reading
and writing that were not so much a focus in undergraduate. I
felt that Wheelock gave me a toolbox. Now I wanted to fill it
with some new tools.
These feelings were echoed by other recent graduates in early childhood
education who chose the elementary teacher graduate program. One
graduate student explained,
I wanted to expand my learning, to take what I learned from my
undergraduate program at Wheelock and make it even better
through my graduate program, to extend my learning. I feel
that I had the building blocks for teaching and that I had to find
what I needed to go higher.
Others added,
I needed to know more about math and literacy, especially early
literacy, and all levels of math. I also needed to do some work in
1 0 -7
94 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERCRADUTE YEARS
English as a second language. I had several Vietnamese students
in the past few years and while I learned a lot about how to see
students whole in the undergrad program, I found I needed
more specific skills to meet my student needs.
I wanted to know how to integrate what my school requires and
the Wheelock Way. I realized that I was not as strong as I'd like
to be in the content areasmath and science in particular. I
knew how to garner resources, but I needed to know more
about content than I did.
As a Wheelock alumna entering the graduate division, Angela felt
immediately at home with the norms and values of her new program. The
themes of developmentalism, multiculturalism, connections with families
and communities, inclusive educational practice, and reflection and
inquiry that so dominated her undergraduate preparation were reiterated
and reinforced in the graduate program.
The Wheelock College graduate catalog used language that was: famil-
iar to her and re-emphasized the developmental foundation of the college.
It states:
The mission of Wheelock College, the improvement of the
quality of life for children and their families, inspires an honor-
able calling to the human services professions . . . A develop-
mental perspective informs the. structure and programs of the
Wheelock Graduate School (1995-96).
This developmental perspective is represented in the three-credit-hour
requirement for study of human development. Courses in child development
(the middle years), lifespan development (conception through adolescence),
for the mas-
and children's cognitive development are options for candidates
ter's degree in elementary education. Since she was a human development
petition for a
major as an undergraduate, Angela had the opportunity to
her privilege. Since one of her
course substitution. She decided not to use
goals in graduate work was to expand her knowledge beyond
the primary
This
years, she chose to enroll in Child Development: The Middle Years.
course promised to fill some of the gaps in her undergraduate experience.
108 WHEELOCK COLLEGE i 95
the content of the
The multicultural emphasis was made explicit in
human development course as well as in the general life of the graduate
program. The Wheelock graduate catalog states,
Every individual's distinct social and cultural circumstance refines
and enriches the scholarship and professional programs designed
Each
to address issues of human development and education.
well
program involves the study of development and learning, as
includes
as a critical consideration of existing knowledge. This
reevaluation of the historical and contemporary significance of
race, culture, and gender. (Wheelock, 1996)
The elementary teacher program requires at least one additional course
in the area of multicultural education. Angela selected Multicultural
Diversity. She
Children's Literature: Encountering and Understanding
enjoyed this course and felt that it helped her understand the growing
number of children of color who were enrolling in her district and how
in
to reach them through a variety of genres. Another required course
learning and teaching also emphasized the frameworks for understanding
children from a multicultural perspective.
The theme of families, community, and inclusion also are emphasized
"Emphasis is
in the elementary teacher program. The catalog states,
placed on a commitment to equity in a multiracial and multicultural soci-
partici-
ety, in working partnership with families, enabling all children to
pate fully in the learning environment, and collaboration with commu-
nity agencies (Wheelock, 1996)."
Two courses are required in these areas. The first is Curriculum Design
for Inclusive Elementary Education Program. It is designed to:
Provide the opportunity for students to develop and evaluate
inclusive environments for students. This course emphasizes
meeting the needs of all children through an integrated approach
to planning, implementing, and assessing instruction in all areas;
developing Individual Education Plans and promoting collabo-
ration among families, school, and communities. Service delivery
systems and transitions between programs are reviewed in rela-
tion to curriculum. (ED604B Course Syllabus)
(sr ()
PK% OF FYCF.I.I.ENCEINAONIVATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
The second course, Impact of Special Needs on Learning and
Development: The Middle Years, focuses on moderate handicapping con-
ditions and their implications for children age six to 12. As in the other
course, there is considerable emphasis on strategies for working with serv-
ice-delivery agencies and with parents and communities.
Finally, the theme of reflection and inquiry is woven throughout the grad-
uate experience. The catalogue is quite explicit about the division's commit-
ment to these practices, "The Graduate School programs emphasize the inter-
action of theory and practice, and the successful application of knowledge and
competence in the professional domain. Students acquire critical thinking
skills, which are fundamental to lifelong learning (Wheelock, 1996)."
These skills are integrated into all coursework through the use of jour-
nals, case studies, and other reflective tools. In addition, there are two
required courses dedicated to the development of a critical and reflective
perspective. All students are required to take a research course. They are
also expected to complete a clinical practicum that is offered in tandem
with a reflective seminar.
Angela elected to take a research course that focused on literacy develop-
her
ment, an area she had identified as a high priority at the beginning of
program. As a requirement of the course, she completed a research paper on
a question derived from her classroom practice. She wanted to know: How
do kindergartners use visual representation as an early form of literacy to
the
express their feelings? She collected data in her classroom, read widely in
field of early literacy development, met in' a small cluster group of students
with common interests, and produced a paper that she hoped to publish.
Angela is halfway through her graduate program; ahead of her lie four
elective courses and the final practicum and reflective seminar. Through her
electives, Angela will be able to pursue her interest in the teaching of liter-
Writing;
acy, K-6, by taking courses such as Assessment of Reading and
Content Area Reading and Writing; A Thousand Doors: Learning and
Teaching Throughout the Arts; and Creative Dramatics. Her final
practicum will involve her in another supervised teaching internship that is
accompanied by a seminar designed to help her to "process her teaching
experiences, problem solve with others, and analyze the roles of the teacher
in schools and communities" (ED6745 Course Syllabus).
Appendix B shows the graduate program that Angela is in the process
of completing. To her mind, these 39 credits of graduate study "are put-
WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 97
and
ting the finishing touches on an excellent undergraduate experience
helping me become the kind of teacher I dreamed of becoming when I
first entered Wheelock over seven years ago.
THE INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE
than the compos-
There is more to Wheelock's teacher education program
time on campus and the
ite profile of Angela reveals. Because of her limited
Angela could not see the
unique lens through which she viewed the college,
institution in the long term; nor could she see it as a whole. Every institution
has a "pre-history" as well as a set of "institutional regularities"
(Sarason, 1996)
that distinguish it as a culture. Interviews with faculty and administration pro-
and how it adapted
vided insight into Wheelock's culture, how it developed,
Wheelock culture
over time. Below, we examine three salient features of the
education and care.
and how it influences the programs in early childhood
point of the fac-
Core Values and Mission. Viewed from the vantage
institution that
ulty and administration, Wheelock is a tradition-rich
values, beliefs, and
adapts to changing demands without violating its core
founder. Over a
norms. These core values are found in the writing of its
century ago, Lucy Wheelock wrote:
The only thing that makes life worth living is to serve a cause,
and the greatest cause that can be served is childhood education.
It gives to every human being the power of perception and
appreciation, and in serving the best interests of the individual,
we serve the greatest good of mankind. (Wheelock, n.d.)
the same senti-
Today, Wheelock's president, Marjorie Bakken, voices
children. These
ment when she says, 'America's future depends on its
and the
children and their families deserve the knowledgeable support
educat-
hopeful spirit of caring professionals. Wheelock's commitment to
1994).
ing these professionals is the foundation of all our work" (Bakken,
The clarity of mission and unwavering commitment of Wheelock was
Colleges visit-
apparent to the New England Association of Schools and
ing committee. In its report, the committee wrote:
From the first day of its charter it has existed to improve the
is
quality of life for children and their families, and that mission
IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
98 / STUDIES OF EXCELLAislcCIAEPARATION
universally seen as identical to the vision with which Lucy
Wheelock founded the College in 1888. The Board of Trustees,
faculty, staff, and administration all know the mission and
overtly attempt to measure each institutional action against its
clear, concise and consistent standard. Faculty Senate members
spontaneously named the mission as the best thing about work-
ing at Wheelock. The Academic Council described the orienta-
tion of new community members to the mission as an activity
equal or even superior to construction of the annual budget as
it works out its agenda from year to year. (NEASC, 1995)
Although Wheelock's mission is published in all the usual and right places,
in addition it informs the community so deeply that the team could not find
any faculty member, administrator, staff member or student who did not
know exactly what Wheelock is abo-utr. Individuals refer often and in a heart-
felt manner to the mission; it even was described in one conversation as a
mantra. It would be hard to imagine a deeper or more consistent fidelity by
any institution to a more universal or clearly defined area of action.
The human development perspective. Closely related to the mission of
the college is the foundation position of human development in its ideology.
The president of the college is clear that "at the heart of the college is the Lucy
Wheelock legacya developmental interactive point of view in which every-
thing grows from the child." She refers to other prominent theorists whose
work has influenced Wheelock over time, including. Betty Ann Little, Evelyn
Weber, Margery Franklin, Barbara Biber, and Edna Shapiro, and concludes,
Methods are not so important as children are. Betty Ann Little
didn't believe in courses. Today at Wheelock, the eight credit-
hour experience in human development is the professional core
of all of our programs. Understanding methods is secondary to
understanding children (Bakken, 1994).
A long-time faculty member amplifies this position and explains,
Methods are not at the center. A conscious decision was made
to de-emphasize methods courses. We want Wheelock teachers
to be strategic thinkers and planners who can understand the
WHEELOCK COLLEGE. / 99
subject to be taught, understand what a child knows, have a
clear idea of what a child needs to know, figure out what a child
doesn't know, and develop strategies to move a child from where
she is to where she needs to be.
The concept of strategic teaching is widely shared across the college.
Another faculty member states,
Once a teacher knows her students well, she can use resources
and materials to teach them what the need to know. A good
teacher learns to choose from a range of strategies, traditions,
and resources to teach children what they need to know. A good
teacher looks at the children and then pulls in the material the
child will use and enjoy.
As indicated earlier in this chapter, the human development perspec-
tive is central to a Wheelock education. It is clearly understood by stu-
dents because they hear it articulated and see it practiced in every aspect
of their education. It is at the core of the Wheelock tradition and is the
consistent and unambiguous theme of a Wheelock experience.
This is not to say that the human development perspective has remained
static from the time of Lucy Wheelock. To the contrary, it has been modi-
fied and adapted to meet the needs of a more complex and multicultural
society. The faculty and administration take seriously their
commitment to
urban children and their families. They have expanded on the traditional
framing of human development as an individual unfolding of abilities and
interests and have added considerations of culture, inclusion, and diversity.
The human development perspective at Wheelock values the influence of
families and communities on individual growth, development, and identi-
ty formation. As the undergraduate dean explains,
Education is more than cognitive development. The paradigm
has shifted to include social, emotional, and affective issues as
well. We have to consider race, class, and identity. Bourdieu's
cultural capital helps us have conversations that we need to have
about privilege.
113
Wheelock's expanded concept of human development has four related
components: the traditional notions on which the college was founded,
the new attention to family and community, an understanding of cultur-
al identity and privilege, and advocacy for full inclusion of diverse learn-
ers. Students in the college, as indicated earlier in this chapter, refer to this
concept as child-centered, family-focused, and community-based. This
phrase is quickly becoming the new mantra of the college.
The primacy of teaching and its connection to idealism. Teaching
is at the center of the college. It is viewed as more important than tradi-
tional research and is deeply connected with the idea of service. Decisions
about hiring, retention, promotion, and tenure all hinge on one's ability
as a teacher; these abilities are widely understood. Discourse about teach-
ing is pervasive. As the undergraduate dean explains, "The entire college
is engaged in constant conversation about teaching. We strive to model
teaching that integrates cognition and emotion. We just discussed this at
our last faculty meeting. We stress instruction that is appropriate, active
and problem-oriented."
At Wheelock, teaching rarely occurs in private. Team planning and
team teaching are the norm, in both liberal arts and professional courses.
Faculty plan together, teach together, and assess students together. They
are in the habit of asking for and receiving feedback and critique from
their peers and of holding their teaching practice up to close examination
and scrutiny. As one faculty member states, "Here you can't get by with
being 'good enough'. The goal is to be excellent, and you judge yourself
harshly if you fall short of that goal."
Evaluation of teaching performance occurs frequently and is taken seri-
ously by administration and faculty.
Significantly, Wheelock draws its faculty from among the ranks of experi-
enced K-12 teachers. It does not seek to hire people who recently received a
doctorate, no matter how impressive, unless they bring with them a distin-
guished teaching history. Traditionally, the college offers tenure-track con-
tracts to those individuals who have taught at the college previously on a part-
time or temporary basis. Tenured faculty are in the minority at the college,
and tenure is not granted generously. Faculty are paid salaries that are well
below those at other local institutions, and their workload is significantly
higher. Yet, the faculty at Wheelock are enthusiastic, dedicated to the institu-
tion, and deeply committed to their students and to the Wheelock Way.
114 WOEELOCK COLLEGE / 101
This phenomenon is accounted for, in part, by the kind of faculty that
Wheelock attracts and the views they have of themselves as teachers and
as social agents. In their interviews, Wheelock faculty consistently referred
to their work as a "calling" or "vocation" or "mission." Such a view of
teaching goes beyond professionalism; it is a form of idealism that is
linked to principled social action. The undergraduate dean models these
qualities by her involvement in the Boston -school reform initiative and
her explicit concerns about equity and justice. Faculty demonstrate their
commitment by involvement in projects that extend beyond their work
at Wheelock. Large proportions of faculty have a history of engagement
in the civil rights and advocacy movements of the last decades. Most
recently, they have embraced the concepts of full inclusion and multicul-
turalism. These commitments are not perfunctory; they appear to be deep
and to pervade the work of the faculty.
A case in point is the degree of involvement that the faculty, adminis-
trators, trustees, and alumni demonstrated and supported for the Stand
for Children march in Washington in spring 1996. While neighboring
colleges had responses that ranged from disinterest to sporadic support, at
Wheelock the Stand for Children campaign captured the attention of the
entire campus. Banners and posters were displayed from windows in
classroom and administration buildings, and from dormitories: Seminars
and symposia were held, and the college arranged for buses to transport
students and faculty to the march, funded in part by alumni and trustees.
The role of faculty in the campaign was central to its success at Wheelock.
This kind of involvement was considered normative. A faculty member,
long committed to social causes, describes the distinctiveness of the
Wheelock faculty this way:
I was once considered odd. Now I'm part of a faculty commit-
ted to social idealism. We really believe that teaching can change
the worldchild by child. I am no longer the only person in a
setting who is committed to developing a fully inclusive and
multicultural and just society.
115
CONCLUDING REMARKS
We began this chapter with the question, "Why is Wheelock College
so successful in preparing teachers?" We end with a deep appreciation of
Wheelock College as a strongly centered institution where student aims,
organizational mission, and faculty values come together in reciprocally
enriching ways. What makes Wheelock successful is not so much what it
does as what it is. Wheelock is a dynamic culture, grounded in a rich tra-
dition, that encourage diversity and is capable of adapting to change with-
out losing its integrity. It sends an unambiguous message to its students
about what a teacher knows, how a teacher acts, and what a teacher is
obligated to do on behalf of all her students and their learning. This mes-
sage is not limited to the undergraduate Early Childhood and Care
Program nor to the master's degree in elementary teacher education. It
permeates both the undergraduate and graduate divisions of the college.
The dean of the graduate division is describing the entire institution when
he says,
What distinguishes us is our common purpose, our belief that
we are here to do the best for children, families and communi-
ties. What holds us together is our single focus, the preparation
of professionals who will fulfill the college's mission. Our beliefs
run deep. They are not only what we teach in classes. They are
what we live in the life of the college.
116
WHEELOCK COLLEGE / 103
REFERENCES
Axelrod, A., Geraty, T, & Gora, D. (1995). Alumni survey: 1990 and 1992
Wheelock graduates. Career Planning and Placement Office. Boston: Wheelock
College.
Bakken, M. (1994). Inaugural address. Boston: Wheelock College.
Cheevers, D. (1988). Wheelock's message and its people. In Wheelock College
(Ed.), Wheelock College 100 Years: 1888/89-1988/89. (pps. 3-10). Boston:
Wheelock College.
New England Association of Schools and Colleges. (1995). NEASC Visiting
Committee/ Evaluation Team report to the faculty administrators, trustees, and stu-
dents of Wheelock College. Unpublished report, Wheelock College.
Sarason, S. (1996). Revisiting the culture of the school and the problem of change.
New York: Teachers College Press.
Silvernail, D. (1997). Results from surveys of graduates of exemplary teacher education
programs and the employees of their graduates: Wheelock College Report. Gorham,
Maine: Center for Educational Policy, Applied Research, and Evaluation.
Wheelock College. (1995-96). Undergraduate catalog. Boston: Wheelock College.
Wheelock College. (1995-96). Graduate catalog. Boston: Wheelock College.
Wheelock College course syllabi:
PRO 120: Children and Their Environment
HD 202-03: Human Growth and Development
ED 443: Curriculum Development for Inclusive Early Childhood Settings
ED 445: 300-Hour Practicum
ED 243: Multicultural Teaching and Learning Strategies
ED 604B: Curriculum Design for Inclusive Elementary Education Programs
ED 6763: Impact of Special Needs on Learning and Development
ED 6745: Reflective Seminar
Wheelock, L. (n.d.). My life story. Unpublished autobiography, Wheelock College.
117
104 / STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS
APPENDIX A: EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND
EDUCATION PROGRAM OF STUDY
College Requirements 26 credits in required courses
Distribution Requirements . . . . 32 credits in arts, humanities, and
natural sciences, mathematics, social
science, and multiculturalism
Major 32 credits in one of four majors: arts,
human development, humanities,
mathematics/science
Professional Studies Program. . . 36 credits including individual
courses in:
Basic principles of early childhood
Literacy and numeracy
Multicultural teaching
Assessment of young children
Integrated core of:
Inclusive child care education
Seminar
450 -hour practicum
Capstone
Elective 8 credits in any discipline
118
WIIFFLOC.K COLLEGF. / 105
APPENDIX B: MASTER'S IN ELEMENTARY
EDUCATION (ANGELA'S PROGRAM)
Degree: Master of Science
Certification: . 1-6 standard
Total Credits: . 39
Core Courses (9 credits required)
Human Development Elective (3 credits required)
HD 504 . . . . Child Development: The Middle Years (3)
Multicultural Elective (3 credits required)
ED 638 Multicultural Children's Literature: Encountering and
Understanding Diversity (3)
Research Elective (3 credits required)
ED 722 Research in Literacy Development: Reading and
Writing (3)
Department Courses (1 credit required)
ED 599 Professional Seminar (1)
Specialty or Elective Courses (12 credits required)
ED 642A . . . Assessment of Reading and Writing (3)
ED 643A . . Content Area Reading and Writing (3)
ED 629 A Thousand Doors: Learning and Teaching Through
the Arts (3)
ED 633 Creative Dramatics (3)
Standard Certificate Core (17 credits required)
ED 559 Teaching and Learning (3)
ED 6763. . . Impact of Special Needs on Learning and
Development: The Middle Years (3)
ED 604B . . . Curriculum Design for Elementary Education
ED 6765. . . . Clinical Experience 1-6 (3)
ED 6745. . . . Reflective Seminar (3)
119
TABLE 1: WHEELOCK GRADUATES'
PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHER PREPARATION
Research Group Comparison Group
A. Program Characteristics
(N =159) (N =420)
Percent Percent
Well or Not at all Adequately Well or
Not at all Adequately
How well do you think your very well or poorly very well
or poorly
teacher preparation prepared you
to do this?
10. Understand how students' 94 7 19 74
1 5
social, emotional, physical,
and cognitive development
influences learning.
26. Understand how factors in 9 19 72
3 8 89
the students' environment
outside of school may influ-
ence their life and learning.
8. Use instructional strategies 8 90 5 17 78
that promote active student
learning.
23. Help students learn to think 82 9 29 62
2 16
critically and solve problems.
3. Set challenging and appropri- 84 8 27 65
2 14
ate expectations of learning
and performance for students.
4. Help all students achieve 79 10 35 55
3 18
high academic standards.
31. Evaluate the effects of their 78 11 29 63
3 19
actions and modify plans
accordingly.
32. Conduct inquiry or research 68 17 36 47
8 24
to inform their decisions.
21. Teach students from a multi- 85 15 28 57
3 12
cultural vantage point.
37. Overall, how well do you feel 85 10 25 65
3 12
your program prepared you
for teaching?
107
BEST COPY AVAILABLE WHEELOCK COLLEGE /
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Lynne Miller is Executive Director of the Southern Maine Partnership
and Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Southern
Maine. The Southern Maine Partnership includes 33 school districts, the
University of Southern Maine, and two other institutions of higher edu-
cation. Before joining the faculty in 1987, Miller held a variety of posi-
tions in public schools and universities. She has written widely in the field
of teacher development and school reform and in addition to numerous
articles, chapters, and papers, she has written fotir books with Ann Lie
Berman, including the recent, Teachers Transforming Their World and
Their Work, published by Teachers College Press. She serves as a member
of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future
and on
Maine's state Professional Development Design Team.
David Silvernail is a Professor of Educational Research and Director of
the Center of Educational Policy, Applied Research, and Evaluation at the
University of Southern Maine. His areas of expertise and work are in
equity, assessment, and accountability. His most recent work is in the area
of identifying best practices in high performing schools.
Ken Zeichner is Hoefs-Bascom Professor of Teacher Education and
Chair of Elementary Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Zeichner was affiliated with the National Centers for Research on Teacher
Education and Teacher Learning at Michigan State University from
1985-1995, was vice president of Division K of AERA from 1996-1998,
and served as a member of the Board of Directors of AACTE from 1997-
2000. His recent publications include "The New Scholarship in Teacher
Education," published in Educational Researcher; "Practitioner Research"
in the Fourth Handbook ofResearch on Teaching, (with Susan Noffke); and
"Democratic Teacher Education Reform" in Africa: The Case of Namibia
(with Lars Dahlstrom).
121
1OR STIII)IFS OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERCRADUTE YEARS
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Linda Darling-Hammond is currently Charles E. Ducommun Professor of
Teaching and Teacher Education at Stanford University. Her research, teach-
ing, and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher educa-
tion, and educational equity. She is also executive director of the National
Commission on Teaching & America's Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose
1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, has been
widely acclaimed as a major blueprint for transforming education so that all
children are guaranteed access to high quality teaching.
Prior to her appointment at Stanford, Darling-Hammond was William F.
Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education at Teachers College,
Columbia University, where she was also Co-Director of the National
Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching (NCREST).
Darling-Hammond is past president of the American Educational
Research Association, a two-term member of the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards, and a member of the National Academy
of Education and has served on many national advisory boards.
She is the author or editor of seven books, including The Right to Learn:
A Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work, which was awarded the
Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research
Association in 1998, and more than 200 journal articles, boOk chapters,
and monographs on issues of policy and practice. Among her other recent
books are Professional Development Schools: Schools for Developing a
Profession, A License to Teach: Building a Profession for 21st Century Schools,
and Authentic Assessment in Action.
109
under-
44- <776, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF)
successfully prepare teachers
took a research project to document teacher education programs that
the successes and strategies of
to teach diverse learners to high standards. The study documented
in ways that are
teacher education programs that have reputations for preparing teachers to teach
to individual stu-
learner- and learning-centered; that is, they prepare teachers who are responsive
also prepare
dents' intelligences, talents, cultural backgrounds, needs, and interests. These programs
for powerful thinking and
teachers for understanding, teachers who support active in-depth learning
studies that provide
flexible, proficient student performances. The study produced -seven case
they engage, and
detailed descriptive evidence about the outcomes of the programs, the content
the processes they employ.
executive director
Those seven case studies are presented here. Edited by Linda Darling-Hammond,
of the National Commission, this three-volume series includes:
EDUCATION: PREPARATION AT THE GRADUATE LEVEL
STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE IN TEACHER
Teachers at Bank
Where There is Learning There is Hope: The Preparation of Preservice
University and Maritza B.
Street College of Education, by Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford
Macdonald, Teachers College, Columbia University'
Education Program
Knowing ChildrenUnderstanding Teaching: The Developmental Teacher
of California-Santa Barbara
at the University of California-Berkeley, by Jon Snyder, University
by Betty Lou
Knitting it All Together: Collaborative Teacher Education in Southern Maine,
Whitford, Gordon Ruscoe, and Letitia Fickel, University of Louisville (KY)
EDUCATION: PREPARATION IN A FIVE -YEAR PROGRAM
STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE IN TEACHER
Mathematics
Teacher Education at the University of Virginia: A Study of English and
Children (Cambridge,
Preparation, by Katherine K. Merseth, Harvard Project on Schooling and
Francisco, (04)
MA) and Julia Koppich, Management Analysis and Planning Associates, San
Koppich, Management
Trinity University: Preparing Teachers for Tomorrow's Schools, by Julia
Analysis and Planning Associates, San Francisco (CA)
EDUCATION: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUATE YEARS
STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE IN TEACHER
College,
Ability-Based Teacher Education: Elementary Teacher Education:at Alverno.
by Kenneth Zeichner, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Silvernail,
Learning to Become a Teacher: The Wheelock Way, by Lynne Miller and David
University of Southern Maine
AACTE
National Commission
on Teaching t America's Future
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI)
Eintlogal lessann tlenomiao Cara
National Library of Education (NLE)
Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)
NOTICE
Reproduction Basis
This document is covered by a signed "Reproduction Release (Blanket)"
form (on file within the ERIC system), encompassing all or classes of
documents from its source organization and, therefore, does not require a
"Specific Document" Release form.
This document is Federally-funded, or carries its own permission to
reproduce, or is otherwise in the public domain and, therefore, may be
reproduced by ERIC without a signed Reproduction Release form (either
"Specific Document" or "Blanket").
EFF-089 (1/2003)
References (55)
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Loacker, G. & Mentowski, M. (1993). Creating a culture where assessment improves learning. In T.W. Banta & Associates (Eds). Making a difference: Outcomes of a decade of assessment in higher education. (pp. 5-24). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mentowski, M. (1984). Careering after college: Establishing the validity of abilities learned in college for later careering and professional performance. (Final Report to the National Institute of Education). Milwaukee, WI: Alverno Productions. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 239 556).
Mentowski, M. (1988). Paths to integrity: Educating for personal growth and profes- sional performance. In S. Srivastva & Associates (Eds.) Executive integrity : The search for higher human values in organizational lift. (pp. 89-121). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mentowski, M. & Doherty, A. (1984). Abilities that last a lifetime: Outcomes of the Alverno experience. American Association of Higher Education Bulletin, 36 (6), 11 -14.
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Alverno College Faculty. (1993). The proof is in the performance. Milwaukee, WI: Alverno College.
Alverno College Faculty. (1994). Ability -based learning program: The history major. Milwaukee, WI: Alverno College.
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Alverno College Faculty. ( 1995). Ability -based learning program: The psychology major. Milwaukee, WI: Alverno College.
Diez, M. (1990). A thrust from within: Reconceptualizing teacher education at Alverno College. Peabody Journal of Education, 65 (2), 4-18.
Edgerton, R. (1984). Abilities that last a lifetime: Alverno in perspective. American Association for Higher Education, 36 (6), 3-4.
Loacker, G. & Mentowski, M. (1993). Creating a culture where assessment improves learning. In T.W. Banta and Associates, Making a difference: Outcomes of a decade of assessment in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mentowski, M. (1991). Creating a context where institutional assessment yields educational improvement. Journal of General Education, 40, 255-283.
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/ STUDIES OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERGRADUTE YEARS ABOUT THE AUTHORS Lynne Miller is Executive Director of the Southern Maine Partnership and Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Southern Maine. The Southern Maine Partnership includes 33 school districts, the University of Southern Maine, and two other institutions of higher edu- cation. Before joining the faculty in 1987, Miller held a variety of posi- tions in public schools and universities. She has written widely in the field of teacher development and school reform and in addition to numerous articles, chapters, and papers, she has written fotir books with Ann Lie Berman, including the recent, Teachers Transforming Their World and Their Work, published by Teachers College Press. She serves as a member of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future and on Maine's state Professional Development Design Team.
David Silvernail is a Professor of Educational Research and Director of the Center of Educational Policy, Applied Research, and Evaluation at the University of Southern Maine. His areas of expertise and work are in equity, assessment, and accountability. His most recent work is in the area of identifying best practices in high performing schools. Ken Zeichner is Hoefs-Bascom Professor of Teacher Education and Chair of Elementary Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Zeichner was affiliated with the National Centers for Research on Teacher Education and Teacher Learning at Michigan State University from 1985-1995, was vice president of Division K of AERA from 1996-1998, and served as a member of the Board of Directors of AACTE from 1997- 2000. His recent publications include "The New Scholarship in Teacher Education," published in Educational Researcher; "Practitioner Research" in the Fourth Handbook ofResearch on Teaching, (with Susan Noffke); and "Democratic Teacher Education Reform" in Africa: The Case of Namibia (with Lars Dahlstrom).
1OR STIII)IFS OF EXCELLENCE: PREPARATION IN THE UNDERCRADUTE YEARS
March 01, 2026
Kenneth Zeichner
University of Washington, Faculty Member
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