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March 1, 1996
Vol. 53
No. 6

Brave New World: Field-Based Teacher Preparation

The CREST field-based program at the University of Texas at Arlington is creating a new breed of better prepared teachers.

There are many traditional teacher preparation programs across America that are supplying our schools with many good—and sometimes not so good—teachers. So why deviate from an established routine? Because, as the story of the CREST program at the University of Texas at Arlington will show, a restructured teacher preparation program creates better teachers.
CREST, which stands for Collaborative Redesign of Educational Systems, is an intensive year long teacher preparation program that takes place totally in the field. Students take no education classes on a university campus. Instead, they are taught at a specific school within the Arlington Independent School District. Each student is a member of an Instructional Leadership Team that is made up of a selected mentor teacher, a university professor, another mentor, an intern, and a resident. (An intern is a first-semester student, and a resident is a second-semester student.)
The purpose of CREST is to directly tie theory to practice. During the year-long program, CREST professors teach their courses as seminars in the field, at chosen public school sites. When a professor discusses a specific philosophy or technique with the interns or residents, the elementary or secondary school campus provides a real-life laboratory where the technique can be demonstrated for student observation and demonstration with children.
When students finish their year in CREST (pending successful passage of the Texas ExCet examination), they are really ready to teach school. After all, they have been doing just that under constant supervision for a full year!

How the Program Works

I am an elementary math methods professor, and to help teach my team, I sought and easily found a mentor teacher who would allow me to bring interns into her classroom to watch me teach a lesson of her choice to her students. She agreed and the process began.
Before going into the 1st grade classroom, I led the college students through a mock lesson of subtraction. I made them aware of the strategies I was going to use so they would know what to watch for. (I planned to count beans and pop balloons, giving hands-on opportunities for children to see and feel the concept of "taking away" in action.)
When we actually went into the classroom, my primed students were watchful of the children's reactions and responses. After the lesson was over, my students and I returned to our own classroom and dissected the lesson. We asked ourselves questions such as, "Were the children successful?" "How else could I have handled various situations?" and "How can the classroom teacher follow up this lesson?"
In each case, we were putting my teaching on the chopping block—not the mentor teacher, who graciously let us into her classroom. The college students had the opportunity to apply what they had previously learned and seen demonstrated.
Like myself, most of the education professors at the University of Texas at Arlington have completely changed their courses and their methods of instruction to allow the field-based courses to better utilize the school setting.
For example, the literacy professor takes his interns into an elementary school classroom and has the children toss a ball back and forth. Each time the ball is tossed, the child tossing has to say what came next in a previously read story. The child catching the ball adds to the story, and so on. The professor illustrates here that in addition to building the children's coordination skills, this activity teaches sequencing, relationship building, comprehension, cause and effect, and other critical thinking skills.
In an elementary school science class, children learn to build a roller coaster with tubing, then create their own experiments involving friction. As this goes on, the college professor teaches the interns about leading active participation activities.
The beauty of integrated instruction is that learning is everywhere. The world is the classroom. As a result, field trips are especially popular. For instance, a professor teaching about diversity took his students to the Holocaust Museum in Dallas. There, they had the opportunity to meet and visit with a Holocaust survivor. There was no way to compare the impact that visit had on those students versus anything they could have read in a book regarding war experiences or discrimination.
On another trip, math students visited the Education Region Service Center in Fort Worth where they experimented with cutting-edge math technology not yet available in their schools.
In CREST, we have a can-do spirit that creates an attitude of change. It's also that can-do spirit that creates results. We want to know, What can we do to make things happen for our students?

The Development of CREST

Teachers and administrators from the Arlington Independent School District collaborated with professors from the University of Texas at Arlington for more than two years to design this unique program. The proposal was funded by the Texas Education Agency, which created the Center for Professional Development and Technology. Each participating school receives state-of-the-art technology packages for use by the public schools and college students.
As a result, it is common to see 6th grade students "surfing the Net," as well as getting lost "somewhere in Finland" as they study other cultures. Mentor teachers and professors particularly like the e-mail feature that gives them immediate access to computerized data on the needs and progress of the interns and residents.
It all sounds good, doesn't it? So good that many students want to join the program. But the admission process is selective. Students must be juniors, seniors, or post-baccalaureates admitted to the School of Education before they can apply, and they must be interviewed by a combination of professors and mentor teachers.
The interview process is a critical component to the success of the program because the student and professor/mentor will be working very closely. In fact, mentors tend to become mama and papa hens to their interns and residents, protecting them and becoming defensive if anyone or anything gets in the way of their students' becoming first-class teachers. This is a complete deviation from traditional teacher preparation programs where student teachers are assigned to cooperating teachers who may or may not have even wanted a student teacher in the first place.
Mentor teachers, on the other hand, are selected expert teachers who have volunteered and been trained in mentoring skills before becoming a part of the CREST program. They have ownership in the program because they serve on governing and planning boards. They also have input concerning their students' college grades while they are working in their classrooms.
With privilege comes responsibility. It is the mentor teacher who daily plans, models, supervises, holds conferences, and gives corrective feedback to the interns and residents. It is hard work. The mentors feel they must constantly provide a good example for the college students. The net payoff, though, is to the K–12 learners in the classroom as they receive the benefit of expert collaborative planning and teaching.
The greatest benefit of the program is that when interns and residents are not participating in seminars, they are actually in classrooms watching their mentors teach. Students spend one full year, five days a week, in classrooms—compared to the traditional 12-16 weeks of student teaching done in most other programs.
A high point of the elementary program is the planning and implementation of a thematic unit. Interns work in groups for a semester to develop a thematic unit on such topics as the rain forest, deserts, baseball, or the solar system. Instruction must address all subject areas across the curriculum. This unit often causes the interns a great deal of stress, but also supplies them with feelings of great accomplishment that they actually taught something valuable to their students.
Another important component of CREST is portfolio assessment. Just as the college students learn to utilize authentic assessment with the K–12 learners, they also must generate a portfolio of their own professional development. This prepares students when they begin interviewing for jobs and provides mentor teachers with a tangible document for evaluation.

Evaluating CREST

CREST is currently in its second full year. At the end of the first year, a study was taken of the principals who hired CREST graduates. These principals were asked a series of questions through written surveys and follow-up interviews.
The following—a sort of CREST report card—sums up the responses of the principals:
Question: What differences did you observe, if any, between graduates of the CREST program and graduates of traditional programs in their general interviewing skills?
Response:Principals gave examples of students exhibiting poise, confidence, knowledge of teaching, and professionalism. Some said, however, they saw virtually no differences between types of teachers. Others said that the CREST graduates had more specific answers to questions concerning classroom management and discipline. Several principals said the CREST graduates had more exposure to methodology, portfolios assessment and development, and planning.
Question: How did the two types of new teachers differ in the way they functioned in their classrooms and the school?
Response: While several principals complimented all their beginning teachers, feedback indicated that the field-based prepared teacher had a better idea of how to set up the classroom and get things organized for the first day. The general consensus was that the CREST students were better prepared.
Question: As the year progressed, what differences did you observe between the teachers in their ability to plan for instruction and in their overall teaching effectiveness?
Response: Again, while the principals were collectively complimentary of all their new teachers, they said that the field-based graduates had more confidence. As strengths, they mentioned planning with the team and understanding long-term goals.
One principal commented that the CREST graduates knew what was involved in planning because they had planned lessons during their internships. Other principals said the CREST graduates knew more about site-based decision making, discipline, and innovative instructional strategies.
Question: What differences did you observe in their effectiveness with classroom management and discipline?
Response: A few principals scored CREST graduates lower than traditionally-trained teachers. One principal said the CREST graduate was not as strong in classroom management as he had expected, but felt it was predominantly due to the student's non-assertive personality.
Other principals disagreed though, complimenting the field-based teachers for having a much better idea of appropriate expectations for behavior. "They did not seem to have to go through the period of discovering how strict or how friendly to be toward the students," said one principal. "This was probably because they had previously had the year-long opportunity to practice and receive corrective feedback from their mentors and university supervisors."
The general consensus was that field-based CREST graduates were more skilled in effective planning, self-confidence, self-reliance, adaptability and flexibility, professionalism, dealing with student diversity, parental involvement, and willingness to seek assistance from other teachers and administrators.
Question: Were the differences between the CREST and traditional programs significant enough that you would give priority in hiring to one group over the other?
Response: All but one of the principals agreed they would give preference to the year-long program graduates. The one who disagreed deferred the recommendation to her site-based team and said she felt an in-person interview would be the acid test.
The other principals felt the CREST graduates' year of hands-on experience exposed them to many different classroom settings and enabled the new teachers to avoid many of the obstacles encountered by graduates of traditional programs.
Question: Specify the greatest strengths of this particular program.
Response: The principals credited the extra time the interns and residents were able to actually spend in the classrooms teaching and observing, their professionalism, their ability to work well with staff and parents, and their self-confidence. The principals felt the CREST graduates were greater risk-takers. Other principals mentioned the cooperation and collaboration between the university and the school district to help strengthen curriculum and teaching strategies.
The students brought new ideas into the classrooms and had the opportunity to try a variety of things to see what worked and what would not, a principal commented. An important side benefit was that mentor teachers had benefited from the new ideas, concepts, and philosophies introduced by the professors.
Question: What improvements or changes would strengthen the program?
Response: These responses were limited. One principal encouraged the continued interaction between the university professors and the school district curriculum department. Another suggested streamlining the collaborative process. "Sometimes consensus was reached on decisions that should have been by command or consultative," said a principal.

The Bottom Line

Overall, the principals commented that the CREST students interviewed well, coming into the interview process with specific questions not usually asked by traditionally taught applicants on school climate and teaching strategies.
They also said CREST gave interns and residents the chance to observe and teach in different classes beyond the specific one of their mentor. "This gives them a better opportunity to see what works with different ages and different abilities," one principal said. "They learn more from their mistakes because of the continuous open feedback with mentors. Because of this relationship, there is more risk-taking. Plus, the Instructional Leadership Team provides them with an opportunity to fall flat on their faces while learning."
Another principal said: "Some new teachers either rush too hard or do not know how to pace. The field-based graduates have more experience and can therefore handle pacing of instruction better. Delivery is thus more appropriate and successful."
Nothing new is ever easy. Restructuring teacher preparation certainly isn't. However, judging from the perceptions of principals in the field today who have hired new teachers prepared in the traditional manner and in the new field-based setting, the verdict is clear: Principal perceptions verify the importance and credibility of field-based teacher preparation. They confirm what we at the University of Texas at Arlington know—restructuring teacher preparation programs results in teachers who are ready for the real world.

Elaine Wilmore has been a contributor to Educational Leadership.

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