Career-Technical Education Research News

Heather Boggs Sass of the Southern Regional Education Board is a principal investigator of the Alternative Licensure Career/Technical Teacher Induction Model. Dr. Sass joined Catherine Imperatore of ACTE to talk about the field tests she and her colleagues have been conducting of an induction model for new career and technical education (CTE) teachers pursuing an alternative route to certification that will increase their competence, self-efficacy and retention. These tests have taken place in Oklahoma and South Carolina.

This induction model features a series of professional development sessions that emphasize four areas of knowledge and skill teachers need to improve student achievement and preparedness for further learning and the workplace: planning standards-based instruction, using research-based instructional strategies, assessing students to promote learning, and effectively managing classrooms. Support elements include mentoring from an educator in the teacher's school, coaching from the professional development instructor, the guidance of a school principal, and the support of electronic communities of practice with cohort peers.

Here's an excerpt from their conversation:

HS: One of the things that we're really experiencing is that these beginning teachers who come through an alternative route together have some things that are similar. They've had workplace experience that's extremely valuable. They tend to know their content pretty well and be pretty confident in the skills that they're going to teach.

But other than that, they are very diverse. They can be different ages. They have very different levels of educational preparation. Some will have high school diplomas with professional training, others may even have graduate degrees.

So we need to be able to differentiate the professional development that they're going to be experiencing, and that's a big challenge, as, interestingly enough, it will be a challenge for them as they turn to their own classrooms and differentiate with their own students who have different learning needs.

The beginning teachers also bring a very different level of math and literacy skills themselves because they've used math and reading very differently in their different career contexts, so that's something to think about.

I think a big challenge is to get that sequence and pace of the learning in the professional development just right so that we are really, in working with the beginning teachers, teaching for learning and not just covering things that they need to know as beginning teachers.

So, the final challenge we see is the building the capacity of our state partners, who will turn and implement this model hopefully themselves, and really helping them understand what we're learning, how it's impacting the induction model, and then how it will impact ultimately the training of the very partners they'll be working with in their own state.

Read more about the Alternative Licensure Career/Technical Teacher Induction Model at the NRCCTE website. Read the transcript here.

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