STEPP uses the Professional Development School model where we partner with local school districts to allow future teachers to gain experience in real schools with real students from the very beginning of the program.
Professional development schools (PDSs) are innovative institutions formed through partnerships between professional education programs and P–12 schools. PDS partnerships have a four-fold mission:
- the preparation of new teachers,
- faculty development,
- inquiry directed at the improvement of practice, and
- enhanced student achievement.
PDSs improve both the quality of teaching and student learning.
PDSs are often compared to teaching hospitals, which are also hybrid institutions created in the early twentieth century. As practicing professions, both teaching and medicine require a sound academic program and intense clinical preparation. The teaching hospital was designed to provide such clinical preparation for medical students and interns; PDSs serve the same function for teacher candidates and in-service faculty. Both settings provide support for professional learning in a real-world setting in which practice takes place.
Five Defining Characteristics of PDSs:
- Standard I: Learning Community—Addresses the unique environment created in a PDS partnership that supports both professional and children’s learning.
- Standard II: Accountability and Quality Assurance—Addresses the responsibility of a PDS partnership to uphold professional standards for teaching and learning.
- Standard III: Collaboration—Addresses the development and implementation of a unique university/school community which shares responsibility across institutional boundaries.
- Standard IV: Equity and Diversity— Addresses the responsibility of the PDS partnership to prepare professionals to meet the needs of diverse learners.
- Standard V: Structures, Resources and Roles—Addresses the infrastructure that a PDS partnerships uses and/or creates to support its work.
Source:
http://www.ncate.org/public/pdswhat.asp?ch=133
The partnership established between CSU and the Poudre School District has been mutually beneficial with vested interest from both parties to ensure the highest quality teacher preparation program. The Professional Development School model is described in Best Practice research and put forward by the National Network for Educational Renewal under the research of Dr. John Goodlad.
This collaborative model calls on the STEPP to place teacher licensure candidates into local schools to practice their craft in partnership with Master Teachers. The research underpinnings of this research revolve around the following four pillars of the Professional Development School Model:
The inaugural cohort at Adams 14; an urban, culturally diverse, high-needs district, began during the summer of 2009. Ten of the seventeen master’s licensure students are in the science or math content areas. The CSU and Adam’s 14 Professional Development School partnership was initiated when Adams City administrators began to recognize strong science and math teaching applicants coming from CSU. At the same time CSU recognized an opportunity to provide a culturally and socio-economically diverse experience for their teacher candidates. The program came to fruition when CSU and Adams 14 received funding from a No Child Left Behind Improving Teacher Quality Start-up Grant. Utilizing the PDS model, the vision that guided the creation of the program was developed by a broad spectrum of voices: experienced veteran teachers, fourth year teachers who received their alternative licensure, first and second-year teachers from in and out-of-state education programs as well as master’s candidates from CSU’s on-site master’s licensure program at Fossil Ridge High School in Fort Collins. Students’ sentiments are that they are receiving a quality, authentic experience in the program.
