News – Page 3 – CEHS Curriculum Revision

Diversity and Technology Themes within the CAEP and InTASC Standards

CEHS has invested time and attention on identifying where the cross-cutting themes of ‘Diversity’ and ‘Technology and Digital Learning’ are evident within both the CAEP Standards and the 2013 InTASC Standards.

The work on aligning Diversity to CAEP and InTASC is based on Donna Gollnick and Deborah Eldridge’s work on how the theme of Diversity was integrated throughout all of the CAEP standards, which was presented at the Fall 2013 CAEP Conference in Washington, D.C. In addition, they looked at how the theme of Diversity mapped to the the InTASC standards.

CEHS took the opportunity to do similar work with the Technology & Digital Learning theme as it was presented in both the CAEP and InTASC Standards. The following is an excerpt directly from the CAEP Standards on the Technology cross-cutting theme and should be highly considered when addressing this theme:

“The essence of technology is rapid change. Members of the Commission realize that for accreditation standards that may be in place for the better part of a decade, it is not possible to anticipate every opportunity through which technology might have potential to advance instructional effectiveness and student learning and development. The Commission has concluded that the current possibilities are insufficiently exploited, and those for the future are beyond current forecasting ability. Educator preparation providers should keep up with research, and those preparing educators should model best practices in digital learning and technology applications that the EPP expects candidates to acquire.”

Both the Diversity and Technology alignment documents are posted within this site.

NJDOE Proposed Regulation on Praxis I/Core Academic Skills for Educators

There is a proposed regulation, titled Professional Licensure and Standards – Teacher Preparation, before the NJ Department of Education regarding mandatory testing for students who wish to enroll in a teacher preparation program in the state of NJ.

As of October 2013, this regulation is in the Proposal Level of rules and regulations with the DOE and is open to public comment. There are two main areas of the regulation that will impact cohorts and individuals enrolling in a teacher preparation program in the state of NJ:

1. The average cumulative GPA of the accepted cohort of candidates as of September 1, 2015 is at least 3.00 when a grade point of 4.00 equals an A grade for the first two years of college and each accepted individual candidate shall achieve at least a 2.75. (The new CAEP standard 3.2 states that “…the provider ensures that the average grade point average of its accepted cohort of candidates meets or exceeds the CAEP minimum of 3.0…” and will be in effect as of January 2014.)

2. The accepted candidates achieved acceptable levels of proficiency in the use of the English language, both oral and written, and mathematics. As of September 1, 2014, all accepted candidates shall have achieved a minimum score established by the Department on a Commissioner-approved test of basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills, or score at least a 1660 combined critical reading, writing, and mathematics score on the SAT or at least a 23 on the ACT.

There was discussion at the Curriculum Revision meeting on September 27, 2013 as to what the ‘Commissioner approved test’ would be. Upon further research and discussions with Eric Nicola, the Assistant Director of Preparation in the Office of Recruitment, Preparation and Recognition, Division of Teacher and Leader Effectiveness, New Jersey Department of Education, the state of NJ will be requiring students to pass the Core Academic Skills for Educators in the areas of math, writing and reading NOT the Praxis I. Detailed information regarding the Core Academic Skills for Educators tests can be found on the ETS website.

Curriculum Revision Meeting – Friday, September 27, 2013

The faculty from the Department of Educational Studies, along with the Dean of College of Education and Human Services, held their first meeting to kick off the curriculum redesign process.

The focus of the meeting was to introduce this blog and then to have the faculty break up into groups and review the five new CAEP standards. The task was to evaluate the language and expectations in the five standards and provide notes, questions and feedback to the entire group on where CEHS was already succeeding and meeting the standards, what are new areas to the standards not previously addressed and in which areas we can improve.

Due to the high level of engagement of the faculty groups, we were only able to provide feedback and notes on the first two standards. The faculty and department will continue the discussion and review of the remaining three CAEP Standards at the next meeting scheduled on Friday, October 25th at 9:30 in the 4th floor media lab.

The CAEP and NJDOE regulations alignment document and the Diversity alignment between CAEP and InTASC, both documents discussed and used during the meeting, can be found here.

Welcome to SHU’s College of Education and Human Services Curriculum Redesign

CEHS is already busy with projects and initiatives to evaluate the teacher preparation program. This site will provide tools, resources, information on projects and updates to the Curriculum Redesign.

Please join us on our journey.