GATEways 2018 (Volume 29, Issue 1)

Georgia Association of Teacher Educators Volume 29, Issue 1 October 2018

GATEways to Teacher Education

Cover artwork by Elijah Terrell, 4th grade, Bethlehem Elementary School, Bethlehem, Georgia 2nd Place Winner in the GATE 2018 Conference Program Art Contest “Cultivation, Collaboration, Rejuvenation�

GATEways to Teacher Education October 2018: Volume 29, Issue 1

Contents The College Degree – Alternatives and Opportunities

By Bob Kimball

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This study assessed emerging alternatives to the traditional college degree and their potential appeal to companies seeking entry-level employees. Then, a brief interview was conducted with 42 recruiters representing a wide variety of organizations at a regional career fair to determine their opinion of the most important credential for a successful new employee. An overwhelming majority of the recruiters indicated that a college degree from an accredited institution and independently certified job-related skills were equally important.

Effects of a Professional Development Design on Teachers’ Self-Efficacy

By Jackie HeeYoung Kim and Moon-Heum Cho

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This study analyzed teacher efficacy in developing and implementing a flipped classroom.

Following professional development based on the four sources of self-efficacy – mastery experiences, verbal persuasion, vicarious experiences, and physiological arousal – data related to the perceptions of the participants were collected to determine whether those four sources play a role in developing and improving the teacher efficacy needed to devise and implement a flipped classroom.

A New Era of Reflection: Utilizing Online Interactive Notebooks to Promote the Transfer of Learning

By Pamela R. Allen

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The Online Interactive Notebook is a learning tool students can utilize during their educator preparation program in a senior methods course. The two theoretical frameworks that are explored in this study are the Information Processing Model and the Transfer of Learning Theory. The Online Interactive Notebook gives teacher candidates the opportunity to create a product that has meaning and allows them to add to their content knowledge, make connections, collaborate with peers, and build their knowledge base of effective teaching practices.

Validating Dispositional Indicators for Evaluating Teacher Candidates Using Lawshe’s Method

By Comfort Y. Afolabi, Winifred C. Nweke, and Tasha P. Perkins

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Assessing the dispositions of teacher candidates remains a challenge for many Educator Preparation Providers. This article details the validation of dispositional indicators by utilizing Lawshe’s method for establishing content validity. Based on these ratings, 24 teacher performance indicators were selected. These indicators can be used to construct assessment instruments that adequately cover the domain of dispositions that teacher candidates are expected to manifest to be able to facilitate learning in diverse classrooms for all students.

Validation Study of the Instrument “edTPA Self-Efficacy Survey” for Pre-Service Teachers

By Pam Wetherington and Jennifer Brown With an increasing number of pre-service teachers developing the edTPA teaching portfolio, there is a need to study the effects of the edTPA teaching portfolio on pre-service teachers’ perceptions of self-efficacy. Although there are other self-efficacy instruments, the constructs within these instruments are not specifically aligned with the constructs of edTPA. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to validate a newly developed instrument, the edTPA Self-Efficacy Survey.

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GATEways to Teacher Education A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators

The College Degree – Alternatives and Opportunities Bob Kimball, University of West Florida

The college degree and the experience of the college education have represented a significant life-changing event for many generations of young men and women. Twenty years ago, Mumper (1996) conducted meta-analyses of studies over 25 years addressing the impact of a college degree, noting that consistently, college had served as a turning point in the lives of everyone responding, and that it had been a time and place where they learned how to better fit into the world and create meaning for their lives.

A number of naysayers in the popular press, however, have recently questioned the value of the college experience and the credential of the college degree, citing the emergence of alternatives to the traditional degree program, prime factors of which have been the evolution of online education and the development of jobrelated skills as an alternative to a college degree. This study begins with a literature review of books and articles that address perceived shortcomings of the traditional college degree and emerging alternatives to that degree.

It then documents findings from a survey of recruiters at a regional career fair to assess their perceptions of the traditional degree in contrast to or as a complement to independently certified job-related skills. Next, it describes the author’s experience in enhancing traditional coursework with applied professional skills development, including the creation of high school programs that provide students with professional skills applicable to post-high school employment opportunities.

Literature Review Online course delivery, as noted by Comer, Lenaghan, and Sengupta (2015), has been well

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received by students, especially non-residents, who favor it because of its convenience. Their perspective, however, contrasts to that of Ganesh, Paswan, and Sun (2015), whose study found that students rated a traditional math class superior to its online equivalent in terms of its overall evaluation, perceived competence, perceived communication, and competence. Additional concerns about the relative effectiveness of online course delivery were raised by Morgan (2015), who documented that there were much lower pass rates on the CPA exam and that graduate rates were much lower in online accounting programs compared to their face-toface alternatives. Those concerns, however, stand in contrast to those of Boyer, Edmondson, Artis, and Fleming (2014), who found that self-directed learning, which plays a more significant role in online courses, was a skill beneficial for both undergraduate and graduate courses and also a skill that translated to workplace success. In sum, these studies suggest that online delivery of course content is not inherently inferior to its face-to-face alternative and in some ways is beneficial.

Along these lines, Christensen and Eyring (2011) propose that the change to a reliance of online course delivery has eroded the traditional university strength and primary benefit of mentorship by a life-changing professor which provided the opportunity to “take professors, not students.” The critical role of professors and their impact on the education experience was documented by Gruber et al. (2012), who confirmed that the professor affects satisfaction and, implicitly, the value of the course itself.

Their conclusions were generally shared, with some qualifications, with those of Sebastianelli,

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Swift, and Tamimi (2015), who found that professor-student interaction played a significant role in course satisfaction but not on the overall perception of its quality. Christensen and Eyring further suggest that publications are becoming a greater determining factor in tenure and promotion, with the resultant trend of coursework management increasingly handled by adjuncts at a fraction of the cost, though a regular faculty member may be the official professor of record.

Addressing this point, Carter (2016) cautions that although the primacy of research may not always be in the students’ best interest, there is a positive association between publishing in top-tier journals and student evaluations. Of course, we cannot say whether this relationship is cause-andeffect or merely correlation. It is entirely possible that those faculty who achieve top-tier publications are likewise those persons who have superior professional knowledge and skills and who thus deliver a superior classroom experience.

A key point to note, however, is that there is no confirmation that online courses, increasingly handled by adjuncts, are inferior.

There has been another development in higher education that these naysayers believe could leave it more vulnerable to change, namely universities’ reliance on marketing and branding, especially in image and extrinsics. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with such a strategy, historically described by Ries and Trout (1981), proposing that you position the product in the mind of the prospect by manipulating what is already in their mind regarding the marketplace and competitive alternatives. Duhigg (2012) described early successes with this approach to propel brands that had previously languished when they had been marketed on their basic intrinsic features. Specifically, he noted how Pepsodent had succeeded in the undeveloped toothpaste market by promoting a nice smile and social benefits rather than clean teeth, and how Febreeze, designed to remove odors, had succeeded when repositioned to let the housewife celebrate finishing housework by enjoying a fresh scent. Expanding this concept, Ariely (2008) demonstrated experimentally that a 50-cent aspirin could do things that a penny aspirin could not. This would explain why a product like Bayer is a highly successful brand though identical to

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the drug store’s private label at a small fraction of the price. He concluded that consumers assume that a higher price means higher quality and experience is enhanced even though the products are identical. Implicit in his work is the fact that consumers and prospective employers believe that a costly traditional education is superior to something that is attained at a greatly reduced price – or even free – from an alternative source and that the attendant employee is perceived to be superior. Selingo (2013) describes how universities have applied these concepts with elaborate branding campaigns, especially for extrinsics such as fancy dorms, climbing walls, and football teams, without addressing the quality of teaching and what is actually learned in the classroom. He further notes the perceived value of specialized accreditation, such as the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, concluding that such credentials leave the current system vulnerable to a competitive alternative and raising the question “What if higher education lost its grip on the credential business?” He acknowledges that a degree documents the discipline to complete 120 credit hours and that this is important to potential employers, but that there is potential vulnerability due to the fact that the degree does not certify what graduates know and have learned. In sum, these authors suggest that an established university name creates recognition and credibility with employers, with the result that predominantly online institutions such as the University of Phoenix have yet to achieve legitimacy for their degrees, even though one might argue that the intrinsic value of the degree is the same.

A marketing and branding strategy for a university and its degree is absolutely appropriate as long as the basic intrinsic product or service itself maintains quality standards. In point of fact, there is every opportunity for the traditional collegiate education to not merely be equivalent to but to be superior to its alternatives in meaningful ways. We are not relegated to marketing a Bayer-type brand against a generic competitor. We have every opportunity to present a superior product to both of our constituents, students and potential employers. However, although branding campaigns focused on

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extrinsics have appealed to potential students, Arum and Roksa (2011) suggest that we can no longer assume that a college degree means that a student has received a rigorous education and thus that we may not be offering a product perceived to be superior in the eyes of potential employers. High-tech entrepreneurs and authors Fried and Hansson (2010) take this criticism to the next level, advocating that we forget about formal education, proclaiming that academia does not prepare someone for the skills needed in the real world.

The current system has opened the possibility of serious changes in higher education as we know it, specifically resulting from the new forces that have shaped many of the changes we have already seen from applications of technology. According to Friedman (2005), the essence of this is what he calls Globalization 3.0, which began around the year 2000, whose key feature is the empowerment of individuals to compete and collaborate globally. Bonk (2009) elaborated on the implications of this for education, noting that by the late 1990s, all information contained in traditional collegiate coursework was available – for free – on the internet, including entire courses from such prestigious institutions as MIT and Stanford.

Recent events have presented the potential for current capabilities to expand exponentially.

Missing for now in the popular press is the question of what would replace – and to what extent it would replace – the current system. As noted, accreditation is a key factor in establishing a university’s legitimacy, but could there be an alternative to accreditation and the university brand that employers would accept? Carey (2015) thinks so, predicting that some sort of open credentialing system will replace the traditional degree.

Many of the naysayers speculate about what would happen if there came to be a credentialing system of job-related skills that would be accepted in lieu of a college degree. They propose that this could readily be accomplished by online institutions offering certifying credentials purported to be of equal value to a traditional college degree. Implicit in their writings is the assumption that a college degree is perceived to be of limited – and declining – value

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by companies seeking high quality entry-level employees and that such companies would be more interested in persons with independently certified job-related skills, even though they had not earned a college degree.

Numerous educators and business professionals have further addressed the skills needed from graduates, with Dwyer, Boswell, and Elliott (2015) among many voices advocating the need for critical thinking skills. Dillon (2005), however, raised the concern that such basic skills as literacy were, in fact, declining. Along these lines, Finch, Nadeau, and O’Reilly (2013) focused on the importance of problem solving, business writing, and setting priorities. Both of these studies advocated the need for traditional generic skills important to a college education.

Building upon this foundation, Munoz, Miller, and Poole (2016) identified the opportunity to enhance job-related skills and professional development in the classroom and also through involvement in student organizations and contacts with business professionals and recruiters. Such skills would represent a differentiation for the traditional college education that could not be duplicated through alternative programs conducted exclusively online.

While there has been considerable discussion about the nature of the college experience and modes for delivery of course material, there have also been voices questioning whether college is appropriate for all or most young people, and whether for some it is necessary at all. These issues are of particular interest to teacher educators. Over a quarter century ago, Sicherman (1991) presented the idea that we don’t need more college graduates, most of whom lack jobrelated skills, and what is needed is those jobrelated skills and on-the-job training. His perspective was further supported by Goodchild (1997), who noted the need of alternatives for and within traditional college education. Building further on those concepts, Rosenbaum (2001) noted the effectiveness of school-to-work practices in Japan and Germany and documented the lack of significant development of such programs in the United States as an alternative to college. More recently, Gray and Herr (2006) expressed criticism of the No Child Left Behind Act and the mentality of the college degree being

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“the one way to win.” They advocated one- or two-year postsecondary technical institutions or work-based programs sponsored by employers and employee groups. The practical opportunity for such alternatives was noted by Serna (2016), who predicted that by 2025, 60% of new entrants into the workforce would need a college degree or certified post-secondary training, compared to 40% of new entrants possessing those credentials today. He pointed out that impediments, especially financial, to the college degree make alternatives the viable choice for first-generation and lower-income students. Teacher educators have the opportunity to embrace these ideas as they counsel and guide students in making choices for their future direction.

Methodology The aforementioned authors in the professional press and academic publications highlight the need to ascertain the perspectives of business professionals concerning their perceived value of a traditional college degree compared to the alternative certification of job-related skills.

This study assessed their perceptions through interviews conducted with 42 recruiters representing a wide variety of products and services at a regional career fair. Due to the nature of the interviewing environment, in which the professionals were intensely involved in discussions with potential employees, it was necessary that the inquiry be both brief and concise. The research question to be addressed was, therefore, very specific: What is the perceived value of a traditional college degree in contrast to or as a complement to independently certified job-related skills?

Findings and Discussion To address the research question, the recruiters were asked a straightforward question: What is the most important credential for a successful new employee: a college degree from an accredited institution or independently certified job-related skills? Respondents were also given the option to answer that each of those would be equally important or that neither of them would be important. Results of the study are found in Table 1.

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Table 1 Recruiters’ Perception of the Most Important Credential for a Successful New Employee ____________________________________________ Number of Respondents N = 42

Percent of Respondents

____________________________________________ College degree from an accredited institution

4

10%

Independently certified jobrelated skills

3

7%

Each of the above would be equally important

33

78%

2

5%

Neither of the above would be important

____________________________________________

These results were dramatic and decisive. Very few respondents cited solely a “college degree from an accredited institution” (4 respondents, 10% of the total), solely “independently certified job related skills” (3 respondents, 7% of the total), or indicated that “neither of the above would be important” (2 respondents, 5% of the total). The vast majority (33 respondents, 78% of the total) indicated that a college degree from an accredited institution AND independently certified jobrelated skills would be equally important. These responses suggest that, contrary to the naysayers, the college degree remains a valuable credential.

They also point to the importance of independently certified job-related skills, suggesting that institutions would benefit by offering them as part of the college experience.

In the Marketing Department of this author’s institution, this has been addressed with the development of special proficiency certificates in three distinct specializations: Professional Selling/Sales Management, Supply Chair/Logistics, and Social Media/Internet Marketing. Coursework within these certificate programs is proficiency-based, with learning outcomes focused on specific job-related skills.

In the Professional Selling/Sales Management specialization, which is managed by this author, coursework provides skill development in the context of a 14-week sales training program and a 14-week management training program

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respectively. Both classes are dedicated to providing students with skills, strategies, and tactics that can be directly applied to the professional business environment. In Professional Selling, these include communication, relationship-building, and networking skills, including presentation skills based on asking questions and listening to prospects, engaging them in helping to identify needs and opportunities, supplemented with negotiation skills designed to address objections and to close a profitable sale. In Sales Management, the focus is on leadership development and commanding respect by establishing a culture employees want to be affiliated with and in achieving results through others by empowering employees to fulfill their individual potential by achieving objective results in the mutual interests of the manager, the organization, and themselves. Specific skill development includes hiring and staffing, establishing a system of standards and objective measurement, conducting performance reviews, dealing with performance problems, establishing a compensation system, and developing sales territories. Both courses supplement traditional coursework with in-class scenarios, case studies, role plays, and negotiation simulations. Recruiters have been consistently receptive to graduates with these skills, which make new employees more productive more quickly.

The aforementioned approach to coursework has its greatest implications for the field of teacher education. Specifically, how can such skills development be brought into the high school environment to provide students a viable alternative to a traditional college education? To address this, the author has developed a two-day intense sales training program that will be offered in local high schools. Colleagues of the author are developing a parallel program to provide jobrelated training in the field of supply chain and logistics. Both programs are designed to generate skills that will enhance prospects for attaining employment immediately after high school and for superior performance on the job, thus giving students a leg up for career progress.

Conclusions Serious questions are being raised about the value and effectiveness of the traditional college

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degree. In the field of teacher education, this suggests the need to reassess the assumption that the primary pathway to success in life is the college degree. For a large number of students, this implies that there is an opportunity for an alternative path: to focus on skills development rather than preparation for college. Teacher educators can address this opportunity through partnerships with the business community and institutions of higher education.

There is significant value for the field of teacher education to include the development of networking skills that can address this opportunity. Local two- and four-year institutions may have faculty with a business background that would qualify them to develop skills training for high school students. Such faculty are expected to perform service, at their institutions or in the community, and are therefore likely to be receptive to such activities. In local businesses, managers responsible for skills development for their employees are also likely to be receptive to the proposal, as this would help them identify persons they might wish to consider hiring.

In sum, there’s a great opportunity – with benefits for all parties – for the field of teacher education to prepare future educators with the concept and strategies for establishing professional networks and helping students who are not on a pathway to college attain skills that will prepare them for employment in the workforce and enhance their prospects for career success.

Opportunities for Future Research Traditional universities have an incumbent opportunity to differentiate themselves from emerging alternatives by requiring proficiency in generic skills and building upon that with the development of job-related skills important to the business constituency. Researchers can continue to develop such programs and document actions which lead to progress. It would also be interesting to conduct studies comparing career progress of graduates with these differentiated skills in contrast to those persons with alternative credentials. Similarly, it would be interesting to compare environments where teacher educators stress the perspective that college is not the only way to win and then establish viable pathways for

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students for whom an alternative to college would be their best choice. Such studies, over the long term, could demonstrate the objective efficacy of such programs.

Of even greater significance, future research could assess the implications for teacher education in implementing the aforementioned building of networks to develop professional skills for high school students who do not plan to pursue a college degree. If such programs revealed a significant impact, it would provide evidence that the field of teacher education would benefit by embracing these programs and including them as part of the teacher education curriculum.

References Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational. New York: Harper-Collins.

Arum, R., & Roksa, J. (2011). Academically adrift.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bonk, C. (2009). The world is open. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Boyer, S., Edmondson, D., Artis, A., & Fleming, D. (2014). Self-directed learning. A tool for lifelong learning. Journal of Marketing Education, 36(1), 5-19.

Carey, K. (2015). The end of college. New York: Riverhead Books.

Carter, R. (2016). Faculty scholarship has a profound positive association with student evaluations in teaching – except when it doesn’t. Journal of Marketing Education, 38(1), 18-36.

Christensen, C., & Eyring, H. (2011). The innovative university. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Comer, D., Lenaghan, J., & Sengupta, K. (2015). Factors that affect students’ capacity to fulfill the role of online learner. Journal of Education for Business, 90, 145-155.

Dillon, S. (2005, December 16). Literacy falls for graduates from college, testing finds. The New York Times.

Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit. New York: Random House.

Dwyer, C., Boswell, A., & Elliott, M. (2015). An evaluation of critical thinking competencies in business settings. Journal of Education for Business, 90(5), 260-269.

Finch, D., Nadeau, J., & O’Reilly, N. (2013). The future of marketing education: A practitioner’s perspective.

Journal of Marketing Education, 35(1), 54-67.

Fried, J., & Hansson, D. (2010). Rework. New York: Crown Business.

Friedman, T. (2005). The world is flat. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

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Ganesh, G., Paswan, A., & Sun, Q. (2015). Are face-toface classes more effective than other classes?

Marketing Education Review, 25(2), 67-81.

Goodchild, L. F. (1997). Contemporary undergraduate education: An era of alternatives and reassessment.

Theory Into Practice, 36(2), 123-131.

Gray, K. C., & Herr, E. L. (2006). Other ways to win: Creating alternatives for high school graduates.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Books.

Gruber, T., Lowrie, A., Brodowsky, G., Reppel, A., Voss, R., & Chowdhury, N. (2012). Investigating the influence of professor characteristics on student satisfaction and dissatisfaction: A comparative study. Journal of Marketing Education, 34(2), 165178.

Morgan, J. (2015). Online versus face-to-face accounting education: A comparison of CPA exam outcomes across matched institutions. Journal of Education for Business, 90, 420-426.

Mumper, M. (1996). Removing college price barriers.

Albany, NY: State University of New York.

Munoz, L., Miller, R., & Poole, M. (2016). Professional student organizations and experiential learning activities: What drives student intentions to participate? Journal of Education for Business, 91(1), 45-51.

Ries, A., & Trout, J. (1981). Positioning: The battle for your mind. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Rosenbaum, J. E. (2001). Beyond college for all: Career paths for the forgotten half. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Sebastianelli, R., Swift, C., & Tamimi, N. (2015). Factors affecting perceived learning, satisfaction, and quality in the online MBA: A structural equation modeling approach. Journal of Education for Business, 90(6), 296-305.

Selingo, J. (2013). College (un)bound. New York: New Harvest.

Serna, G. R. (2016). The federal role in financing higher education: Effectiveness, issues, and alternatives.

VTechWorks. Retrieved from https://vtechworks.lib. vt.edu/handle/10919/73738 Sicherman, N. (1991). “Overeducation” in the labor market. Journal of Labor Economics, 9(2), 101-122.

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About the Author Bob Kimball, PhD Dr. Kimball has 13 years of sales and marketing experience with Coca-Cola USA, including positions as Central Area Home Market Sales Manager and Field Implementation Manager for Mello Yello.

He developed and conducted sales and management training programs for both company and bottler personnel. Bob later managed his own firm, The Kimball Organization, specializing in sales and management training, with clients including CocaCola Bottling Companies, Cotton States Insurance, Lanier Business Products, Pabst Brewing Company, and the Georgia Department of Education. After earning his doctorate in Marketing at the University of Georgia, he joined the Department of Marketing at The University of West Florida in 1987, where he specializes in Marketing Fundamentals, Professional Selling, and Sales Management. Dr. Kimball has published numerous scholarly articles, concentrating in the area of marketing education.

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Effects of a Professional Development Design on Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Jackie HeeYoung Kim, Georgia Southern University, and Moon-Heum Cho, Syracuse University

Teacher efficacy, a type of self-efficacy, is the confidence teachers have in their ability to promote learning. Given the pivotal role of teacher efficacy in classroom teaching, understanding how teachers acquire it is essential.

Because teacher efficacy is specific to particular teaching contexts, teachers shape perceptions about their capabilities in light of the requirements of a particular teaching task (Tschannen-Moran, Hoy, & Hoy, 1998), such as implementing new instructional practices.

Researchers examining teacher efficacy have, in fact, found self-efficacy to be among the most potent influences on receptivity to change (Poole & Okeafor, 1989; Tschannen-Moran & McMaster, 2009; Shahid & Thompson, 2001).

Some researchers have even suggested that teacher efficacy may actually be more important than skills and knowledge (Wozney, Venkatesh, & Abrami, 2006). They viewed knowledge of a new method as indeed necessary, yet teachers must also feel confident using it to facilitate student learning (Ertmer & Ottenbriet-Leftwich, 2010).

A new instructional practice well received by educators is the flipped classroom, which differs from traditional instruction when teachers deliver content during class and students do homework outside the classroom (Kim, Foster, & Cho, 2017; Wanner & Palmer, 2015). The flipped classroom operates in reverse: Students learn the content outside the classroom by themselves and engage

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in activities and projects in the classroom. In the flipped classroom, teachers create lectures in video format or select necessary content such as book chapters or web sources to help students learn outside the classroom. The concept of the flipped classroom is appealing, but many teachers feel challenged by it (Wanner & Palmer, 2015); therefore, teacher efficacy in designing and implementing the flipped classroom is very important for its successful adoption.

New instructional methods like the flipped classroom are often promoted through professional development, but little research has been conducted on the role of professional development design in improving teacher efficacy. Thus, the purpose of this research was to determine whether a professional development model can increase teacher efficacy in designing and implementing a flipped classroom. Social cognitive theory served as our framework as we designed a professional development model called Self-Efficacy Enhanced Design, which we created to examine the perceptions of participants and to identify activities important in improving self-efficacy.

Our premise was that efforts to increase teacher efficacy, content knowledge, and understanding of the processes involved in designing and implementing the flipped classroom model would lead to improving teacher effectiveness.

Research Questions The guiding research questions were as follows:

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• How does professional development increase teacher efficacy in designing and implementing the flipped classroom?

• How do teachers perceive professional development in terms of the sources of selfefficacy?

Teacher Efficacy Self-efficacy was defined by Bandura (1977) as the belief that people hold about their abilities to perform particular tasks, which in turn influences the levels of effort they expend, their persistence when working through challenges, and their resilience in the face of failure. Thus, strength of conviction in effectiveness is likely to affect whether people will try to cope with given situations, including those requiring change (Bandura, 1977). Extensive research has been conducted on a type of self-efficacy known as teacher efficacy, specifically defined as a teacher’s “beliefs about his or her capability to organize and execute courses of action required to accomplish a specific teaching task in a particular context” (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998, p. 233). Many researchers have suggested a strong connection between (a) teacher efficacy and (b) instructional motivation and effectiveness; specifically, teachers with a strong sense of individual efficacy tend to spend more time planning, designing, and organizing what they teach. They are open to new ideas and willing to try new strategies, set high goals, and persist through setbacks and times of change (Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2000). Teachers who feel more efficacious tend to use a greater variety of instructional strategies and are more likely to try new teaching techniques, including those that may be more difficult to implement (Hami, Czerniak & Lumpe, 1996; Riggs & Enochs, 1990). Furthermore, teacher efficacy correlates with classroom instructional strategies and a willingness to implement educational innovations (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). Teachers with higher self-efficacy have been found to be more

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willing to implement new instructional programs (e.g., Donnell & Gettinger, 2015) and more efficient when doing so than teachers with lower self-efficacy (e.g., Berman, McLaughlin, BassGolod, Pauly, & Zellman, 1977). In the context of this study, teachers may view a new teaching method, such as the flipped classroom, as important in improving their practice for better student outcomes, but if they do not believe that they can successfully design and implement it, they will be less likely to incorporate it into their practice.

Professional Development as a Source of Teacher Efficacy If teacher efficacy is a malleable trait influenced by the teacher’s performance and experience (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998), then it can change over time and with support.

Bandura (1977) proposed four major sources of self-efficacy that contribute to its formation: mastery experiences, verbal persuasion, vicarious experiences, and physiological arousal.

For teachers, the most powerful of these is mastery experiences, including successful prior teaching experiences (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2007). The level of mastery experiences impacts success in implementing a new teaching method.

Mastery experiences, also called enactive mastery, comprise perhaps the most influential source of efficacy because they are experiential in nature and rooted in past performance accomplishments such as training or prior on-thejob experiences. The value of mastery experiences is that, when faced with similar situations, individuals rely on perceptions of past mastery to make judgments about present capabilities. Prior teaching successes, particularly in the face of adversity, help establish and strengthen efficacy, but less successful past performance may create doubts about personal ability and undermine belief in current capabilities (Wood & Bandura, 1989). In one notable example, familiarizing teachers with

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educational software during professional development sessions helped them adapt to using the technology with their students; however, evidence showed that achievement gains were higher the second year the teachers worked with the technology (Anderson, Corbett, Koedinger, & Pelletier, 1995), reinforcing the value of personal mastery experiences over other self-efficacy enhancements provided in professional development.

Verbal persuasion pertains to the verbal interactions that teachers have with colleagues, supervisors, and administrators about their success as well as prospects for success in the teaching context. Bandura (1997) postulated that teachers judge their self-efficacy based on the verbal encouragement of those whom they perceive as role models.

Vicarious experiences are those in which someone else models the target activity. When teachers observe the success or failure of other teachers who design and implement a new method, they perceive the new method as more or less credible. When someone with whom the teacher identifies performs well, teacher efficacy should increase. By extension, the nature and design of professional development experience, in which teachers observe the demonstration of a target activity, may influence teacher efficacy (Ross & Bruce, 2007; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2007; Tschannen-Moran & McMaster, 2009).

Emotional and physiological arousal, which also affects teacher efficacy, can be positive as with enthusiasm and anticipation or negative as with anxiety or fear. As a motivational construct, self-efficacy is linked to teachers’ effort and persistence, which affect performance. Emotional and physiological arousal, in turn, become new sources of efficacy.

Many researchers have pointed out the close relationship between teacher efficacy and professional development, but few have focused on professional development specifically designed to improve it. Rutherford, Long, and

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Farkas (2017) investigated 431 teachers’ experiences with professional development designed to support their implementation of ST Math, a commonly used digital mathematics software. They researched the association among (a) the degree to which teachers value professional development, (b) self-efficacy, and (c) student achievement outcomes, without addressing professional development design in terms of teacher efficacy. Yoo (2016) examined the effect of online professional development on teacher efficacy in 148 K-12 educators. She described the four sources of self-efficacy and the treatment to increase them; however, her research focused only on the change in teacher efficacy through professional development from a broader perspective instead of focusing on how the four sources contributed to the improvement of teacher efficacy. In this study, we therefore examined both the role of the design of professional development in improving teacher efficacy and the manner in which the four sources of self-efficacy contribute to its formation.

Methods Context and Professional Development Design This professional development, aiming at the improvement of teacher efficacy, was offered at a weeklong summer workshop in 2016 for 10 Georgia teachers in partnership with the Georgia Southern University College of Education and College of Science and Technology. In 2017 another 11 teachers engaged in a second weeklong workshop. Thus, a total of 21 teachers from several elementary and middle schools in Georgia participated in this professional development. In small groups, participants learned to construct lesson plans that incorporated three components of a flipped classroom model: pre-class activities, in-class activities, and post-class activities. While improving content knowledge in math, participants learned instructional strategies that

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allow students to use their mathematical reasoning in authentic reading and writing activities; they also simulated the flipped classroom model for collaborative peer review.

The Georgia Southern team provided ongoing, sustained in-classroom support for all participants through follow-up training and monthly reflective postings along with dialogue on Google Community, a social network site.

Given that the professional development program was intended to provide mastery experiences, we focused on designing and implementing training that ensured teachers adequate opportunities to master new teaching techniques and content before they were expected to apply them in the classroom. Efficacy theory and research have suggested that some ways of doing so may be effective in developing efficacy.

For example, we knew that providing mastery experiences in training typically involves the use of skill practice with a focus on how best to use it to generate both learning and subsequent skill applications; therefore, the practice component had to be the heart of the professional development.

The guidelines for learning modules of the professional development program were drawn from exemplary models based on the research of Sparks and Loucks-Horsley (1989) and DragoSeverson (2004), who recommended training, observation or modeling, involvement in the development or improvement process (needs analysis, lesson plan construction, reciprocal teaching, coaching), individually guided activities (self-directed/needs-based instruction), and mentoring.

We adopted social cognitive theory and used the four sources of self-efficacy to design the professional development activities. First, for mastery experiences, participants were introduced to the flipped classroom and learned to reduce time spent on direct instruction to create more time for individual instruction, intervention, and project-based activities. Realizing that the

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promotion of successful experiences in development and implementation was vital to foster mastery experiences, we adopted the selfguided, needs-based approach to tap into their principal interest in learning a flipped classroom approach. Hence, the project was based squarely on the teaching and learning needs and objectives articulated by the administrators and teachers and focused on improving the foundational skills identified by the school systems as most important for primary and middle school educators. Mastery experience was promoted through activities in lesson plan simulation, student/teacher roleplaying, reciprocal teaching, and collaborative group mini-lesson demonstrations. Participants had ample opportunity to construct lesson plans incorporating the three components of a flipped classroom model: pre-class activities, in-class activities, and post-class activities guided by a lesson plan rubric and a class observation rubric.

Over a period of five days and throughout yearlong follow-up activities, the participants implemented a flipped classroom model in their classrooms, participated in online discussions with peers using Google Communities, and applied tasks from the materials they learned.

Second, verbal persuasion took the form of encouragement and feedback during professional development workshops, where we fostered an environment rich in opportunities for (a) verbal persuasion among participants and instructors, (b) collaborative critiques, and (c) rubric-based assessment. During collaborative sessions, after group members created mini-lessons and screencast lectures, they demonstrated the flipped classroom model before the whole group for collaborative peer review based on the systematic rubric. Feedback on the individual teaching demonstration offered during reciprocal teaching provided additional verbal persuasion.

Third, to gain vicarious experiences, participants were asked to observe instructors’ modeling during instruction periods, peers’ modeling during reciprocal teaching, and online

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lesson plan sharing through Google Communities. Instructors adopted the flipped model in designing the workshop structure; they also created pre- and in-class activities and posted pre-class activities in daily agendas and on Google Communities. After observing instructors’ modeling on a daily basis, participants conducted reciprocal teaching to master the flipped strategies.

Fourth, to keep physiological arousal at the optimal level and avoid its negative forms, such as anxiety and fear, participants were coached to transform abstract and big lesson ideas into more realistic and smaller lesson ideas because stress and anxiety negatively affect teacher efficacy.

The project team also shared exemplary teaching examples collected during follow-up observations given at other times before 2016. Through online discussion forums, participants were also given ample opportunity to share their challenges along with possible solutions or actual cases in which they resolved difficult issues with one another.

To reduce anxiety and resistance to the new teaching method, the professional development offered multiple ways to observe, share, practice, and reflect on the flipped classroom models.

Research Method and Data Sources We used mixed methods to capitalize on the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative methods (Greene, 2007). The 21 teachers in our study volunteered to complete an online survey before and after the professional development workshops. Self-efficacy scales were developed for the survey to measure teachers’ confidence about the flipped classroom approach, specifically about (a) designing activities for the flipped classroom and (b) implementing a flipped classroom. A 10-point Likert scale was used, in which responses ranged from 0 (cannot do at all) to 10 (highly certain can do), following the selfefficacy scale guideline (Bandura, 2006).

Participants also answered semi-structured interview questions during and at the end of the

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workshop. The interviews were conducted to collect data regarding the change in participants’ confidence in terms of the four sources of selfefficacy before and after the workshop.

Data Analysis For the quantitative data acquired from the survey, we conducted paired sample t tests to examine improvement of teacher efficacy in designing and implementing the flipped classroom. We conducted the data analysis separately for the 2016 and 2017 participants because the teacher professional development workshops were funded by separate grants and participants in the two summer workshops were different.

For the qualitative data obtained from the semi-structured interviews, a modified version of typological analysis outlined by Hatch (2002) guided our analysis. In typological analysis (i.e., deductive analysis), the researcher separates the data into categories based on predetermined constructs. In this study, the categories for typological analysis represented the four sources of self-efficacy (Borko, 2004). We copied and pasted all of the teachers’ responses into Word documents for analysis. Once the documents were created, we independently read through the transcripts and coded the concepts by selected themes.

Results Quantitative Results The results of the paired sample t tests conducted to analyze the change in the selfefficacy of participants in the 2016 workshop showed that between the pre- and post-tests selfefficacy for designing flipped classrooms significantly improved. Specifically, t (9) = -5.23, p < .001, between Time 1 (M = 5.68, SD = 2.28) and Time 2 (M = 9.78, SD = 1.20), and Cohen’s d = 2.25, indicating a large effect of the teacher professional development on teachers’ selfefficacy for designing flipped classrooms (see

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Table 1). Effect size indicates the magnitude of a treatment effect, and Cohen’s d conveys the difference between the means of the two groups divided by the average of their standard deviations. In general, an effect size of 0.2 or 0.3 is regarded as small; around 0.5, medium; and 0.8 or more, large. Self-efficacy for implementing flipped classrooms also significantly improved, t (9) = -4.35, p < .01 between Time 1 (M = 5.78, SD = 2.85) and Time 2 (M = 9.55, SD = 1.10), and Cohen’s d = 1.75 (see Table 1).

With the data from participants in the 2017 professional development workshop, we conducted another paired sample t test to examine improvement in self-efficacy in designing and

implementing a flipped classroom. Between the pre- and post-tests, self-efficacy for designing flipped classroom significantly improved (see Table 2). Specifically, t (10) = -7.46, p < .001, between Time 1 (M = 4.59, SD = 1.47) and Time 2 (M = 8.41, SD = 1.10), and Cohen’s d = 2.56, indicating a large effect of the professional development workshop on self-efficacy for designing a flipped classroom. In addition, selfefficacy for implementing a flipped classroom significantly improved: t (10) = -7.59, p < .001 between Time 1 (M = 4.05, SD = 1.60) and Time 2 (M = 8.24, SD = 1.37), and Cohen’s d = 2.79 (see Table 2).

Table 1 Comparison of 2016 Participants’ Self-Efficacy on Pre- and Post-tests Variables

Pre

Post

t-statistics

Cohen’s d

M

SD

M

SD

Self-efficacy for designing a flipped classroom

5.68

2.28

9.78

1.20

-5.25**

2.25

Self-efficacy for implementing a flipped classroom

5.78

2.85

9.55

1.10

-4.35**

1.75

Note. All the variables were measured on an 11-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (no confidence at all) to 10 (100% confidence). Cohen's d = (M2−M1)/√[(σ12+σ2 2 ) / 2] ** p < .001

Table 2 Comparison of 2017 Participants’ Self-efficacy on Pre- and Post-tests Variables

Pre

Post

t-statistics

Cohen’s d

M

SD

M

SD

Self-efficacy for designing flipped classroom

4.59

1.47

8.41

1.10

-7.46**

2.94

Self-efficacy for implementing flipped classroom

4.05

1.60

8.24

1.37

-7.22**

2.81

Note. All the variables were measured on an 11-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (no confidence at all) to 10 (100% confidence). Cohen's d = (M2−M1)/√[(σ12+σ2 2 ) / 2] ** p < .001

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Qualitative Results Regarding the second research question about participants’ perceptions of the role of the four sources of self-efficacy in improving their own self-efficacy with regard to the flipped classroom,

several themes emerged from the semi-structured interviews (see Table 3). Overall, the professional development activities helped build confidence in understanding and embracing the flipped classroom model.

Table 3 Attribution to the Sources of Teacher Efficacy Source of selfefficacy

Attribution Themes

Mastery experiences

 Alignment with teachers’ goals  Familiarization with new educational methods  Ample opportunity to practice  Q & A opportunities with experts and colleagues during development and implementation

Verbal

 Relevant and immediate feedback  Connection between personal knowledge and community knowledge  Safe space for feedback

persuasion

Vicarious experiences

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 Observation of challenges and successes  Combination of observation and execution  Connection with colleagues on the same topic  Observation and Q&A opportunities

Sample Quotations  Designing our lectures tailored to our own needs.  I did not know absolutely about the flipped classroom prior to the workshop. I had no knowledge how to make my videos. Now I have multiple options for making videos for the classroom. Having a structure of pre and post activities helped me a lot. Having the flipped classroom lesson planning increased my confidence.  I became very confident after this workshop. Being able to ask questions to experts when I have questions helped me immensely.  It’s a relatively new thing – a lot of these people are not used to it. In my head, I keep drawing parallels to Common Core Math – it’s new/it must be bad. Some people have a perception of Common Core Standards/ flipped classroom – being new. But it's dependent on how effective I am in implementing it/how much I embrace it myself.  When I get watching, and I get stuck I am not going anywhere. You were right there so I can ask the bunch of questions.  It helped me because it allowed me to ask questions if we do not understand. Yes. Nice to get others’ perspective. In even every different grade level. How to bring into their classroom. Because everyone brings different backgrounds to the table.  I am now very confident; I was able to get questions and answers. I will be getting feedback for my lesson to help me improve.  I want to believe everyone is here to be better at flipped, so I ask something. If I ask it, they won't look down on me. And giving and receiving feedback will be natural and inspiring.  Because we have different ways of doing things. Hearing someone else's interpretation can be eye-opening. If I hear my group, how they might do something, giving me more options. Oh, there are other ways to do it beside my ways.  It was relaxing environment. Giving and receiving feedback flowed easily.  Professors that we worked with are observers and analysts and give us the close feedback.  I became very confident after seeing you guys using it. You modeled for us. Modeling in this workshop. Seeing others’ strategies.

Reciprocal teaching to see different style really helps.  Seeing others’ struggling also helped. I did not think about that software we learned.  I was talking and showing my lesson after seeing instructors’ modeling. I became highly confident. I learned it does not have to be reinvented. I can use something already out there from watching others.  I became very confident after that I have given resources and enough practice doing it.  I wanted to see models. I want to see more. I was very excited to see it happened.

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Physiological arousal

Anxious:  Uncertainty  Lack of time to plan  Lack of support and resources  The transition from the old to the new Not anxious at all  Community knowledge  Observation  Enough practice  Others’ perspectives and experiences  Well defined frame of reference  Advanced skills and knowledge

 I am very confident, I saw more things and learned more things. You did a good job of modeling. We play a role as students to see how students would see. And we played a role as a teacher to see it actively. Otherwise, I would see it passively. We are given opportunities to actively go through it.  I became very confident. I got to see every different teacher style. I was surprised to see what she is capable of. I did not know that kind of teacher down the hall. Now, I have a connection. I can ask her questions if I have questions. Now we are shining. We will continue to talk through this. Now we are connected.  Very confident. By seeing what other people are struggling with/not doing effectively, I can anticipate those errors myself and fix them before they happen.  Uncertainty makes me a little anxious. There are so many ways to do flipped classroom. Different videos, different ways, different resources to flip the classroom. And there are questions of how often you do it and what is the best way to do it in the classroom.  Anxious. Being uncertain that my students received the instruction they needed. Also uncertain about their achievement - am I improving their learning? Is it improving their engagement? Hopefully, increased engagement leads to increased achievement.  A little anxious because I do not have enough resources and strategies to implement. Because I have lack of time.  Not very anxious, because I already have tools. It is the matter of getting fine-tuning. I have a framework to extend the use of it to my best ability.  Anxious, because I am not able to know what I am able to do. I lost a lot of technology people. Technology infrastructure may not be there for me to use all technology tools. We have the small percentage of students who do not have the technology. They break it then they do not have it for the rest of year.  Not at all anxious. Collaborating with classmates helps us improve ideas in much better ways.  I have co-workers taking this workshop with me. One of them will know how to solve. I can go back and ask for help.  Not at all anxious, we are given a variety of tools to use in the classroom and time to work with tools.  A little anxious. Still, have not decided how many days I have to do within a week. From almost of no class to totally the flipped. Finding a balance between the traditional method class and the flipped classroom model. Where to start, how much I will start.  I have seen and heard, and they have gone through this process.

Hearing experiences of other teachers who have tried make me not anxious.  A little anxious about acceptance from parents and students.

Resistance. What number of students work outside classroom? How many out of 20 students will really do it. Will the parent be excited about it? They would say they do not have time for that.  I am confident that I can convince my students, but I do not get to see parents often, so I do not have a chance to persuade parents.  Exercise through the workshop, so I am not anxious.

Analyzing comments from the participants, we matched the perceived features of the professional workshop with the four sources of self-efficacy. Overall, the analysis of the interviews indicated that not only did the

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particular workshop features influence selfefficacy but also that the four sources of selfefficacy were closely intertwined. For example, vicarious experiences, such as observing others, improved mastery experiences; and mastery

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experiences with verbal persuasion, including a mini-lesson demonstration coupled with immediate and relevant feedback, simultaneously improved both mastery experiences and increased verbal persuasion.

Mastery experiences in professional development. We learned that the introduction of a new teaching model necessitates two steps: teachers (a) must conceptualize the flipped model in the classroom and (b) need time to assimilate their learning during the workshop in a selfdirected way to familiarize themselves with what they learned on their own terms. They noted that various modes of practice covered in the workshop (reciprocal teaching, lesson construction, and mini-lesson teaching demonstration) provided opportunities to become familiar with the new teaching concept.

According to the interview data, the major factor contributing to change in teacher selfefficacy was the actual, multiple practice sessions in lesson plan development. Teachers noted that simple exposure to the material at other workshops without practice failed to increase their confidence. Teachers need a practice component in training programs, but this component is often absent or of limited relevance in the typical training program.

To increase teacher motivation to master a new teaching method, research on the focus of school administration is critical. The flipped classroom instructors learned that teachers’ major concerns and interests derive from the focus that school administers place on the school improvement plan, which affects teachers’ goals and motivates them to grow. Hence, workshop content must closely align with the school’s targeted instructional improvement plan to increase the mastery level of the projected skills and concepts. Participants cited the ability to ask questions and hear answers from an expert present in real time during a demonstration helped them gain the confidence needed to adopt the flipped classroom model.

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Verbal persuasion in professional development. Teachers value a workshop design that fostered a helpful, collegial environment in which positive verbal reinforcement shapes teacher efficacy. Teachers noted that receiving and providing verbal support and encouragement helped them effectively build self-efficacy. They recognized the value of immediate and relevant feedback from instructors and other participants on their action plans. The sociocultural perspective of learning (Bandura, 1997), which encompasses the development of professional knowledge, personal knowledge, and community knowledge in the training process, played a critical role in participants’ confidence.

Participants stated that hearing myriad interpretations of the same topic was an eyeopening experience that produced community knowledge derived from differing and rich backgrounds. They commented that feedback was given and received in a safe, relaxed environment where feedback flowed easily and naturally.

Vicarious experience in professional development. Teachers attributed their increased confidence to multiple opportunities to observe other teachers successfully and unsuccessfully adopting the flipped classroom model. Seeing what other people struggle with or do ineffectively, they can anticipate errors and correct them before they occur in their own practice. These comparisons provided potent referents useful in the development of selfperceptions of competence (Schunk, 1983).

Interview data also revealed that the combination of numerous observations and performance execution impacted teachers’ attitudes toward and confidence in teaching along with their receptiveness to change, aligning with previous research that showed minimal increase in teaching skill resulting from only watching a presenter (Joyce & Showers, 1996). The workshop in this study, however, allowed teachers to observe performance of the skill by proficient instructors and to execute the

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performance on a small scale, providing them with valuable information and insight.

Participants also valued their colleagues as significant resources whom they could access when facing problems with the new method.

They also noted the opportunity to ask questions and receive immediate feedback as needed as another benefit of observing demonstration by instructors and colleagues.

Physiological arousal in professional development. Twenty-five percent of the participants expressed anxiety about adopting the new teaching method because of their unfamiliarity with and the ambiguity of the benefits of the flipped classroom model.

Teachersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; comments indicated that they gained confidence in the new instructional method, but environmental factors, such as the availability of technology, parental involvement, administrative support, and school culture, produced anxiety when they contemplated adopting the flipped classroom.

One of the major concerns for teachers in implementing the flipped classroom model was the inaccessibility of technology for students.

Although flipped classroom instructors could develop ideas to address this issue, a more effective way to tackle this problem is to have teachers brainstorm solutions collectively.

Another issue that concerned teachers was that the flipped classroom model requires committed parent involvement for young children to handle technology; therefore, flipped classroom instructors should model ways to encourage parent involvement. Flipped classroom instructors learned that the best way to promote a new paradigm of instruction was to have teachers listen to one another. Collective brainstorming helped teachers who struggled with the approach to see the benefits of incorporating a new teaching model.

Most teachers noted that they lowered their level of anxiety significantly by the end of the workshop because they were able to observe the

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exemplary performance of others. With the ease that results from continued practice, skill development, and successfully presented lesson plans, they gained a sense of accomplishment, pride, and exhilaration. The professional development design focused on incremental learning experiences that allowed teachers to experience success.

Discussion In this study, we investigated the associations between the value of professional development and the self-efficacy of primary, elementary, and middle school teachers involved in designing and implementing a flipped classroom model.

Because teacher efficacy has been found to be a more critical factor than the knowledge and skills learned in professional training when adopting the new teaching method (Donnell & Gettinger, 2015; Wozney et al., 2006), examining the way professional development influences teacher efficacy is crucial. We found that participants made significant improvement in self-efficacy for designing and implementing the flipped classroom. We have demonstrated why we believe that our Self-Efficacy Enhanced Design model represents an influential professional development design that can increase teachersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; self-efficacy. One of the notable findings of the study was that the four sources of self-efficacy are closely intertwined. For example, teachers saw that vicarious experiences, such as observing others, also improved their mastery experiences; and a mini-lesson demonstration coupled with immediate and relevant feedback simultaneously strengthened both mastery experiences and verbal persuasion.

This study specifically supports self-efficacy as a focal point for designing professional development. We believe that self-efficacy, when used as a focus in the design of professional development activities, can provide a sound theoretical framework for understanding the why and how of teacher development. Training,

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observation or modeling, involvement in development or improvement process (needs analysis, lesson plan construction, reciprocal teaching, coaching), individually guided activities (self-directed or needs-based instruction), and mentoring that can be used to foster self-efficacy, improve teacher competence and enhance student outcomes.

Our study implies that improving teacher efficacy, one of the most influential constructs to foster teachers’ capability to teach, is essential.

We also confirm the effectiveness of professional development in increasing efficacy with regard to new teaching techniques. Because scant research has been conducted on the topic of self-efficacy training in teacher professional development, the findings from this study provide critical insights for professional developers who conduct studies about building connections between instructional activities and the sources of self-efficacy.

The limitations of this study require attention for future studies. First, further investigation of the association between teacher efficacy and student outcomes is necessary. Second, a longitudinal study could be useful to accumulate follow-up data about the sustained benefits of the workshops. Despite these limitations, this study is meaningful in that it empirically investigated the role of teacher efficacy and its formation by using social cognitive theory both quantitatively and qualitatively. We hope the current study contributes to the designing teacher professional workshop in teacher education.

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Berman, P., McLaughlin, M. W., Bass-Golod, G. V., Pauly, E., & Zellman, G. L. (1977). Federal programs supporting educational change: Vol. VII: Factors affecting implementation and continuation.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R1589z7. html Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 3-15.

Donnell, L. A., & Gettinger, M. (2015). Elementary school teachers’ acceptability of school reform: Contribution of belief congruence, selfefficacy, and professional development.

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Kim, J. H., Foster, A., & Cho, M. H. (2017). Professional development for technology integration into differentiated math instruction. In J. Keengwe & P. H. Bull (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Transformative Digital Content and Learning Technologies (pp. 1-24). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

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field trial. The Journal of Educational Research, 101(1), 50-60. doi: 10.3200/JOER.101.1.50-60 Rutherford, T., Long, J. J., & Farkas, G. (2017). Teacher value for professional development, self-efficacy, and student outcomes within a digital mathematics intervention. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 51, 22-36.

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About the Authors Jackie HeeYoung Kim, EdD Dr. Kim is an Associate Professor in the College of Education at Georgia Southern University. Dr. Kim has rich experiences in teaching pre-service teachers and working with Georgia teachers through the Teacher Quality Grant and other statewide grants. Dr. Kim’s areas of expertise are in educational technology, particularly technology integration into curriculum, and curriculum and instruction. Her research interest includes the transformation of K-12 classrooms with digital technology, professional development for technology integration into differentiated instruction, and flipped learning in K-8 and higher education.

Moon-Heum Cho, PhD Dr. Cho is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Instructional Design, Development, and Evaluation at Syracuse University. He has taught educational technology and technology integration for pre-service and in-service teachers. His primary research focus is enhancing K-16 teaching and learning practices with technology integration. He is also interested in how students learn and build knowledge in innovative learning spaces, such as through massive open online courses (MOOCs), flipped classrooms, virtual reality, and makerspaces.

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A New Era of Reflection: Utilizing Online Interactive Notebooks to Promote the Transfer of Learning Pamela R. Allen, Georgia Gwinnett College

The rationale for the Online Interactive Notebook was to create a productive organizational system for helping teacher candidates understand the content taught in a senior methods course. In educator preparation, teacher candidates are often overcome with learning vast amounts of content knowledge and feel overwhelmed when learning the many necessary skills to becoming a productive and effective teacher. There are many demands placed on teacher candidates. These requirements come not only from state requirements for educator preparation programs, but also federal requirements that must be met. Case in point, to be a nationally accredited preparation program, the program is required to meet the five standards of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP, 2018). Therefore, these standards require an institution of higher education to have an organized infrastructure to prepare candidates who are ready for the rigorous career of teaching. One of the many requirements included in the standards is a quality assessment system; key assessments are required in every educator preparation program and help demonstrate teacher candidates’ understanding once they are in their final semesters of an educator preparation program. One such nationally recognized assessment is the edTPA. The edTPA was developed through the Stanford

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Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education to assess teacher candidates’ ability to plan, teach, and assess their students.

This assessment requires candidates to plan a 3-5 day learning segment, implement the unit, and assess the students’ progress to measure the teacher candidates’ capacity for effective teaching and learning in the K-12 environment (SCALE, 2017). The skill set required for this one assessment is rigorous and multi-faceted.

Therefore, educator preparation programs must be intentional when planning curriculum for the methods courses taken by teacher candidates.

The Online Interactive Notebook enables teacher candidates to process the information learned so they can transfer their learning and apply the content to their field placement and future classroom. The Online Interactive Notebook helps teacher candidates see the connections between multiple pedagogies taught in the senior methods course, including the value of collaboration between peers. The Online Interactive Notebook helps preservice teachers develop a collaborative learning environment in which learners engage in the process of critical thinking, such as solving problems and working to organize content in a way that it can be stored and retrieved from long-term memory. The Online Interactive Notebook requires the teacher

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candidates to code information into a usable form and place the information in the Online Interactive Notebook that the candidates can refer to during the semester and once they start teaching in their own classroom. The transfer of learning takes place when a teacher candidate takes the information and applies it to another situation effectively, such as implementing the strategies learned in the methods course to the national edTPA assessment or when planning effective lessons in their clinical placement.

The notebook was created as an online document and implemented during a senior methods course. The course instructor created the initial notebook, including a table of contents that was color-coded with the activities the students would complete throughout the semester.

Additional resources were also included in the Online Interactive Notebook, such as hyperlinks to videos and instructional strategies. On the first day of class, the instructor introduced the Online Interactive Notebook to the teacher candidates and shared the purpose of the notebook. The teacher candidates were told that they could add resources that they found helpful as a class, group, or personally. They were given the parameters for the notebook: collaborating with their peers, valuing each item placed in the notebook, and completing their tasks in the Online Interactive Notebook promptly.

Additionally, a sense of community had to be built in the college classroom because teacher candidates needed to learn how to collaborate, manage their time, and trust their classmates. In some cases, the K-12 schooling background does not prepare teacher candidates for the inquisitive and demanding environment that is required in college to make meaning of the content they are studying in their educational courses. So, when teacher candidates come without the ability to process content knowledge, it is the instructorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s job to help build this capacity in the teacher candidates and scaffold the learning. The Online Interactive Notebook provides the scaffold

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teacher candidates need in a non-threatening environment by providing an online location where they can add additional resources and content where they will not be or graded or judged by others; the Online Interactive Notebook is only used to formatively assess teacher candidatesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; content knowledge. It is important to note that using the Online Interactive Notebook does not allow for a lecture approach in a course; this is a method that pushes teacher candidates to think for themselves through case studies, scenarios, investigations, and research studies (Dweck, 2008).

In this course, the author worked to create a collaborative learning environment where teacher candidates were engaged, self-regulated, passionate about learning, and able to demonstrate a transfer of learning concerning the topics studied in the course. The instructor created parameters that enforced a community of learners who were pushed by higher level thinking questions and activities that required critical thinking and communication among their peers. The activities in the Online Interactive Notebook held teacher candidates accountable, worked to build their trusts, served as a communication tool, and positioned them to be in charge of their own learning. For example, the students were given student and classroom scenarios for which they had to identify the barriers to learning, identify strategies to support the learner, and give examples of how they would assess the learner.

This activity allowed the teacher candidates to mimic parts of the Response to Intervention (RTI) process, develop critical thinking skills needed for the edTPA, and communicate with other candidates to solve classroom issues they will face in their first years in the inclusive classroom.

Literature Review In this paper, there are two theoretical models discussed that align with the purpose of the Online Interactive Notebook. These are the information processing model and the transfer of

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learning theory. Each of these theories describes how educator preparation programs can build strong teacher candidates by using active and engaging practices in the college classroom.

Information Processing Model The information processing model is described as the steps one uses to solve problems, specifically the mental processes, such as the working memory capacity, the organization of the long-term memory, and the way one retrieves the information once it’s been learned (Ormrod, 2004). Kiewra (1996) was quoted as specifying that “the interactive notebook could be analogous to an information-processing model. The information processing model involves the processes of selective attention, encoding (coding information into a usable form), placement of information into short-term memory, storages in long-term memory, and retrieval from memory” (Stencel, 2002, p.36). Each of these processes is part of the executive functioning system that a person uses to formulate a response when learning new information or making connections with past learning. This process requires an individual to take in the stimulus, process the information, and then connect new content to what they already know concerning that subject.

This is precisely what the teacher candidates are doing in the Online Interactive Notebook; they are learning to investigate, research, and identify essential information concerning different content knowledge areas and formulate new knowledge into an organized system that can be delivered and shared with their peers. The students then discuss their findings and make connections with past and present learning and ideas going on in their clinical field placement. The more connections the students have with the content, the less frustrating it is for them to learn new content and the easier it becomes to retrieve content from their long- and short-term memory.

Therefore, teaching teacher candidates to think critically and use specific strategies for storing

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and organizing information allows students to hold onto the content learned and make further connections with all learning (Goldstein & Naglieri, 2014). The information processing model describes one’s capacity to retrieve, store, and attend to the new knowledge by making further connections and transfer learning to a new context (Ormrod, 2004).

Transfer of Learning Transfer is the ability to extend knowledge from one area to another. In instruction, the point is to be able to transfer what is learned in the classroom environment to a wide variety of contexts outside of school and the K-12 classroom. Yet the ability to transfer ideas is not a given for all students. Often students learn the information in a specific way, or context, and do not transfer the information to other areas. For example, candidates may memorize academic language for a quiz, but not understand the meaning of the words to use them in their written commentaries. They may learn mathematical facts, but not understand the mathematical reasoning behind why problems are solved using specific procedures and how these translate into real life (Darling-Hammond & Austin, 2003).

This level of critical thinking requires the candidates to be involved in the process of learning, planning, and communicating about the curriculum. Therefore, a collaboration between students and teachers is a key component.

For transfer to occur, learning must involve more than simple memorization or apply a fixed set of procedures (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). Learners must understand a concept or have command of a skill to be able to use it themselves. To build this skill set, a college instructor should offer opportunities for thinking and problem-solving in classroom courses. As students work through the semester using the Online Interactive Notebook in the senior methods course, they are invited to collaborate with their peers concerning instructional

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strategies, pedagogies, and theoretical frameworks. These opportunities with the Online Interactive Notebook support the transfer of learning through receptive and expressive language demands during teacher candidates’ conversations about the different aspects learned in the course over the semester.

Ormrod (2004) discusses strategies such as hill climbing, means-end analysis, working backwards, using visual imagery, and drawing analogies for promoting transfer. Educator preparation programs should utilize these strategies and others similar to the Gradual Release Model by Pearson and Gallagher (1983) to encourage this process of transfer. The Online Interactive Notebook offers opportunities such as those strategies listed above in various activities over the course of the semester in the methods course. For example, the teacher candidates create concept maps and graphic organizers that require students to identify various adaptations that can be utilized for learners with varied needs.

These classroom experiences lead candidates to learn the content thoroughly and engage with the information in meaningful ways. The teacher candidates can then learn to lead and work in larger collaborative groups which value all voices in a group setting. They learn that collaboratively, their ideas can become more complex and thoughtful. This thought process then allows teacher candidates to be a part of a group where they discover that communication can enhance the problem-solving method and they learn to communicate with their peers about real-life issues and concepts. As candidates work through the Online Interactive Notebook and are given different case study scenarios, they practice these problem-solving skills and learn to value the voices of their peers. They learn that one idea can lead to a bigger thought that solves real-life issues in today’s inclusive classroom setting. The other critical part of this process is they learn to be confident in their abilities to lead and follow.

Fisher, Frey, and Quaglia (2018) also discuss this

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in their text when explaining the summative engagement for student engagement. The authors discuss the self-worth students feel when their voices are valued in the school community and the identity purpose this gives students. When teacher candidates have a purpose, they are driven to learn more content and become cognitively engaged in the classroom, while making connections to other areas and transfering the new learning to different contexts.

Darling-Hammond and Austin (2003) state that teachers must ask “What is it about what I am teaching now that will be of value, of use, and a source of understanding for my students at some point in the future, when they are in a situation that is not identical to the one they’re in now?” (p.191). The overall implication is that for effective transfer to take place, learning should be organized around the kinds of authentic problems and projects that are more often encountered in non-school settings. It is thus important to provide opportunities for students to use knowledge in multiple contexts so they can see how skills and problem-solving strategies can be generalized (Darling-Hammond & Austin, 2003).

If college professors practice these problemsolving strategies, they will teach candidates to become more self-regulated learners who process and organize information successfully and think metacognitively in their practice, which then overflows into their classroom teaching practices in the K-12 environment.

Online Interactive Notebook Purpose and Description The purpose of the implementation of the Online Interactive Notebook as a learning tool was to create a document where the teacher candidates could capture their learning and converse with their peers to process the vast content knowledge and make connections to what they were learning in the course and observing in the field.

Furthermore, the purpose of the Online Interactive Notebook was to put teacher candidates in charge

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of their learning while offering candidates the opportunity to collaborate, determine the importance of class resources, and provide clarity to the course through scaffolding. Additionally, it built engagement in the college classroom, provided candidates with a purpose for learning the academic content, and built self-regulation skills, motivated learners, and taught teacher candidates the value of transfer. These experiences developed more effective teachers and helped persuade teacher candidates that content knowledge should be ever-changing and supportive of learners in the inclusive classroom setting. The Online Interactive Notebook was designed and utilized in the course and supported collaboration and accountability in the class, including building capacity in teacher candidates.

Teacher candidates viewed the Online Interactive Notebook as a storage location for many of the resources they would need throughout the semester and during the student teaching year.

The easiest online tool to create the document was Google Documents, and the best way to organize the notebook was by class dates and topics, which meant the first page was always a table of contents where the instructor created hyperlinks that would take users to the respective location in the document. Also, one student suggested colorcoding the topics and headings. The teacher candidates worked to add resources to each of the topics concerning curriculum planning, culturally relevant teaching methods, differentiated instruction, co-teaching, adaptations, communicating and analyzing assessment results, feedback, academic language in literacy and mathematics, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), high leverage teaching practices, and edTPA resources. Candidates also included technology resources such as Padlet boards that were created as a class group and links to other resources such as cast.org for adaptation techniques. Essentially, the Online Interactive Notebook became a constant and growing resource for the teacher candidates when they needed to

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study, revisit a topic for an assignment, and plan lessons for their field experience. Due to the rigorous demands of teaching and learning in educational preparation programs, instructors should teach candidates to stay organized and be proactive learners and planners. The Online Interactive Notebook allowed teacher candidates to experience the value technology can have in their classrooms and the influence it can have in building lifelong learners.

As time evolved, the instructor began to build course activities into the notebook and have teacher candidates complete these tasks in different groups. For example, rather than using posters to summarize ideas about various topics that were studied, instructors created a graphic organizer in the Online Interactive Notebook where teacher candidates recorded their findings.

Additionally, they would connect to televisions around the room so the entire group and the teacher could see exactly who was contributing in the group and if any misconceptions needed to be addressed at that time. As the college teacher circulated, the level of engagement from all candidates could be viewed. Because multiple people can work together at one time, it allowed for collaboration and all members of the class could join forces. The teacher candidates were often divided into groups, and sometimes one candidate typed while the others identified and crafted the information that was needed in the chart for their topic of study. They scoured the internet and textbooks to find examples and resources that helped support their findings. Of the most benefit, it allowed the course instructor to serve as a facilitator and the teacher candidates to take control of their learning. Peer groups made decisions that directed their learning, and they were pushed to ask questions when they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand their topics or needed another explanation from a different perspective.

Additionally, as teacher candidates read and found different resources, they recorded them in the Online Interactive Notebook. Teacher

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candidates brainstormed as collaborative groups, recorded things they learned as new topics were discussed, and continuously adjusted their learning and charts in the notebook each week as new content was delivered in the course. On several occasions, the candidates were given a chance to record their wonderings from the previous class. For example, when differentiation was discussed, they filled out a K-W-L chart and after several weeks of instruction on differentiation, the teacher candidates recorded their ideas in the table. The instructor was able to view these wonderings and go back to touch on things the teacher candidates were still unclear about concerning differentiation. Therefore, the Online Interactive Notebook additionally served as a formative assessment and helped to determine what academic content needed to be readdressed with each section. Another way the notebook was utilized as a formative assessment was as the teacher candidates typed notes in the online notebook, the instructor would look at the notes and make sure there were not any misconceptions, specifically when it came to specific topics such as the RTI process. The RTI process has a lot of moving parts, and the students worked in collaborative groups to dissect each tier. Teacher candidates made connections to the districts where they worked during their clinical experiences and discussed their role as the general education teacher, the members of the student support team, and how they will help support the teacher when students are moving through the RTI process. The candidates organized their findings in a chart which was shared in the Online Interactive Notebook and then presented to the class. As each group walked through their findings for each tier of the RTI process, misconceptions were cleared up and the instructor made sure all teacher candidates understood the implications RTI will have on their role as a general education teacher in an inclusive classroom setting. Other activities that served the teacher candidates well were those

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when the students had to investigate different strategies and identify the different types of learners for whom these practices would work best within their classroom setting. Each group of candidates examined different methods such as the High Leverage teaching practices and those available on the UDL website. For instance, the students investigated multiple UDL strategies related to technology applications and programs.

Teacher candidates also examined numerous strategies that could be used for students with a variety of exceptionalities. The assignment required them to locate five research-based strategies that would work with learners of differing abilities, record those strategies, give examples, and provide links. And because the jigsaw strategy was utilized, groups of students were able to cover more academic content in a smaller amount of time. Furthermore, the candidates were able to create a resource that they could use during their year-long student teaching experience and carry with them into their teaching career when they plan effective lessons and make adaptations. These opportunities in the methods course were all engaging, meaningful, and stretched teacher candidatesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; content knowledge, including requiring the candidates to work through the information-processing model each time they attended course meetings and completed assignments in the Online Interactive Notebook.

As the semester progressed, the instructor came to learn that the Online Interactive Notebook held teacher candidates accountable, taught them teamwork, gave them the opportunity to add their ideas and resources, and created an engaging classroom environment. The teacher candidates eventually asked if the instructor could add resources, or if they could add additional items, and the answer was always, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Yes, this document is your property.â&#x20AC;? Once they learned that they were in full control of the Online Interactive Notebook, the candidates made changes without asking, became more

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motivated, and added additional content that was not required in the course.

Research Question The purpose of this study was to determine whether the Online Interactive Notebook could help teacher candidates process and transfer content knowledge from the senior methods course to the classroom setting. The study surveyed one senior methods course in the educator preparation program.

Sample Participants in the study were undergraduate students in their senior year of the educator preparation program. Participants were elementary teacher education candidates in a senior methods course. Students were asked to provide their thoughts about the Online Interactive Notebook for a presentation at a state conference. The teacher candidates were not required to participate in the feedback session concerning the Online Interactive Notebook.

Participants’ grades were not impacted by their responses. Teacher candidates were given the opportunity and choice to participate.

Method of Data Collection To collect data in this study, the researcher had the participants provide anonymous feedback giving their perspective of what the instructor should keep or change concerning the Online Interactive Notebook. Additionally, the teacher candidates shared suggestions they had for the instructor concerning the Online Interactive Notebook on the survey. The instructor left the room and allowed the candidates to record their feedback on a form and place it in an envelope before leaving at the end of class. The instructor then reviewed and analyzed the qualitative data to determine the candidates’ perceptions concerning the Online Interactive Notebook. The themes that emerged concerned the access, application, and attributes of the Online Interactive Notebook.

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Data Findings From the teacher candidates’ perspective, they made comments concerning three aspects: access, application, and attributes. They stated, the Online Interactive Notebook was easily accessible, all in one place and organized, could always be viewed, worked well as a study guide, and could be used to access anything they missed in the course meetings. Additionally, the teacher candidates commented that they used the Online Interactive Notebook during their final semester to complete the edTPA, one of the key assessments required for their teaching certification. Teacher candidates also mentioned that they were able to apply the content to other areas of their teaching. For example, candidates stated that it supported their edTPA preparation and differentiated lesson planning. The positive attributes most students commented on during the data collection were the ability to collaborate in one location, the resources stored, and the fact that it was a shared document and everyone could make their contributions, as well as the interactions it allowed with classmates. One student wrote, “I think it is a great tool, very helpful.”

Based on feedback, the Online Interactive Notebook is adjusted each semester. For example, it was a teacher candidate’s suggestion to color-code the Online Interactive Notebook based on the topic of study. The color-coding allowed candidates to easily identify the information that corresponded to each content area studied. Furthermore, it supported the coding of the information which is discussed in the Information Processing model, and the teacher candidates were then required to identify the correct location for each of the resources they added to the Online Interactive Notebook. When adding the additional resources and completing the concept maps and class activities, the teacher candidates were also learning to organize and store information in a meaningful way. This

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coding and organizing taught them to utilize the Online Interactive Notebook and allowed them to practice the model of information processing.

The Online Interactive Notebook allowed the teacher candidates to control the information they were processing and make connections to another context, which is known as the transfer of learning. Teacher candidates were gaining insight about how to find valuable information and organize the material so it could be used at a later date; they were using the information to guide their thinking and decisions further and collaborate with their peers. Teacher candidates’ communication and critical thinking skills became more defined and well thought-out. The student teacher candidates made their own decisions concerning the things they thought were of value in the course content and adapted content knowledge they already knew to make further connections to the field classroom where they were placed for the school year. And finally, the engagement of all learners grew in the course meetings.

The instructor was thrilled to see the teacher candidates motivated to complete activities that taught them to build and structure information while also making connections to past and present learning. The transfer of learning was evident in the course grades and revisions on student work. The overall course average for the senior methods course was an 87% with five A’s, seven B’s, and one C. Implications for Future Practice Based on teacher candidate feedback, each notebook should be differentiated for each course section, and the instructor should constantly seek teacher candidate feedback for the fluidity of content and purpose, while also being flexible and adaptable concerning the items included in each course section’s notebook. For example, it’s evident that some teacher candidates found certain resources more valuable than others.

Therefore, it’s the job of the instructor to teach

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candidates how to choose and organize information so that it can be easily located at another time. Not only do teacher candidates have to be able to recall the content from their long- and short-term memory, they should also be able to transfer their ideas to other contexts. If candidates are remembering the material and utilizing the information in their future classrooms, learning transfer is taking place in teacher candidates.

The instructor must still consider how to build capacity in all candidates, how to motivate all teacher candidates to participate in continuing to create the paradigm shift of usefulness concerning the Online Interactive Notebook, determine how this is affecting the teacher candidates ability to collaborate, and how to help candidates see the true value of the Online Interactive Notebook and how it can be used for multiple tasks in their classroom in the future.

Upon reflection, the author learned the more the teacher candidates grapple with the content knowledge in the course, the more easily they learn to transfer the knowledge to other contexts.

This learning tool teaches candidates how to structure and restructure ideas when new knowledge is acquired and helps them revisit the old content with new ideas and understandings, which possibly help shift the mindset they once had concerning the initial learning. These reflective behaviors build teacher candidates’ metacognition and teach them to think critically about how the course content can further be developed and analyzed to build deeper meaning of teaching pedagogies and methodologies.

Summary Darling-Hammond (2006) states, “Studies suggest that changes in teaching practice and student achievement occur when teachers participate in sustained, collaborative learning grounded in the curriculum they teach and emphasizing examination of teaching methods and student work” (p.286). Over the last few

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years, these strategies have been implemented in my methods course using the Online Interactive Notebook. The goal in using the Online Interactive Notebook was to encourage teacher candidates to work through content, build their own level of understanding so they could then communicate about the academic content with their peers, and work to build a long-term memory concerning course content areas. When this level of communication and coding is sustained over several months, it changes the environment and thinking process that is seen in teacher candidates. This level of cognitive engagement as described by Fisher, Frey, and Quaglia (2018) teaches students to value a variety of perspectives and builds students skills to collaborate, trust others, become vulnerable, and debate using facts and skills learned from the text and environment. However, it takes time to build this community in the college classroom; teacher candidates don’t always come willing to problem-solve, reflect, and collaborate or like structure and accountability. It is the instructor’s job to build trust and motivate the candidates beyond a level of behavioral engagement into a level of cognitive engagement that allows for transfer to take place. The more this becomes a common practice, the more experienced and comfortable the teacher candidates will be in the college learning environment. The candidates will understand the accountability and enjoy learning because of the bond between the students and the teacher. They will know they can ask for clarity during instruction and the instructor will provide coaching to those who need additional support. This also demonstrates the practices of a culturally responsive teacher (Gay, 2010). It allows the teacher to coach, facilitate questions that further guide student learning, and help them see things from a different perspective. The real value is that the teacher candidates learn to be a part of a team and work together to solve real-world issues concerning educational dilemmas they will face

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in their jobs after completing their college degrees.

Every day these future teachers will work to help students understand new content, and the hope is that if they are taught in creative ways during their methods courses, they will then take these same pedagogies to their classrooms. When we have teacher candidates who are driven by a passion for meeting the needs of all learners, they will begin thinking outside of the box, and change will occur in K-12 inclusive classrooms.

As college faculty who prepare future teachers, it’s time to be intentional and teach for transfer.

When we model facilitation and engagement techniques, we are instilling a love of learning in our teacher candidates. We have been charged with creating teachers who are self-regulated, strong in their content knowledge, and persistent in learning. When candidates from the course are asking to load additional items, volunteering to take notes for the class, creating authentic examples of work in the Online Interactive Notebook, building their resources, and giving positive feedback on course assignments, we are working towards a positive learning community.

Listening to our teacher candidates will help direct our path to create a curriculum that is accessible, is adaptive, and meets all candidates’ needs.

Phillip Schlechty (2009) said, “Transformational change is a messy business.

Sometimes things must be done sooner when they logically should be done later. Sometimes things that might be done later have to be done sooner, if for no other reason than that there is a compelling opportunity to act at the moment.” So as we move to create a transformational learning community in our educator preparation programs, let’s work hard to build an engaging and positive learning community, which supports lifelong learning and thrusts teacher candidates beyond the original realm of thinking into a new era of reflection.

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References Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (Eds.). (2000).

Learning and transfer. In How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school, pp. 51-78.

Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation.

(2018). Accreditation policy. Washington, DC: Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation. Retrieved from http://caepnet.org/~/ media/Files/caep/accreditation-resources/ accreditation-policy.pdf?la=en Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs. San Franciso: Jossey-Bass.

Darling-Hammond, L., & Austin, K. (2003). Session 11: Lessons for life: Learning and transfer. In The Learning Classroom, pp. 189-204. Retrieved from https://www.learner.org/courses/learningclassroom/ support/11_learning_transfer.pdf Dweck, C. (2008). Mindset: the new psychology of success. New York: Random House.

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Quaglia, R. (2018). Engagement by design. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Goldstein, S., & Naglieri, J. A. (2014). Handbook of executive functioning. New York: NY: Springer.

Ormrod, J. (2004). Human learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, G. (1983). The gradual release of responsibility model of instruction.

Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 112123.

Schlechty, P. (2009). Leading for learning: How to transform schools into learning organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity.

(2017). Elementary Education Assessment Handbook. San Jose, CA: Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

Stencel, J. E. (2002). An interactive lecture notebook: Twelve ways to improve studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; grades.

Innovative Techniques for Large Group Instruction.

Arlington, VA: National Science Teachers Association Press Journals Collection.

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About the Author Pamela R. Allen, PhD Dr. Allen is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Gwinnett College and serves as the edTPA Coordinator, supervises teacher candidates, and teaches senior methods courses. She received her doctoral degree from The University of Southern Mississippi. Her primary research interests include the self-regulation process of teacher candidates, curriculum design, and effective teaching practices in higher education.

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Validating Dispositional Indicators for Evaluating Teacher Candidates Using Lawshe’s Method Comfort Y. Afolabi, University System of Georgia; Winifred C. Nweke, Clayton State University; and Tasha P. Perkins, Shorter University

The development of educator dispositions is an essential aspect of teacher preparation (Cummins & Asempapa, 2013; Hochstetler, 2014; Schussler, 2006), although dispositions are often informally taught and weakly assessed.

Accreditation standards for Educator Preparation Programs (EPPs) require evidence that teacher candidates embody the dispositions necessary to provide a safe, equitable, and fair classroom for all students. Work has been done to identify and define necessary dispositions for teacher candidates (Alawiye & Williams, 2010; Council of Chief State School Officers, 2011; Johnston, Almerico, Henriott, & Shapiro, 2011; Rike & Sharp, 2008; Wayda & Lund, 2005). Nevertheless, there remains some disagreement about which dispositions should be assessed. Moreover, much of the research and discussions about the necessary teacher dispositions tend to be among EPPs, often excluding the opinions and preferences of the employers and administrators who hire, work with, and evaluate new teachers (Arial & Miller, 2016; Wayda & Lund, 2005).

Therefore, this study examines the dispositions that both EPPs and school districts consider important for teacher candidates to manifest through applying Lawshe‟s (1975) method for establishing construct validity.

Literature Review The various understandings of the dispositions of a teacher are historical and complex (Schussler, 2006). Definitions have included aspects such as teachers‟ attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, tendencies, values, and actions (NCATE, 2008; Villegas,

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2007; Schussler 2006). Recently, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO, 2011) unpacked sets of “critical dispositions” for each of the ten Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium‟s (InTASC) standards using performance indicators reflecting values, beliefs, and actions. Thus, adopting a working definition from the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP, 2016) and InTASC (CCSSO, 2011), dispositions are defined in this project as the habits of professional action and moral commitments that underlie an educator‟s performances.

Some researchers posit a teacher candidate‟s dispositions are not static, but instead can be influenced and changed over time due to experiences and context (Curran & Murray, 2008; Frederiksen, Cooner, & Stevenson, 2012; McKnight, 2004). Scholars have also expressed concern regarding which dispositions should be valued in educator preparation (Alawiye & Williams, 2010; McKnight, 2004) and regarding a general lack of agreement across definitions for dispositional indicators (Johnston, et al., 2011).

Jung and Rhodes (2008) recommended assessing dispositions related both to character, such as “teachers‟ personalities, morals, work ethic, attitudes, beliefs,” and professional competence, such as “technology instruction, classroom management, or leadership” (p. 647). Others have argued that dispositions which school districts consider important when hiring teachers should be included in any instrument used for assessing teacher candidates‟ dispositions (Arial & Miller, 2016; Wayda & Lund, 2005). Considering the

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phenomenological aspect of dispositions, Villegas (2007) underscored the importance of addressing the beliefs teacher candidates hold – especially at program entry – explaining that candidates must have experiences beyond classroom instruction to challenge traditional notions of teaching and students. This ambiguity within the literature poses an additional challenge for EPPs in determining which dispositional indicators to choose for assessing teacher candidates and underscores that it is imperative for EPPs to introduce teacher candidates to clearly defined dispositions that will be expected or not expected of them both within their education programs and once they become teachers.

Drawing upon the aforementioned literature and in order to address EPP-desired dispositions along with dispositions for employability (Arial & Miller, 2016; Wayda and Lund, 2005), dispositions for technology use (Jung & Rhodes, 2008), and beliefs of candidates (Villegas, 2007), this article presents a list of dispositional indicators and the process of their validation using Lawshe‟s (1975) method. The list, if desired, could be used to create a dispositions assessment. This study includes (a) the determination of essential dispositions from the perspectives of the preparers (EPPs) and the employers and (b) the selection of dispositions that are considered essential using Content Validity Ratios (CVR).

The content validity of an instrument is often determined through expert opinion or judgment.

Lawshe (1975) proposed the CVR as a way to quantify and strengthen that judgment. CVR is a “linear transformation of a proportional level of agreement on how many „experts‟ within a panel rate an item as „essential‟” (Ayre & Scally, 2014, p. 79). The CVR formula is (ne - N/2)/(N/2), where ne is the number of panelists indicating an item is essential, and N is the number of panel members (Ayre & Scally, 2014). CVR scores can range from -1 (perfect disagreement) to 1 (perfect agreement). Using the CVR method ensures a more objective and defensible selection of dispositional indicators to form the basis of any dispositions instrument.

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Research Questions The following research questions are addressed in this article: 1. What are the desired dispositions for teacher candidates from the perspectives of program providers and employers of the teachers prepared?

2. Which of the desired dispositions, using Lawshe‟s CVR, meet the criteria to be part of the content domain of dispositions expected of teacher candidates?

Development of Disposition Themes and Indicators: Finding the Essential Dispositions The span of research regarding teacher and/or teacher candidate dispositions reveals that desired dispositions for educators vary. Prior to the current study, we collected and independently coded and analyzed 14 disposition assessment forms from seven private and six public EPPs with respect to common themes (one university submitted a separate, unique assessment instrument for graduate students) in order to generate a list of possible dispositional indicators. Codes were compared, and 27 unique themes were identified.

To account for P-12 stakeholder values and employability (Wayda and Lund, 2005), the themes were compared with the 25 unique themes derived from employment forms that 25 school districts use for hiring P-12 teachers (Arial & Miller, 2016). Corresponding and/or overlapping concepts were consolidated into 27 composite EPP/ P-12 themes (see Table 1).

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Table 1 Twenty-seven Indicators Based on Themes from EPPs and Pre-K-12 Reference Forms Themes

Indicators

Collaboration

Teacher candidate works collaboratively with colleagues and is a valuable member to the team.

S/he is cooperative and a team player who is willing to assist and accept responsibilities.

Attitude and Demeanor

Teacher candidate maintains a positive attitude and demeanor. S/he is flexible, professional, and enthusiastic.

Interaction with Adults

Teacher candidate interacts positively and maintains appropriate and professional relationships with adults (includes parents, colleagues, etc.).

Communication

Teacher candidate communicates effectively and professionally in all domains (verbal, nonverbal, written, technologically) and with tact.

Attendance and Punctuality

Teacher candidate is always present and on time to work/school, meetings, and events.

Interaction with Students

Teacher candidate interacts positively and maintains appropriate relationships with students.

Initiative

Teacher candidate displays initiative, creativity, and resourcefulness. Teacher candidate is intrinsically motivated.

Self-Control

Teacher candidate displays composure and self-control and demonstrates the capacity to handle stress.

Integrity

Teacher candidate abides by the Georgia Code of Ethics and demonstrates ethical conduct and integrity in his/her actions. Teacher candidate is a person of reputable character. S/he always maintains confidentiality.

Professional Appearance

Teacher candidate dresses according to school policy and presents him/herself in a professional manner.

Dependability and Reliability

Teacher candidate demonstrates consistency in tasks and responsibilities; s/he is considered to be reliable and dependable by peers, professors, and mentor teachers.

Organization and Preparedness

Teacher candidate organizes classroom to optimize learning and provides academically challenging learning environment. Teacher candidate is well-prepared for teaching.

Time Management

Teacher candidate plans effectively, manages time well, submits work in a timely manner, and meets deadlines.

Teachability and Adaptability

Teacher candidate demonstrates a willingness to learn and/or grow professionally and has a commitment to improving his/her practice. S/he adapts to change and accepts constructive criticism and feedback well.

Passion for Teaching

Teacher candidate is committed, passionate, and enthusiastic with regard to teaching.

Potential for Leadership

Teacher candidate shows potential for leadership.

Role Model

Teacher candidate serves as a role model for others, especially other teacher candidates.

Cultural Sensitivity

Teacher candidate shows respect for and an understanding of a student's or other person's diversity, including respect of differences in race, class, gender, ability, culture, religion, and sexuality.

High Expectations for All Students

Teacher candidate is committed to student learning and believes all students can learn. S/he holds high expectations for all students.

Content Knowledge

Teacher candidate stays current in field and understands potential biases within his/her content areas. Teacher candidate values critical thinking.

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Themes

Indicators

Assessment

Teacher candidate uses assessments ethically, makes appropriate accommodations, and uses a variety of assessments with his/her students.

Fairness

Teacher candidate makes fair decisions based on data/evidence; s/he treats students fairly and equitably.

Professional Judgement

Teacher candidate demonstrates professional judgement and makes professional decisions consistently.

Commitment to School

Teacher candidate supports the school mission and vision, is loyal to the employer/school, and understands and follows policies, procedures, and rules.

Neatness and Accuracy

Teacher candidate provides neat and accurate work and reports.

Problem Solving Ability

Teacher candidate is an active problem solver.

Use of Technology

Teacher candidate understands and practices legal and ethical boundaries for technology. S/he uses technology to enhance student learning and communicate efficiently. Misuse of cell phone and/or social media is not an issue with the candidate.

The themes were then defined to create 27 corresponding dispositional indicators for a potential disposition assessment. When pertinent, the 2011 InTASC Model Core Teaching Standards were consulted for identifying the dispositional component of a theme. For instance, a candidate‟s disposition toward “content knowledge” was not evident in the school district‟s hiring forms but it appeared on EPP disposition assessment forms; thus, we sought clarity through the InTASC standards to which all key assessments must align for accrediting purposes. In the following section we present how the 27 dispositional indicators provided in Table 1 were validated using Lawshe‟s (1975) method.

Methods Participants To gain a broad representation, participants were recruited from nine regional collaboratives comprised of EPPs and P-12 representatives across the state. A total of 131 respondents returned their completed surveys. The average years of experience in education was 24, with a range from 6 to 47. Survey participants included 73% who identified as White, 9% as African American, 2% as a mixed race or ethnicity, 1% as Asian, 1% as Hispanic, and 1% as Native American; 14% did not specify a race or ethnicity. Three-quarters (75%) of the participants identified as female, 14% as male,

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and the remaining 11% did not specify a gender identification. These data closely mirror the state‟s P-12 teaching workforce demographic data (Governor‟s Office of Student Achievement, 2017). Of the participants, 46% (n=60) represented P-12 personnel while 54% (n=70) represented EPPs or institutions of higher education (IHE).

Procedure for Determining the Content Domain of Dispositional Indicators Lawshe‟s (1975) approach for establishing content validity for assessment indicators entails surveying a panel of experts regarding whether an item on an assessment is essential, not essential but useful, or not useful for job performance.

Following this approach, we developed a survey for education experts across our state to rate the 27 indicators in order to determine which indicators should be included in the content domain for building an assessment of teacher candidates‟ dispositions. The survey was accessible online after participants reviewed the consent form and wished to participate in the study. Participants reviewed each indicator and made a determination if the item “must be included,” “could be included,” or “should not be included” for assessing a teacher candidate‟s dispositions, mirroring Lawshe‟s classifications. Using Lawshe‟s formula to establish content validity, we calculated the Content Validity Ratio CVR = (ne -

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N/2)/(N/2) for each indicator, where ne is the number of panelists indicating an item is essential, and N is the number of panel members, based on the expert panel/participants ratings (Ayre & Scally, 2014). A positive CVR score indicates that greater than half of the panelists agree that an item

is essential or in the case of our study, â&#x20AC;&#x153;must be included.â&#x20AC;? The data collected were analyzed based on overall participants and then by professional groups (EPPs versus P-12). See Table 2 for a comparison of CVR scores by indicator and participant groupings.

Table 2 CVR Arranged by Theme, From Highest to the Lowest on all Participants, and by Professional Groups Theme (panelists made judgements regarding each theme based on its corresponding indicator)

CVR ALL, N=131*

CVR P-12

CVR IHE

N=60

N=70

Integrity

0.94

0.87

1.00

Interaction with Students

0.92

0.97

0.88

Attitude & Demeanor

0.89

0.93

0.86

Communication

0.89

0.83

0.94

High Expectations for All Students

0.85

0.83

0.86

Attendance/Punctuality

0.83

0.8

0.86

Dependability & Reliability

0.79

0.77

0.80

Interaction with Adults

0.78

0.76

0.80

Collaboration

0.77

0.87

0.68

Organization & Preparedness

0.75

0.76

0.74

Teachability and Adaptability

0.74

0.73

0.74

Content Knowledge

0.74

0.77

0.71

Cultural Sensitivity

0.71

0.63

0.77

Assessment

0.71

0.80

0.63

Fairness

0.69

0.76

0.63

Use of Technology

0.60

0.69

0.51

Time management

0.58

0.49

0.66

Self-Control

0.52

0.39

0.63

Professional Appearance

0.50

0.47

0.54

Initiative

0.49

0.60

0.39

Professional Judgement

0.48

0.45

0.50

Passion for Teaching

0.33

0.53

0.14

Commitment to School

0.22

0.37

0.07

Problem Solving Ability

0.20

0.4

0.01

Neatness and Accuracy

-0.05

0.07

-0.14

Role Model

-0.25

-0.13

-0.37

Potential for Leadership

-0.66

-0.56

-0.77

Content Validity Index (mean of CVRs for items in instrument)

0.66

0.69

0.64

*One panelist did not distinguish him/herself as either an EPP representative or Pre-K-12 representative.

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Findings As Table 3 shows, only the following three indicators had negative CVRs and thus were not identified as “must be included” by the consolidated panel of participants: neatness and accuracy, role model, and potential for leadership.

Twenty-four items had positive CVRs based on the 131 participants: more than half of the experts rated each item as “must be included” as opposed to “could be included” or “should not be included.” Lawshe‟s criteria for keeping or eliminating items from an instrument are that the CVRs are positive as well as statistically significant. Using Ayre‟s and Scally‟s (2014) formula (CVRCritical = [(Z√N) + 1]/N; where N is the number of panelist, Z is the Z score corresponding to relevant α level) for estimating normal approximations for the binomial distribution, we calculated one-tailed critical CVRs at α =.05 for N=131 as 0.15. Thus, the 24 themes with positive CVRs were chosen to constitute the essential dispositions since all the CVRs were also higher than 0.15. When examined by profession, one-tailed critical CVR at α =.05 for the P-12 group with N=60 was 0.23, and the one-tailed critical CVR at α =.05 for the IHE group with N=70 was 0.22. All 24 items would be retained if validated on the P-12 panel alone as all the CVRs were higher than the critical value of 0.23. However, if the items were validated on the

IHE panel alone, three more items with CVRs below the critical value of 0.22 would be eliminated from the instrument. IHE participants‟ CVR ratings differed from those of P-12 participants by at least 0.2 points on the following dispositions: self-control, initiative, passion for teaching, commitment to school, and problem solving ability. The CVR data are presented in Table 2 by themes and professional groups.

Although an EPP might choose to eliminate some of the indicators for an assessment instrument, all 24 indicators with positive CVRs were compared to the InTASC Standards for alignment (see Table 3). Eighty-three percent of the indicators are tagged to InTASC standards, showing that more than 80% of the rubric requires the evaluation of candidates on proficiencies significant to national teaching standards.

Indicators not explicitly tagged to InTASC standards are implied in the concept of professional behavior. Items not tagged are attitude and demeanor (CVR=0.89), attendance/punctuality (CVR=0.83), dependability and reliability (CVR=0.79), and professional appearance (CVR=0.50). It is important also to note that these items were within the top 13 of the 25 most frequent disposition themes identified on P-12 hiring reference forms (Arial & Miller, 2016).

Table 3 Disposition Assessment Indicators Aligned with InTASC Critical Dispositions InTASC Critical Disposition

Disposition Assessment Indicator

Content Validity Ratios

2(l) The teacher believes that all learners can achieve at high levels and persists in helping each learner reach his/her full potential.

5. High Expectations for All Students - Teacher candidate is committed to student learning and believes all students can learn. S/he holds high expectations for all students.

0.85

2(m) The teacher respects learners as individuals with differing personal and family backgrounds and various skills, abilities, perspectives, talents, and interests.

13. Cultural Sensitivity - Teacher candidate shows respect for and an understanding of a student's or other person's diversity, including respect of differences in race, class, gender, ability, culture, religion, and sexuality.

0.71

3(p) The teacher is committed to supporting learners as they participate in decisionmaking, engage in exploration and invention, work collaboratively and independently, and engage in purposeful learning.

10. Organization & Preparedness - Teacher candidate organizes classroom to optimize learning and provides academically challenging learning environment. Teacher candidate is well-prepared for teaching.

0.75

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InTASC Critical Disposition

Disposition Assessment Indicator

Content Validity Ratios

4(o) The teacher realizes that content knowledge is not a fixed body of facts but is complex, culturally situated, and ever evolving. S/he keeps abreast of new ideas and understandings in the field.

4(p) The teacher appreciates multiple perspectives within the discipline and facilitates learnersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; critical analysis of these perspectives.

4(q) The teacher recognizes the potential of bias in his/her representation of the discipline and seeks to appropriately address problems of bias.

12. Content Knowledge - Teacher candidate stays current in field and understands potential biases within his/her content areas. Teacher candidate values critical thinking.

0.74

6(u) The teacher is committed to making accommodations in assessments and testing conditions especially for learners with disabilities and language learning needs.

14. Assessment - Teacher candidate uses assessments ethically, makes appropriate accommodations, and uses a variety of assessments with his/her students.

0.71

6(v) The teacher is committed to the ethical use of various assessments and assessment data to identify learner strengths and needs to promote learner growth.

15. Fairness - Teacher candidate makes fair decisions based on data/evidence; s/he treats students fairly and equitably.

0.69

7(p) The teacher takes professional responsibility to use short- and long-term planning as a means of assuring student learning.

17. Time management - Teacher candidate plans effectively, manages time well, submits work in a timely manner, and meets deadlines.

0.58

8(q) The teacher values the variety of ways people communicate and encourages learners to develop and use multiple forms of communication.

4. Communication - Teacher candidate communicates effectively and professionally in all domains (verbal, nonverbal, written, technologically) and with tact.

0.89

9(o) The teacher understands the expectations of the profession including codes of ethics, professional standards of practice, and relevant law and policy.

1. Integrity - Teacher candidate abides by professional codes of ethics for teaching and demonstrates ethical conduct and integrity in his/her actions. Teacher candidate is a person of good reputable character. S/he always maintains confidentiality.

0.94

2. Interaction with Students - Teacher candidate interacts positively and maintains appropriate relationships with students.

0.92

16. Use of Technology - Teacher candidate understands and practices legal and ethical boundaries for technology.

S/he uses technology to enhance student learning and communicates efficiently. Misuse of cell phone and/or social media is not an issue with the candidate.

0.6

18. Self-Control - Teacher candidate displays composure and self-control and demonstrates the capacity to handle stress.

0.52

21. Professional Judgement - Teacher candidate demonstrates professional judgement and makes professional decisions consistently.

0.48

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GATEways to Teacher Education A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators

InTASC Critical Disposition

Disposition Assessment Indicator

Content Validity Ratios

10(p) The teacher actively shares responsibility for shaping and supporting the mission of his/her school as one of advocacy for learners and accountability for their success.

22. Passion for Teaching - Teacher candidate is committed, passionate, and enthusiastic with regard to teaching.

0.33

23. Commitment to School - Teacher candidate supports the school mission and vision, is loyal to the employer/school, and understands and follows policies, procedures, and rules.

0.22

10(q) The teacher respects familiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; beliefs, norms, and expectations and seeks to work collaboratively with learners and families in setting and meeting challenging goals.

8. Interaction with Adults - Teacher candidate interacts positively and maintains appropriate and professional relationships with adults (includes parents, colleagues, etc.).

0.78

9. Collaboration - Teacher candidate works collaboratively with colleagues and is a valuable member to the team.

S/he is cooperative and a team player who is willing to assist and accept responsibilities.

0.77

10(r) The teacher takes initiative to grow and develop with colleagues through interactions that enhance practice and support student learning.

20. Initiative - Teacher candidate displays initiative, creativity, and resourcefulness. Teacher candidate is intrinsically motivated.

0.49

10(t) The teacher embraces the challenge of continuous improvement and change.

11. Teachability and Adaptability - Teacher candidate demonstrates a willingness to learn and/or grow professionally and has a commitment to improving his/her practice. S/he adapts to change and accepts constructive criticism and feedback well.

0.74

24. Problem Solving Ability - Teacher candidate is an active problem solver.

0.2

(CCSSO, 2011)

Discussion This study provides 24 dispositional indicators identified as comprising the content domain of dispositional indicators that can be used by an EPP in developing an assessment instrument for assessing the dispositions of teacher candidates throughout an education preparation program. The indicators are based on dispositional themes that were determined to be relevant and important to and by both preparers and employers of teachers.

The indicators identified in this study also overcome several pitfalls outlined in the literature on assessing teacher candidate dispositions, such as a lack of clarity of definitions among indicators (Johnston et al., 2011), an absence of indicators for assessing dispositions toward technology (Jung & Rhodes, 2008), and the omission of the P-12 perspective (Arial & Miller, 2016).

Furthermore, EPPs and faculty can align coursework activities and assignments with the

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dispositions provided in this study to ensure teacher candidates are aware of and taught essential dispositions for the profession. The alignment of the dispositional indicators to several InTASC critical dispositions, and by extension to CAEP standards, further supports the validity of the indicators for EPP use.

Limitations A major limitation of the study is the selection and composition of the participants. Although a broad sample participated in the expert panel from across the state, the values regarding teacher candidatesâ&#x20AC;&#x; dispositions is limited to the one state represented in this study.

Conclusions Teachers must embody the critical, professional dispositions to afford all children access to high quality and equal educational

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opportunities. Thus, teacher educators must prepare the future teaching force in such a way as to develop candidates‟ dispositions along with the skills and knowledge of the profession. EPPs must therefore prepare teacher candidates to have the dispositions to be effective teachers and assess them accordingly. The indicators identified in this study integrate dispositions that are important to both EPPs and P-12 stakeholders, and which reflect relevant research, into one comprehensive list. With regard to the research questions, while 27 desired dispositional indicators were identified from combined perspectives of the EPPs and hiring districts, only 24 met Lawshe‟s (1975) criteria of a positive CVR and being statistically significant. Thus, EPPs can utilize some or all of this set of validated indicators in the development of an assessment of teacher candidates‟ dispositions in order to hold candidates accountable for the dispositions expected of teachers by national standards and arguably needed for effectively teaching in today‟s classroom.

References Alawiye, O., & Williams, H. (2010). Disposition profile inventory: An assessment tool for measuring the professional attitudes and behaviors of teacher education candidates. National Social Science Journal, 34(2), 1-10. Retrieved from http://www. nssa.us/journals/2010-34-2/2010-34-2-01.htm Arial, M., & Miller, S. (2016). What schools look for when hiring new teachers: An examination of dispositions statements on hiring reference forms.

GATEways to Teacher Education, 27(1), 47-52.

Retrieved from https://issuu.com/gaate/docs/ gateways_fall_2016 Ayre, C., & Scally, A. J. (2014). Critical values for Lawshe‟s content validity ratio: Revisiting the original methods of calculation. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 47(1), 79-86.

Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation.

(2016). CAEP Accreditation Handbook, Version 3.

Retrieved from http://caepnet.org/accreditation/caepaccreditation/caep-accreditation-handbook Council of Chief State School Officers. (2011). InTASC model core teaching standards: A resource for state dialogue. Retrieved from http://www.ccsso.org/ Resources/Publications/InTASC_Model_Core_Teac

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hing_Standards_A_Resource_for_State_Dialogue_ (April_2011).html Cummins, L., & Asempapa, B. (2013). Fostering teacher candidate dispositions in teacher education programs. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13(3), 99-119. Retrieved from http:// files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1017120.pdf Curran, E., & Murray, M. (2008). Transformative learning for professional educators: Building competencies and changing dispositions. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8(3), 103-118. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/ fulltext/EJ854867.pdf Frederiksen, H., Cooner, D., & Stevenson, C. (2012).

Assessing teacher dispositions in pre-service teachers. Journal of College Teaching & Learning, 9(1), 39-52.

Governor‟s Office of Student Achievement. (2017).

Georgia K-12 teacher and leader workforce report: 2016. Retrieved from https://gosa.georgia.gov/sites/ gosa.georgia.gov/files/K-12%20Teacher%20and%20 Leader%20Workforce%20Report%2020170130.pdf Hochstetler, S. (2014). The critical role of dispositions: What's missing in measurements of English teacher candidate effectiveness. Clearing House, 87(1), 9-14.

Johnston, P., Almerico, G. M., Henriott, D., & Shapiro, M. (2011). Descriptions of dispositions for assessment in pre-service teacher education field experiences. Education, 132(2), 391-401.

Jung, E., & Rhodes, D. (2008). Revisiting disposition assessment in teacher education: Broadening the focus. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(6), 647-660.

Lawshe, C. H. (1975). A quantitative approach to content validity. Personnel Psychology, 28, 563-575.

McKnight, D. (2004). An inquiry of NCATE‟s move into virtue ethics by way of dispositions (Is this what Aristotle meant?). Educational Studies, 35(3), 212230.

National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education.

(2008). Professional Standards for the Accreditation of Teacher Preparation Institutions. Retrieved from http://www.ncate.org/~/media/Files/caep/accreditatio n-resources/ncate-standards-2008.pdf?la=en Rike, C. J., & Sharp, L. K. (2008). Assessing pre-service teachers‟ dispositions: A critical dimension of professional preparation. Childhood Education, 84(3), 150-153.

Schussler, D. (2006). Defining dispositions: Wading through murky waters. Journal of Teacher Education, 41(4), 251-268.

Villegas, A. M. (2007). Dispositions in teacher education: A look at social justice. Journal of Teacher Education, 58, 370-380.

Wayda, V., & Lund, J. (2005). Assessing dispositions: An unresolved challenge in teacher education.

Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 76(1), 34-41.

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About the Authors Comfort Y. Afolabi, PhD Dr. Afolabi is a Senior Research Associate at the University System of Georgia and serves as adjunct faculty teaching methods of research in education. She earned her PhD in Educational Policy Studies from Georgia State University. Her other areas of interest are in the field of educator preparation, recruitment and retention, and growing the teacher pipeline.

Winifred C. Nweke, PhD Dr. Nweke is an Associate Professor and the Assessment Director in the Teacher Education Department at Clayton State University. She has a PhD in Measurement and Experimentation from the University of Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Nweke previously served as the Coordinator for Research & Evaluation at the Georgia Professional Standards Commission.

Her research interests include educator workforce supply and demand, large-scale assessment, and dispositions assessment.

Tasha P. Perkins, PhD Dr. Tasha Perkins is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Assessment and Accreditation for the School of Education at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia. She earned her PhD in Instructional Leadership from the University of Alabama. She teaches undergraduate foundations of education courses as well as Middle Grades and Secondary Mathematics methods courses. Her research interests include preparing and assessing effective teacher candidates, refugee education, issues impeding equal educational opportunities, and the inequitable allocation of teachers as a key resource within schools.

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Validation Study of the Instrument “edTPA Self-Efficacy Survey” for Pre-Service Teachers Pam Wetherington and Jennifer Brown, Columbus State University

Bandura (1982) defined perceived selfefficacy as “concerned with judgments of how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations” (p. 122).

Additionally, an individual’s levels of selfefficacy have been found to influence decision making, how to react and/or not react in situations, the amount of time invested in performing a task, and the perseverance of a task (Dinther, Dochy, & Segers, 2011). Furthermore, an individual who has higher levels of selfefficacy, such as confidence, will develop goals to accomplish a task that is perceived to be challenging (Bandura, 1986).

One’s self-efficacy can be translated in terms of teacher self-efficacy. Jamil, Downer, and Pianta (2012) defined teacher self-efficacy as “a teacher’s belief in his or her ability to complete the steps required to accomplish a particular teaching task in a given context” (p. 119). Other researchers have studied teacher self-efficacy and found teachers’ levels of self-efficacy to influence their attitudes and beliefs in regard to their teaching abilities and the effects of their teaching on students’ learning (Guo, Justice, Sawyer, & Tompkins, 2011; Holzberger, Philipp, & Kunter, 2013; Justice, Mashburn, & Panata, 2008; Sezgin & Erdogan, 2015; TschannenMoran & Hoy, 2001). Moreover, teachers with higher levels of self-efficacy are more likely to

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develop a positive learning environment for their students (Tschannen-Moran & Barr, 2004).

Furthermore, Klassen, Tze, Betts, and Gordon (2011) found teachers’ self-efficacy to influence the investment of time and energy spent on teaching related activities, such as developing innovative learning tasks.

The Problem Although researchers have studied teachers’ self-efficacy, the instruments that were used did not specifically relate to each of the edTPA’s constructs. Therefore, in order to study the effects of developing the edTPA teaching portfolio on pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy after completing each task in the edTPA teaching portfolio, an instrument aligned with the constructs became a necessity. The edTPA teaching portfolio is evaluated with 15 rubrics for most of the handbooks that pre-service teachers use when developing their edTPA teaching portfolios. Therefore, the edTPA Self-Efficacy Survey was created based on the constructs within the 15 rubrics in order for pre-service teachers to self-evaluate their perceptions of selfefficacy specifically related to the edTPA teaching portfolio.

As the number of pre-service teachers developing the edTPA teaching portfolio has increased across the nation, there is a need to study the effects of the teaching portfolio on pre-

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service teachers’ perceptions of self-efficacy related to planning, teaching, assessing, and analyzing teaching effectiveness and students’ learning. To that end, Bandura (1977) found that one’s levels of self-efficacy “proved to be an accurate predictor of performance in the enactive mode of treatment because subjects were simply judging their future performance from their past behavior” (p. 211). Therefore, by studying preservice teachers’ perceptions of self-efficacy, such as levels of confidence, the findings will allow pre-service teachers to inform future planning, instruction, and assessment performances. Finally, the findings can also support the methods in which teacher educators are preparing their pre-service teachers to develop the edTPA teaching portfolio.

Literature Review Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory Bandura (1977) found factors that influence one’s self-efficacy are “performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological states” (p. 195). Of the four factors, performance accomplishments was identified as the most influential factor for affecting one’s perceptions of self-efficacy.

According to Bandura, when an individual has experienced success when performing a task, his or her perceptions of self-efficacy in successfully performing future related tasks would increase.

Pendergast, Garvis, and Keogh (2011) found performance accomplishments to be the most “powerful influence as they provide authentic evidence of one’s performance” (p. 47).

Vicarious experiences were found to influence one’s perceptions of self-efficacy after observing someone perform a task. The experiences would allow observers to become more confident, even to the point of persuading themselves to perform similar tasks (Bandura & Barab, 1973). Verbal persuasion has been found to be the most accessible factor affecting one’s perceptions of self-efficacy. Bandura (1977) explained verbal

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persuasion as “people are led, through suggestion, into believing they can cope successfully with what has overwhelmed them in the past” (p. 198).

The final factor, emotional arousal, can be explained as how the human body responds, such as with a racing heart, when faced with a challenge. Of the factors that Bandura identified, emotional arousal was found to have minimal significance on one’s perceptions of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1989).

The edTPA teaching portfolio can be categorized as a performance accomplishment, the most influential factor for affecting self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977). Through the process of developing a teaching portfolio, one is able to intentionally select and reflect on authentic teaching artifacts that affect students’ learning (Shulman, 1986). Bandura found that the performance itself was not the only contributing factor in regard to affecting one’s self-efficacy. He found the reflection of the performance to be the key contributing factor in terms of affecting one’s self-efficacy when performing future-related performances.

Self-Efficacy Instruments Over the years, various teacher self-efficacy instruments have been developed and validated to investigate pre-service and in-service teachers’ perceptions of confidence in performing classroom and school-related tasks, such as managing the classroom and engaging students in learning, and navigating classroom and school-related factors, such as those involving the community. The constructs have varied within the teacher selfefficacy instruments based on the theory by which the researcher had subscribed to; however, the instruments include similar items that measure constructs related to the profession of teaching, such as classroom environment (Friedman & Kass, 2002).

As interest to investigate teacher self-efficacy increased, Bandura (1997) developed a 30-item instrument, Bandura’s Instrument Teacher Self-

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GATEways to Teacher Education A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators

Efficacy Scale. The scale allows participants to indicate their perceived levels of self-efficacy in terms of the following constructs: influence decision making, influence school resources, instruction, discipline, parent involvement, community involvement, and school climate. The items within the scale are broad in nature. For example, within the construct of instruction, participants are asked to respond to “How much can you do to promote learning when there is lack of support from the home?” and rate their perceived levels of self-efficacy using the Likertscale of nothing (i.e., Level 1) to a great deal (i.e., Level 9). Other items within the scale are similar in nature regarding the lack of specificity. To date, there is little evidence that Bandura’s Instrument Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale has been used.

Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2001) originally developed a 52-item Teachers’ Sense of SelfEfficacy instrument; however, after testing the instrument in three studies with pre- and inservice teachers, two different forms emerged.

The first was a 24-item long form, and the second was a 12-item short form. The purpose of the instrument was to identify which constructs cause the most angst for teachers in school and classroom-related tasks. The scale’s constructs are student engagement, instructional practices, and classroom management. The items within each construct are more specific in nature as compared to Bandura’s (1997) self-efficacy instrument. For example, an item within the construct of instructional practices asks participants to respond to “How much can you do to adjust your lessons to the proper level for individual students?” and rate their perceived levels of self-efficacy using the Likert-scale of nothing (i.e., Level 1) to a great deal (i.e., Level 9) (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001).

Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study was to validate a newly developed instrument, the edTPA SelfEfficacy Survey, in an effort to attend to the

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specificity within the edTPA constructs of planning, instruction, and assessment.

Method Participants Sixty-six pre-service teachers received an e-mail invitation to participate in the study. Of the 66, 51 responded to the edTPA Self-Efficacy Survey for a 77.3% response rate. Of the 51 preservice teachers who responded to the survey, 46 of them had valid cases without missing data. Of the 46 participants, 33 (71.7%) were female, and 13 (28.3%) were male. The racial makeup was 38 (82.6%) White, 6 (13.0%) Black, 1 (2.2%) Hispanic, and 1 (2.2%) other. Table 1 presents the frequencies and percentages representing the participants’ teacher education programs.

Table 1 Frequencies and Percentages for Participants’ Teacher Education Program Teacher Education Program

n

%

Early Childhood Education

9

19.6

Health and Physical Education

3

6.5

Middle Grades

2

4.3

Music Education

7

15.2

Secondary English

2

4.3

Secondary History

3

6.5

Secondary Mathematics

7

15.2

Secondary Science

6

13.0

Theatre Education

7

15.2

46

100.0

Total

Procedures At the beginning of the fall 2016 semester, each pre-service teacher received an initial e-mail invitation to participate in the study. The e-mail included the informed consent, an explanation of

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GATEways to Teacher Education A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators

the study, and a link to complete the study.

Following the initial e-mail, pre-service teachers attended an edTPA Boot Camp for an overview of edTPA. At the conclusion of the Boot Camp, the edTPA Graduate Assistant described the purpose of the study, reviewed the informed consent, and encouraged the pre-service teachers to ask questions. After the edTPA Boot Camp, the edTPA Graduate Assistant sent a follow-up email reminding pre-service teachers of the study.

Measurements The edTPA Self-Efficacy Survey was developed based on the edTPA constructs for planning (6 items), instruction (9 items), and assessment (6 items). The survey used a 21-item, four-point Likert scale for pre-service teachers to rate their levels of confidence and self-efficacy after developing the edTPA teaching portfolio.

The levels ranged from 1, representing not confident at all, to 4, representing very confident.

Results After employing a series of reliability analyses to determine if the responses for the items within each scale were internally consistent, the items were found to be internally consistent while using Cronbachâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s alpha of .60 or greater as the criterion (George & Mallery, 2003).

The alpha coefficient of .90 was identified for the Planning scale. Similarly, the alpha coefficient of .91 was identified for the Instruction scale.

Comparable to the Planning and Instruction scale items, the Assessment scale was found to be internally consistent with the alpha coefficient of .91.

To determine convergent validity of the items within each scale, the items were analyzed to identify the relationship of the items within each scale using the corrected item-total correlation (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2006).

The criteria recognized for correlation

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coefficients was .10 as weak, .30 as moderate, and .50 as strong (Cohen, 1988). For the Planning scale, the correlation coefficients ranged from .67 to .79. The Instruction scaleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s correlation coefficients ranged from .57 to .81, and the range for the Assessment scale was found to be .66 to .79. Based on the criteria, the findings indicate that the items within each scale have a strong relationship (Cohen, 1988), which shows convergent validity was established.

Using the three scales from the Self-Efficacy Survey, a bivariate correlation was conducted to measure discriminate validity. The correlation coefficients ranged from .80 to .83. With a correlation coefficient less than or equal to .80 as the criterion (Hair et al., 2006), the findings indicated that the scales were found to be close to the benchmark for discriminant validity. The findings suggest each scale did not measure the same concept but were close to measuring similar concepts. Within the teaching cycle, there are three concepts: planning, instruction, and assessment, which are naturally woven together, indicating a cause and effect relationship (Brookhart, 1999). Consequently, it is not unusual for the concepts of planning, instruction, and assessment to have similarities.

In Tables 2, 3, and 4, the corrected item-total correlation and alpha coefficients for each of the Planning, Instruction, and Assessment scales are represented. Additionally, Table 5 represents the inter-correlations for the Pilot Self-Efficacy Survey scales of Planning, Instruction, and Assessment.

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GATEways to Teacher Education A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators

Table 2 Corrected Item-Total Correlation and Alpha Coefficients for the Planning Scale Item

Corrected ItemTotal Correlation Coefficient

Alpha Coefficient if Deleted

Developing lesson plans that build on one another to support students’ learning

.71

.88

Developing lesson plans that build on one another to deepen students’ learning

.67

.89

Developing differentiated, learning tasks to support individual students’ needs

.71

.88

Describing how learning strategies and planned supports are supported by research and/or theory

.74

.88

Developing learning tasks that support my students in learning and using academic language associated with my discipline

.79

.87

Developing multiple forms of assessments to monitor my students’ learning

.74

.88

Table 3 Corrected Item-Total Correlation and Alpha Coefficients for the Instruction Scale Item

Corrected ItemTotal Correlation Coefficient

Alpha Coefficient if Deleted

Providing a safe learning environment that promotes mutual respect

.62

.90

Providing a safe learning environment that demonstrates a positive rapport with all learners

.62

.90

Providing a safe learning environment that encourages learners to critically think

.67

.90

Allowing my students to make connections to their prior learning

.81

.89

Providing learning tasks that are connected to my students’ interests

.76

.89

Asking higher level questions

.72

.89

Building on my students’ responses to deepen their learning

.73

.89

Evaluating my instruction in order to describe missed opportunities

.57

.91

Using the reflection of my instruction to develop more effective learning tasks for my students

.66

.90

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GATEways to Teacher Education A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators

Table 4 Corrected Item-Total Correlation and Alpha Coefficients for the Assessment Scale Item

Corrected ItemTotal Correlation Coefficient

Alpha Coefficient if Deleted

Evaluating my students’ learning

.77

.89

Describing similarities and differences regarding my students’ learning

.78

.89

Providing feedback to my students that addresses their areas of strength and areas for improvement

.79

.88

Providing learning tasks for my students that allow them to use my feedback to strengthen and/or revise their thinking

.73

.89

Evaluating my students’ use of academic language (i.e., function, vocabulary syntax, and discourse)

.75

.89

Developing next steps for instruction supported by research and/or theory that will meet my individual students’ needs

.66

.90

Table 5 Intercorrelations for the Pilot Self-Efficacy Survey Scales Scale

1

2

Planning

--

Instruction

.80**

--

Assessment

.83**

.83**

3

--

Note: * p  .05; ** p < .001.

Limitations The pre-service teachers participating in this study represented one cohort of student teachers in the fall 2016 semester. This could be considered a limitation, as other factors such as state-mandated testing and musical performances in spring could influence one’s perceived levels of self-efficacy while developing the edTPA teaching portfolio. An additional limitation was the cohort of pre-service teachers represented only one department of teacher education. The preparation for pre-service teachers varies within such departments with respect to the number of methods courses and lab experiences, which could influence perceived levels of self-efficacy

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while developing the edTPA teaching portfolio.

One final limitation for this study was that the majority of the participants were white female pre-service teachers. Future studies in terms of validating the edTPA Self Efficacy Survey should include the various demographics described to ensure the instrument’s validity within a variety of contexts.

Conclusions The number of pre-service teachers developing the edTPA teaching portfolio has increased nationally. Therefore, it was imperative to study the effects of developing the edTPA teaching portfolio on pre-service

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GATEways to Teacher Education A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators

teachers’ perceptions of self-efficacy. Soon after developing the edTPA teaching portfolio, preservice teachers complete their teacher preparation programs and enter the profession of teaching, responsible for their own groups of students and their students’ learning. Hence, teacher educators, pre-service teachers, and others (e.g., school administrators) can make inferences for future-related performances based on the perceived levels of self-efficacy related to the specific constructs within the edTPA teaching portfolio (e.g., developing multiple forms of assessments to monitor student learning). Bandura (1977) has found the effects of one’s self-efficacy to be “an accurate predictor” (p. 211) of one’s performance with future-related tasks.

When researching existing self-efficacy instruments, the instruments did not specifically align with the constructs of edTPA (e.g., describing similarities and differences regarding student learning). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to validate a newly developed instrument, the edTPA Self-Efficacy Survey.

After data analysis, the instrument was found to be valid and reliable.

References Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychologist Review, 84(2), 191-215.

Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 37(2), 122-147.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and actions: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bandura, A. (1989). Regulation of cognitive processes through perceived self-efficacy. Developmental Psychology, 25(5), 729-735.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Company.

Bandura, A., & Barab, P.G. (1973). Processes governing disinhibitory effects through symbolic modeling.

Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 82, 1-9.

Brookhart, S. M. (1999). The art and science of classroom assessment: The missing part of pedagogy. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons.

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Cohen, J. (1998). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Dinther, M., Dochy, F., & Segers, M. (2011). Factors affecting students’ self-efficacy in higher education.

Educational Research Review, 6(2), 95-108.

Friedman, I., & Kass, E. (2002). Teacher self-efficacy: A classroom-organization conceptualization. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 675-686.

George, D., & Mallery, P. (2003). SPSS for Windows step by step: A simple guide and reference 11.0 update (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Guo, Y., Justice, L., Sawyer, B., & Tompkins, V. (2011).

Exploring factors related to preschool teachers’ selfefficacy and family involvement practices. Urban Education, 39, 290-315.

Hair, J., Black, W., Babin, B., Anderson, R., & Tatham, R. (2006). Multivariate data analysis (6th ed.).

Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Holzberger, D., Philipp, A., & Kunter, M. (2013). How teachers’ self-efficacy is related to instructional quality: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(3), 774-786.

Jamil, F., Downer, J., & Pianta, R. (2012). Association of pre-service teachers’ performance, personality, and beliefs with teacher self-efficacy at program completion. Teacher Education Quarterly, 39(4), 119-138.

Justice, L., Mashburn, B., & Panata, R. (2008). Quality of language and literacy instruction in preschool classroom serving at-risk pupils. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23, 51-68.

Klassen, R., Tze, V., Betts, S., & Gordon, K. (2011).

Teacher efficacy research 1998-2009: Signs of progress or unfulfilled promise? Educational Research Review, 23, 21-43.

Pendergast, D., Garvis, S., & Keogh, J. (2011). Preservice student-teacher self-efficacy beliefs: An insight into the making of teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36(12), 46-57.

Sezgin, F., & Erdogan, O. (2015). Academic optimism, hope and zest for work as predictors of teacher selfefficacy and perceived success. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 15(1), 7-19.

Shulman, L. (1986). Assessment for teaching: An initiative for the profession. Phi Delta Kappan, 69(1), 38-44.

Tschannen-Moran, M., & Barr, M. (2004). Fostering student learning: The relationship of collective teacher efficacy and student achievement.

Leadership and Policy in Schools, 3(3), 189-209.

Tschannen-Moran, M., & Hoy, W. (2001). Teacher efficacy: Capturing an elusive construct. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(7), 783-805.

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About the Authors Pam Wetherington, EdD Dr. Wetherington began her educational career as a fourth grade teacher in Harris County, Georgia. In 2011, she began working at Columbus State University and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Early Childhood Education Program. Additionally, she serves as the Assistant Department Chair for the Department of Teacher Education. As part of her responsibilities, she is the coordinator of edTPA and serves at the local, state, and national levels to support Education Preparation Programs implementing edTPA. Jennifer Brown, PhD Dr. Brown began her educational career as a special education teacher at the secondary level in LaGrange, Georgia. After earning her PhD in Educational Psychology, she returned the classroom as a secondary math teacher. Dr. Brown joined the Teacher Education Department at Columbus State University in 2011 where she teaches educational psychology, diversity, and educational research to undergraduate and graduate students. Her primary research interests include undergraduate retention at commuter institutions and effective instructional strategies, which began with her graduate research assistantship at Auburn University.

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The Georgia Association of Teacher Educators is an organization of educators from Georgia's public and private schools.

Those wishing to become members or renew membership can find an application online at gaate1.org

GATEways to Teacher Education is a refereed online journal with national representation on its editorial review board and published by the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators.

The journal, published in October and April, is soliciting manuscripts concerned with teacher education, including teaching and learning, induction, in-service education, and pre-service education.

Refer to the Journal tab at gaate1.org for more details.

Manuscripts for the April issue of GATEways are due January 2nd.

Editors Dr. Janet Strickland, University of West Georgia, jstrickl@westga.edu, 678-839-6061 Copy Editor: Dr. Robyn Huss, University of West Georgia, rhuss@westga.edu

Join us at the GATE 2018 Fall Conference October 10-12 at the Unicoi State Park and Lodge in Helen, GA Additional conference information is available online: gaate1.org