Gathering Content-Related Validity Evidence for the School Leaders Licensure Assessment

A licensure assessment's purpose is to measure the relevant knowledge and skills required for safe and effective professional practice. Given the important role of licensure assessments, great care must be paid to the issue of validity: Is the assessment measuring what it claims to measure? In particular, evidence of a licensure assessment's content-related validity must be collected and evaluated prior to incorporating the assessment into a licensure process. The School Leaders Licensure Assessment was developed to be part of state licensure processes for entry-level school principals. To evaluate the use of the assessment for this purpose, a multistate panel of professionals examined the assessment and rendered judgments concerning its appropriateness. The results of this content-related validity study support the use of the School Leaders Licensure Assessment by affirming the relevance and importance of the content being assessed.     

From Standards to Licensure: Developing an Authentic Assessment for School Principals

The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium funded the development of a licensure assessment based on its Standards for School Leaders. But moving from a set of professional standards to a licensure assessment poses many challenges and raises difficult questions: Which standards should be assessed? How authentic should an authentic assessment be? How can licensure assessment help lead the field to a new pedagogical paradigm, when licensure has typically been reserved for protecting the public? This article explains these challenges and documents the methods used to meet them in the development of the School Leaders Licensure Assessment.     

ISLLC Standards and Assessment in the Context of School Leadership Reform

The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) has accomplished much to elevate the status of school leadership, particularly the principalship. Standards have been developed for school leaders that have broadly impacted the performance expectations most states are setting for the licensure of their beginning principals. The School Leaders Licensure Assessment has been developed to screen candidates with respect to the ISLLC standards. My intent in this piece is to extend our discussion of the work of ISLLC by focusing on four issues. The most important of these is, What do we need to do to advance the reform of school leadership with respect to the ISLLC Standards? I contend that, unless a concerted effort is made to change the public's image of the principal, it will be difficult to obtain the resources necessary for the meaningful reform of school leadership.     

Discriminating between Competent and Not Yet Competent Beginning Teachers: an analysis of principals’ reports

Principals’ written assessments of 50 high school teachers whom they judged competent for full registration and 32 whom they judged not yet competent and in need of an extended period of provisional registration were analysed in terms of the characteristics used to describe and determine beginning teacher competence. It was found that principals consistently refer to a narrow range of characteristics when describing competent beginning teachers and focus on an even narrower range in deciding whether or not full registration should be granted. Characteristics that describe approaches to teaching are used most often in this regard. While the majority of beginning teachers possess an adequate knowledge base in their subject area, success in the first year of school experience hinges on the ability to communicate such knowledge and concepts to students. The need for further refinement of the appraisal process, including professional development programmes for principals, is highlighted.     

Developments in the Preparation and Licensing of School Leaders: The Work of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium

Volume 13, Number 3, of the Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education is a special issue developed under the leadership of Joseph F. Murphy of Vanderbilt University. The articles discuss some of the recent and important work of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC), which operates under the auspices of the Council of Chief State School Officers and in cooperation with the National Policy Board for Educational Administration. In carrying out its work, the ISLCC has brought together some 30 states, a variety of professional associations, and a number of universities to reexamine, conceptualize, and redefine the meaning of school leadership as we approach the next century. Core principles grounded in a broad view of education and society and accompanying content standards have been developed by the ISLCC as a basis for several decision-making and education-improvement contexts, including licensure, certification, program improvement, and candidate assessment.     

Integrating School Leadership Knowledge and Practice Using Multimedia Technology: Linking National Standards, Assessment, and Professional Development

This article presents an overview perspective on the potential benefits of applying multimedia technology to redesign and invigorate the career-long performance assessment and professional learning of school leaders. Funded design and development efforts of one multimedia project—the Administrator Case Simulation (ACS) Multimedia Library—focusing on the professional assessment and development of school principals involved in collaborative school leadership are highlighted. Project research teams at the ACS Multimedia Lab have focused in the past seven years on using available multimedia technologies to develop school leadership assessment and organizational learning case simulation resources for school principals and other school leaders. This article provides an overview of the multimedia case simulation concept, describes collaborative R&D project efforts involving regional and state school leaders, highlights multimedia case design features, and discusses implications of technology-integrated case designs for informing personnel assessment and evaluation programs and for enhancing the reflective thinking, decision making, and professional learning of school leaders. Finally, recommendations are offered for engaging in further research and development efforts using the integrated systems professional learning approach presented, and for creatively expanding technology-integrated case simulation designs to develop similar professional assessment and learning resources for all school leaders.     

动物科学专业实习基地建设研究

文章探讨了动物科学专业实习基地的创新路径:建立校内专业实习基地,及时加深学生对专业知识点的理解;建设校外实习基地,让学生能系统地融合专业知识,做好就业前的过渡;学校与社会企业广泛合作,扩大学生专业知识面,拓宽就业渠道。     

Implicit psychological concepts in architects' knowledge — How large is a large room?

Architects create environments for human behaviour. Therefore they need — in addition to technical and design knowledge — some sort of “psychological” knowledge of the effects of their planning decisions on the occupant. The structure of this knowledge, which is only touched upon during architectural training, is the subject of an empirical study. Experts (experienced architects) and novices (students of architecture in their first or second year) were asked to judge the quality of the floor-plan layout of a four-room flat under three different conditions. From the expert-novice comparison, it is possible to gain insight into how professional experience shapes the knowledge of occupant needs and occupant behaviour. The results show remarkably few differences between the two groups. One possible reason lies in the special structure of architectural practice, which, due to a lack of feedback, makes it difficult to accumulate knowledge by evaluating experience.     

Peer learning: an analysis of secondary school teachers’ reflection groups on teaching practice / El aprendizaje entre iguales: análisis de los grupos de reflexión sobre la práctica docente para profesores de educación secundaria

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyse the discourse of beginning teachers and mentors in Secondary Education throughout their participation in reflection groups on teaching practice, as part of a program designed to palliate the reality shock and encourage reflection on the practice, thus promoting the construction of professional knowledge.

The data collected consist of speech recordings from five pairs (beginning-mentor) who participated in five reflection groups during a school year. This interpretative and longitudinal study draws on a qualitative analysis (Atlas.ti) of the discussion topics and types of sentences produced by the participants. The most frequent discussion topics were the thematic areas considered to be the most problematic for beginners (pair adjustment; attention to the diversity; student assessment; assessment by the program; fatigue and stress; classroom management; teacher identity; status and school culture). Mentors tended to produce more metacognitive statements while beginning teachers tended to use more conceptual statements. The results show that taking part in a discussion group on teaching practice was not enough to promote a really thoughtful (most sophisticated) elaborative pattern for beginner teachers.     

Four spheres of knowledge required: an international study of the professional development of literacy/English teacher educators

This paper reports on a research study of 28 literacy teacher educators (LTE) in four countries: Canada, the USA, England and Australia. It identifies three main forms of professional development: informal, formal and communities of practice and four spheres of knowledge: research; pedagogy of higher education; literacy and literacy teaching; and current school district and government initiatives. The study reveals the sheer scale of knowledge required to be an effective LTE and demonstrates how participants used the three forms of professional development to enhance their knowledge in each sphere. It concludes that the professional development of teacher educators is not conducted systematically; rather, it is quite ad hoc with much of it occurring through learning while doing. All had to construct their own programmes for professional development, which added yet another layer to their responsibilities.     

From attrition to retention: a narrative inquiry of why beginning teachers leave and then rejoin the profession

The issue of beginning teachers leaving the profession in the first few years of their career represents a global problem, and while discrepancies exist over precise numbers, there is consensus that the attrition rate of new teachers is high. This paper reports on a narrative inquiry into two beginning teachers who left the profession after just 1 year of practice, only to return 2 years later. By examining this continuum from attrition to retention through the lens of the two teachers’ narrative accounts it is possible to gain some insights into how new teachers’ personal and professional landscapes intertwine. Findings reveal that these beginning teachers’ experiences of their school contexts combined with their personal stories in the first year of practice shaped their professional identity culminating in them leaving and then rejoining the teaching fold. Insights gleaned may have significant implications for beginning teachers, school leaders, teacher education institutions, and policy makers.     

高职院校辅导员队伍专业化建设的路径选择

高职院校辅导员队伍专业化建设,是提高大学生思想政治教育队伍素质的重要途径,对构筑大学生思想政治教育长效机制具有重大意义。目前高职院校的辅导员队伍建设离专业化尚有差距,主要表现在知识结构偏低;管理能力不强;职责不清晰;队伍不稳定等突出问题。正确认识这些问题,促进辅导员队伍专业化建设,需要从专业培训、完善考核、调整人员构成、健全工作保障机制等方面展开。     

Use of Knowledge, Skill, and Ability Statements in Developing Licensure and Certification Examinations

The task inventory approach is commonly used in job analysis for establishing content validity evidence supporting the use and interpretation of licensure and certification examinations. Although the results of a task inventory survey provide job task-related information that can be used as a reliable and valid source for test development, it is often the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) required for performing the tasks, rather than the job tasks themselves, which are tested by licensure and certification exams. This article presents a framework that addresses the important role of KSAs in developing and validating licensure and certification examinations. This includes the use of KSAs in linking job task survey results to the test content outline, transferring job task weights to test specifications, and eventually applying the results to the development of the test items. The impact of using KSAs in the development of test specifications is illustrated from job analyses for two diverse professions. One method for transferring job task weights from the job analysis to test specifications through KSAs is also presented, along with examples. The two examples demonstrated in this article are taken from nursing certification and real estate licensure programs. However, the methodology for using KSAs to link job tasks and test content is also applicable in the development of teacher credentialing examinations.     

Professional Communities in the Context of Teachers’ Professional lives: A Case of Mathematics Specialists

We describe an urban school initiative aimed at teachers’ professional development with the goal of increasing their mathematics content knowledge and helping them improve their practice. In the lowest performing schools, mathematics specialists were employed to teach only mathematics in upper-elementary grades (ages 9–12). One aspect of this initiative was a provision of time and space for the formation of site-based professional communities that were intended to support teachers in trying to implement changes in their practice. Teachers’ professional communities developed at some sites and not at others. In this analysis, we explore the conditions that afforded or constrained the development of teachers’ professional communities. Using two contrasting school sites as examples, we describe five aspects of the teachers’ individual and collective professional lives that influenced the emergence of teachers’ professional communities.     

The school sociologist: A new role for the public school

An argument is made for the usefulness of sociology in solving current problems of the public school and for the creation of a new professional role—the school sociologist—to carry this out. Five areas of sociological knowledge useful to the school are discussed: family and community life, youth culture and adolescence, organization and bureaucracy, teaching as a profession, and the school as a social system. Specific tasks that the school sociologist would undertake are then discussed, followed by an analysis of how the sociologist would fit into and work within the school organization. Finally, suggestions are made about university training for the job and the kind of curriculum necessary for that purpose.

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Résumé L'auteur défend l'utilité de la sociologie dans la solution des problèmes actuels de l'école publique et dans la création d'un nouveau rôle professionnel—celui du sociologue scolaire—pour résoudre ces problèmes. Il étudie cinq domaines de connaissances sociologiques utiles à l'école: vie familiale et communautaire, culture des jeunes et adolescence, organisation et bureaucratie, l'enseignement en tant que profession, et enfin l'école en tant que système social. L'auteur étudie ensuite les tâches particulières qui seraient entreprises par le sociologue scolaire et il analyse la façon dont celui-ci pourrait s'intégrer et oeuvrer au sein de l'organisation scolaire. L'auteur présente enfin des suggestions sur la formation universitaire à donner à ce sociologue et le type de programme d'études nécessaire à cette formation.

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The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of two colleagues, William G. Spady of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and Norman L. Friedman of California State College, Los Angeles. Their criticism of the first draft of this article was extremely useful in the preparation of the final version presented here.     

Parents’ and teachers’ beliefs about children’s school readiness in a high-need community

This study compared the beliefs of preschool teachers, kindergarten teachers, and parents in one mostly Hispanic and Black high-need urban school district to learn their views of what children should know and be able to do at kindergarten entry. Beliefs regarding the importance of 12 school readiness “resources” were assessed with the CARES survey designed for this study. Parents held remarkably similar beliefs, regardless of ethnicity or education. Parents and teachers also agreed that children must be healthy and socially competent, and be able to comply with teacher authority, although parents rated this latter resource higher. However, parents rated all classroom-related readiness resources as more important than teachers did. They believed it was necessary for a child to be able to communicate in English and to have basic knowledge and skills, which was more important than a child’s approach to learning. Preschool teachers also believed that knowledge was more important than kindergarten teachers did. Directions for further research and implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

The condition of secondary school physics education in the Philippines: Recent developments and remaining challenges for substantive improvements

This study is aimed at assessing the state of Philippine secondary school physics education using data from a nationwide survey of 464 schools and 767 physics teachers and at identifying challenges for substantive improvements. Teacher-related indicators revealed academic qualification deficiency, low continuing professional involvements, substantial physics teaching experience, and good licensure status. Academic environment indices revealed that the number of physics classes per teacher is manageable, but the individual classes are large. Results also showed limited instructional materials and technologies, the unpopularity of professional mentoring, and favorable library and internet access. Based on these findings, challenges to developing a larger pool of competent physics teachers and equipping schools with relevant instructional devices were identified.     

机电一体化技能型人才培养体系建设的研究

高职机电一体化技术专业是培养适合生产一线需要的、掌握机械、电学、液压（或气动）等理论知识和具有动手能力的技能型人才.从武钢的生产岗位、岗位职责、职业资格证书,分析出机电一体化专业所具备的技能,由技能到必须拥有的理论知识体系和实践技能体系.理论知识体系演化为相应的课程,课程对应教材;实践技能体系演化为相应的实训项目.两大体系都离不开师资队伍建设、课程建设和实验、实训基地建设.基于“工学交替”的理论和实践体系是相辅相成、水乳交融的一体,是技能型人才培养的根本.     

论新时期高职院校党员干部的担当

担当精神是中华民族传统文化精神风骨的一脉相承,是贯穿我党奋斗过程的的优秀品格,更是新时期党员干部考核和评价的重要标准。在高职院校争创"双高"、谋求新发展的关键时刻,党员干部更应坚定理想信念,提高思想站位,学习知识本领,做到想担当、能担当、会担当,以不畏险阻的担当精神和锐意进取的拼搏精神为学校事业的发展做出贡献。     

The preparation of highly motivated and professionally competent teachers in initial teacher education

Education systems around the world need to recruit highly motivated individuals to become teachers and prepare professionally competent teacher education graduates to take up these broadened and deepened roles and responsibilities with a deep and lasting engagement to the profession. This article reports on a mixed-methods study that examines types of teaching motivation in relation to various facets of professional competence and planned engagement in future teaching. One hundred and thirty-two student teachers of a postgraduate diploma in education programme participated in the quantitative survey of whom seven were interviewed. The quantitative data analysis shows the positive association between ‘intrinsic–altruistic motivation constellation’ and selected facets of professional competence, with ‘intrinsic–multifaceted and stimulating job nature’ as the most distinctive type of teaching motivation. To complement the quantitative findings, the qualitative data analysis reveals two professional orientations of the ‘intrinsic–altruistic motivation constellation’, namely (1) student-centred orientation and (2) subject-centred orientation. In addition, three types of professional development aspirations are identified: ‘classroom engaged careerists’, ‘highly engaged persisters’ and ‘pessimists’. The study provides insights into the design of appropriate ITE practices to support professional learning in the light of student teachers’ motivations. It also suggests the importance of matching career opportunities and beginning teachers’ professional development aspirations and supporting ‘pessimists’ in the face of the stringent job market.