With dozens of states mandating changes to how reading is taught, requiring schools to use evidence-based methods, many teachers have asked the same question: Why didn’t I learn any of this in my college classes?
Similar to school districts, the colleges and universities that prepare future teachers have long taken a range of different philosophical approaches to literacy instruction.
But unlike teachers in K-12 schools, higher education faculty usually have a great deal of autonomy over how they structure their courses. That means that even as states mandate changes to district practice to align to the “science of reading,” educator-preparation programs may not make the same shifts.
In Tennessee, one group has started a district-university partnership network in an attempt to make these systems more connected.
Tennessee SCORE, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, paired four school districts with one or two local universities that prepare a portion of the school system’s incoming teachers. Together, these district-university dyads—the Lead in Literacy Network—are working to align coursework and preservice experiences with the materials teachers are now expected to cover in the classroom after the passage of the state’s reading law.
The 2021 Tennessee Literacy Success Act requires educator-preparation programs to equip prospective teachers to teach foundational literacy skills and use universal screening assessments. Programs also have to prepare future teachers to teach with curricula that meet the state’s definition of high-quality instructional materials.
In the SCORE partnerships, university faculty teach their students to use the same tools that they’ll be working with in their future classrooms. That includes curriculum materials, of course, but also a step-by-step process for preparing lessons and understanding how they’ll be observed implementing them.
“Having common materials and common tools that are so integrated into the work really takes a lot of the questioning off of the table,” said Karen Lawrence, the senior director of networks and partnerships at SCORE.
Education Week spoke with a group of three leaders in one partnership, between Tennessee Tech University and Putnam County schools in Cookeville, Tenn.
Amber Spears, an associate professor of literacy at Tennessee Tech, teaches literacy methods courses at undergraduate and graduate levels. Having regular time to meet with Diana Wood, Putnam County’s pre-K-4 curriculum supervisor, and her team allowed for deeper communication about their goals, Spears said.
“We had a handful of opportunities over the years to try to come together at the table, but it felt like it was just intermittent, and it wasn’t frequent enough to really implement big change,” she said.
Lindsey Braisted, an instructor at Tennessee Tech who oversees the literacy and English-learner practicums, also joined the conversation.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did the Tennessee Literacy Success Act change the work you were doing?
Spears: The idea is that as we were preparing our teachers, we needed to emulate the work that they would be doing when they were hired into the school system. Many of our students who graduate from our elementary ed. program do apply for jobs in Putnam County, and so it worked very well for us to parallel the work that the teachers in Putnam County were doing.
I went through the two weeks of the Tennessee Early Reading Training myself, and then shortly thereafter, all students who go through our program also had to complete the Tennessee Early Reading Training, which is a 26- to 30-hour online training. They all have that as part of their coursework.
We also learned in feedback from Putnam County that our students were not really doing a great job with their early literacy instruction, especially, at that time, phonics, and so we incorporated an online, six-hour training for our students, all of our candidates, to develop a more robust understanding of phonics. We also then incorporated some [Core Knowledge Language Arts, a curriculum], into our lessons as we were teaching. But we felt like we were still missing a lot.
We had a singular 7-credit hour literacy course that all students took, and it was a K-5 literacy methods course. But if they take that course in the fall semester of their junior year, by the time that they graduate and get a job, it’s been up to a year or two years since they’ve had a literacy methods course. You can forget a lot ... not being in the field.
We knew that we needed a stronger emphasis in foundational literacy, skills, pedagogy, and so … this is the first semester we’re offering a 6-credit hour K-2 literacy methods course.
A year later in the program of study, during their senior year, the students will have a 3rd to 5th grade literacy-methods course where they’re still building on the knowledge that they gained their junior year, and then they’re starting to put all these pieces together. My hope is that within the next one to two years, we really see stronger content knowledge with our first-year teachers.
Braisted: We now use the IPG [Instructional Practice Guide] rubric as one of their evaluation tools [in the practicum], because that’s a tool that’s used widely in the state and in Putnam County schools.
My students are required to teach one foundational-skills lesson and one knowledge lesson. They teach the foundational-skills lesson about midway through this semester, and that’s evaluated with the IPG skills rubric. And then they have the opportunity to teach a [Core Knowledge Language Arts] knowledge lesson at the end of the semester.
What work have you done so far with the Lead in Literacy Network?
Braisted: We’re now in year two of this work. The first year was looking specifically at the methods courses being taught, and what kind of content is being delivered, how it is being delivered, what kind of thinking we’re eliciting from our preservice teachers.
We’re now in a second round of course analysis for both the K-2 literacy course and now the [grades] 3-5 literacy course. Aside from that, we have this really cool component of our network this year, where we’re getting to specifically come to the table with Putnam County. We started our first meeting by saying, ‘What does a day one teacher need to be able to do?’ And then we kind of backtracked and said, ‘OK, starting their junior year, how can we help to prepare these students to be ready for the day one expectations of being a teacher?’
That has looked like some minor tweaks in the course, but then it’s also looked like some larger projects that we’re taking on that we’re about to launch next semester, where we are supporting both mentor teachers and preservice teachers in developing a strong co-teaching relationship. Mentor teachers are being coached on how to give effective feedback, and preservice teachers are being coached on how to receive that feedback, ... how to observe.
Is there an example of something that came up about preparing teachers where there were diverging opinions?
Wood: I know it didn’t start in that conversation, but one big-picture item that has come from our partnership—the fact that we no longer, with our [high quality instructional materials], are requiring lesson plans, but more digging into the materials and truly understanding what’s expected of the kids. That has been a shift in expectations of a preservice student. [Creating a lesson plan], that’s not as much a skill set that they need anymore; they’re not pulling resources. It’s there. It’s more about digging into the materials and internalizing that lesson.
Introducing some of the materials that teachers would be using in districts seems really interesting. How have those materials been integrated?
Spears: I try to connect it to whatever we’re teaching. If I’m teaching them about phonemic awareness, for example, and we spend two class periods on that, … we move from just learning about it to actually doing it.
We might bring in Heggerty, [a popular phonemic-awareness curriculum], for example. I’ve had students put into pairs, and they practice teaching the lesson, they practice giving responses, they practice charting, and then they practice what skill is this, and where does it fit into this continuum of phonological awareness? They learn to identify those learning gaps that proceed learning at the next level.
If we’re learning about comprehension or vocabulary, where it’s easy to pull a CKLA lesson and be able to identify: Where is the vocabulary taught? What are these words? How do they fit into the broader context?
They’re learning to internalize those things: What are the teacher moves here? What are the teacher shifts? How does that compare to what we’ve learned in our textbook? Lots of hands-on practice.
Are there any other mindset shifts that have come out of this partnership?
Spears: In the past several years, we had a strong focus on, ‘Can I pass the Praxis [licensing exam]?’ The goal is making sure they pass the Praxis—period, end of discussion—and it would be up to residency for them to be prepared for being great, responsive teachers.
But as a result of this work, that has really not been the primary focus. We’ve done a lot more case studies. If we’re teaching about fluency, for example, we’ll pose a little case study at the end: You’ve got this child, he’s doing x, y, and z. What are our next steps? What can we do differently to support him?
I think it’s created a sense of humility with our students that they realize, ‘Oh, sure, I’ll be ready to pass this Praxis, but can I actually teach a young child? What are my moves?’ They’re realizing the more that they learn, the more that they don’t know. I think that’s been very challenging in a good way for them.
I know this partnership is still growing. But has it changed the way that teachers are coming into the district yet?
Wood: I was at Lindsey’s class last week, and in talking to them about how much they’re actually doing in the classroom—many of them are teaching the entire skills lessons and knowledge—it appears to me that there probably is somewhat of a shift. Our teachers are very picky about what they’re going to release to a preservice teacher to teach the classroom.
I am encouraged by the change in their course offerings at Tennessee Tech, and definitely on our end of it, we want to make sure that our schools, our classrooms, are providing the experience that our preservice teachers need to be ready, instead of just seeing it as an extra pair of hands or an extra help. This is their chance to practice and experience the curriculum with real kids in real time.
