- Year 2022
- NSF Noyce Award # 1557211
- First Name Carol
- Last Name Johnston
- Discipline Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics
- Presenters
Carol Johnston, Mount Saint Mary’s University–Los Angeles
Need
The Noyce Program and our Education Programs have placed an important emphasis on Equity, Inclusion, and Justice to prepare teachers for success in high need schools. Recognizing that our good intentions may not be enough, our faculty embarked on an exploration of where and how Equity, Inclusion, and Justice were embedded in our courses. Initially, all faculty were interviewed and asked about how they included these concepts in their courses. Many shared resources used, as well. Discussions related to the mapping led to a recognition that faculty may not all be on the same page. We asked ourselves, “What competencies do we as faculty need to best develop these competencies in our teachers?” In this poster, the teacher educator competencies identified through our processes is shared.
Goals
Our inquiries were based on two ideas:1) How do the concepts of equity, inclusion, and justice show up in our education department courses?2) What competencies do we expect of our teacher educators (faculty, supervisors, cooperating teachers, etc.)?3) How do we recruit and evaluate teacher educators based on these competencies?
Approach
The following steps were taken in our inquiry:1) Mapping of where Equity, Inclusion, and Justice were included in our coursework in the department.2) Created a book club to study the text: “Everyday Anti-racism”. This allowed us to create a common understanding of our goals for ourselves, and ultimately, our teacher candidates.3) Creation of Teacher Educator Competencies4) Rewriting tools for recruitment and evaluation.
Outcomes
The key outcomes are the Teacher Educator Competencies and the new tools for recruitment and evaluation. The next steps are to create a self-assessment for our teacher candidates.
Broader Impacts
The need to explicitly address issues of Equity, Inclusion, and Justice are critically needed for our teachers, in addition to strategies to help them to create equitable classrooms for their K-12 students. We will continue to work on ourselves, as models, for what can be acheived.