Resources

Educators and policymakers across the United States recognize a growing urgency to improve the nation’s systems of teacher preparation. Ensuring that teachers stay and thrive in the profession depends largely on having system-wide policies and practices in place that address teacher shortages, promote equity and excellence, and cultivate expertise, diversity, and more.

The California State University (CSU) system partnered with the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation to launch the New Generation of Educators Initiative (NGEI), in an effort to transform the nature and quality of teacher preparation at both individual CSU campuses and across the CSU system as a whole. To answer the question, “What does it take to transform teacher education?” WestEd and SRI International conducted an evaluation to examine and share learnings about the CSU-led effort to implement large-scale clinically oriented teacher preparation reform.

As part of a series of new evaluation reports that explore key transformational elements of effective teacher preparation programs, this paper identifies key levers to put high-quality clinical experience—that is, the opportunity to practice the work of teaching in classrooms—at the center of teacher preparation. Findings in this report explore the following high-leverage strategies to strengthen the clinical orientation of teacher preparation programs:

• Lever 1: Identify prioritized skills
• Lever 2: Select or create a rubric to assess candidate proficiency with prioritized skills
• Lever 3: Integrate and expand opportunities to practice prioritized skills
• Lever 4: Re-conceptualize clinical roles, selection, and support
• Lever 5: Define and implement processes to provide formative feedback to candidates on prioritized skills

To find out more about lessons learned and promising practices that emerged throughout the implementation of the NGEI, download the related papers in this four-part study:

1. Building Strong Partnerships to Improve Clinically Oriented Teacher Preparation
2. Strengthening the Data Use and Continuous Improvement Capacity
3. The NGEI Approach to Improving Teacher Preparation in the CSU Through a System of Supports