Partnerships and Change Strategies for Ensuring High Quality, Clinical Placements that Promote Teacher and

Leader Collaboration

Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform

H325A120003

H325A120003

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This content was produced under U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, Award No. H325A120003. Bonnie Jones and David Guardino serve as the project officers. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the positions or polices of the U.S. Department of Education. No official endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any product, commodity, service, or enterprise mentioned in this website is intended or should be inferred.

Partnerships and Change Strategies for Ensuring High Quality, Clinical

Placements that Promote Teacher and Leader Collaboration

Larry Maheady, Ph. D.

Exceptional Education Department

SUNY Buffalo State

maheadlj@buffalostate.edu

June 24, 2015

Presentation for the CEEDAR Cross State Convening, Arlington, Virginia.

All New York State teachers must be prepared to teach effectively, students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and individuals from poverty environments (New York State DOE, 1989).

“The effect of teacher preparation on eventual student outcomes is necessarily mediated by teachers’ actual practice. It is, therefore, impossible to know the effect of teacher preparation on student outcomes without fully understanding teaching practice” (Goe & Coggshall, 2007).

Purposes

Describe criteria for quality clinical placements

Share three ways to connect teacher preparation, teaching practice, and student outcomes– Created & sustained collaborative relationships with

P-12 partners– Taught pre-service teachers to use Evidence-Based

Practices (EBP) & assess effects on student learning

Provide “evidence” on what “worked”– How student learning was impacted– How teacher practice was impacted– How teacher preparation – teaching practice –

student outcomes were linked

Criteria for Quality Clinical Placements

Inclusive settings (i.e., physical, academic, & social integration) with multiple sources of diversity

• Effective teachers• good instructional models (e.g., use EBP) • nice enough to work with us

Clinical experiences were • linked to required courses for all teachers • practice-based & driven by teacher- and student-

needs• highly structured (i.e., required formal teaching

and outcome assessments)• conducted in pairs

Instructional Assistants Program

First formal teaching experience Freshmen & Sophomores8- to 10-week field experience & partnership

with P-12 schools– Pre-service teachers assigned in pairs

– Twice per week; 3 hours per day

– Teaching/Learning Contracts• 3 to 5 routine instructional roles

– Taught two formal lessons• Pre- & post-test lessons

• Graph results for whole class, small groups, and/or one target student

• Use EBP in one lesson as intended

Descriptive Study (Maheady, Jabot, Rey, & Michelli-Pendl, 2007).

Instructional Assistants Program – 422 pre-service general educators over 4 semesters– Almost 17,000 hours of in class assistance (15 years)

• 78% in high need schools– Taught over 800 formal lessons– Implemented variety of EBP with high degree of accuracy

• Students made marginal and noticeable gains in 83% of sampled lessons

• Students and teachers provided positive evaluations of program and EBP

Lessons Learned– Pre-service teachers can use “simple” EBP as intended &

help students– In-service teachers used IA primarily for instructional

purposes– School-university partnership has persisted for almost 20

years

Peer Tutoring Program

Second clinical experience

– Sophomores & Juniors

– Linked to Introduction to Special Education course

– 8- to 10-week, after-school tutoring program for students with disabilities and ELL

– 2:1 instructional arrangement

• Pre-service teachers alternated teaching, observing, and data collecting roles

• Collected data on how well they used selected teaching practices

• Monitored student performance on brief, end-of-session assessments

– Worked in small cooperative learning groups on campus

• Shared EBP using Jigsaw format

• Modeled content enhancements & use of varied motivation systems

Peer Coaching Study (Mallette, Maheady, & Harper, 1999)

Randomly selected 3 tutor pairs Taught them to use adapted version of PALS (multi-

component training, “peer tutoring” package) Examined effects of coaching on

– How well students coached?– How well pre-service teachers used PALS – What happened to students’ reading fluency and

comprehension Lessons Learned

– Pre-service teachers learned to peer coach but not well– Coaching improved accuracy in using PALS– Improved accuracy produced better student outcomes– Teachers and students gave positive favorability ratings– Pair Tutoring Program sustained for 24 years

Graduate Research Sequence

9-hour TE research sequenceSecond course, teachers……

– Identify important problems– Complete illustrative literature reviews– Design research-to-practice studies & get

approval to do themResearch-to-practice studies

– Target important problems in P-12 settings– Conduct study under “existing” conditions– Compare student performance under existing

(baseline) versus intervention conditions• Within-teacher comparisons

Improving Homework Completion & Accuracy (Landy, Budin, Maheady, Patti, & Rafferty, in

press)

Problem– Low homework completion and accuracy

– Pupil disinterest and some disruptive behavior

Students and settings– 20, 7th graders; 12 students with IEPs

– Co-taught math inclusion class (19 & 34 years experience)

Student Outcomes– Percent homework completed (i.e., % of items completed

divided by total assigned)

– Percent homework accuracy (i.e., % correct or completed items)

Teaching Practice– Three Jars

WHAT? WHO? WOW !

Closing The Gap

Percent Completion Percent Correct

Takeaways

Some practices are more effective than others in improving student outcomes (EBP)– We need more teachers, pre-service & in-service, to use more EBP

more often

Teacher educators can – teach these practices (and others) – provide structured opportunities to use them (early & often) & via

P-12 partnerships– include “tools” to evaluate impact on students– conduct research on teacher practice & student learning

SEA professionals– promote and implement policies that support use of EBP– encourage use of instructional coaching to help teachers use them– support accountability policies & procedures that focus on teaching

improvement over evaluation

References Goe, L., & Coggshall, J. (2007, May). The teacher preparation –

teacher practices – student outcomes relationship in special education: Missing links and necessary connections. NCCTQ Research and Policy Brief. Washington, DC: National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality. Available from www.ncctq.org

Landy, K., Budin, S., Maheady, L., Patti, A., & Rafferty, L. (in press). The effects of Three Jars on the homework completion and accuracy of a 7th grade math inclusion class. Education and Treatment of Children.

Maheady, L., Harper, G. F., Mallette, B., & Karnes, M. (2004). Preparing pre-service teachers to implement Class Wide Peer Tutoring. Teacher Education and Special Education, 27, 408-418.

Maheady, L., Jabot, M., Rey, J., & Michelli-Pendl, J. (2007). An early field based experience and its effects on pre-service teachers’ practice and student learning. Teacher Education and Special Education 30, 24-33.

Mallette, B., Maheady, L., & Harper, G. F. (1999).The effects of reciprocal peer coaching on pre-service general educators' instruction of students with special learning needs. Teacher Education and Special Education, 22, 201-216.

Questions????