Midway College Teacher Education Program to participate in Teachers for the 21st Century Program
April 17th, 2008The Midway College teacher education program has been chosen to participate in a Council of Independent Colleges initiative to improve teacher training.
“Improving the effectiveness of K-12 school teachers is an urgent task,” says Richard Ekman, President of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC). “The challenge today is to incorporate into teacher preparation programs new “21st century” skills, tools, content, and assessment, so that the next generation of teachers is able to teach those skills and content to K-12 students.”
To address this need, the CIC, in partnership with Microsoft Corporation’s Partners in Learning initiative, created the Teachers for the 21st Century Program, a project designed to enhance the teacher education programs in independent colleges. The program began in 2006 with 19 selected institutions. In 2008, the CIC sought to expand the program and invited applications in the areas of ePortfolios, science, mathematics, and multimedia, with faculty teams designated for each area.
Midway College’s Teacher Education Program submitted three applications to the project and all were accepted.
The three Midway projects will deal with:
(1) ePortfolios – use of ePortfolios to improve student learning, for program evaluation and improvement, and accreditation self-study: Dr. Lori Henderson, Team Leader; Dr. Johnie Dean; Alison Critchfield; Sarah Laws, Dante Sweatt
(2) Mathematical Dispositions of Future Elementary School Teachers – Assessing and addressing dispositions of future teachers toward mathematics: Dr. David Gibson, Team Leader; Dr. Sarah Laws; Conley Manning; Larry VanHoose; Anna Senter
(3) Learning from Effective Practice – Use of expert teachers’ multimedia narratives of the effective practice to engage pre-service teachers in the profession: Dr. Christine Gibson, Team Leader; Dr. Carolyn Bowman; Debra Wakefield; Dr. Charles Roberts; Jim Roe
Team members will participate in webinars and online communities of practice developed specifically for this program, gaining access to national experts, proven resources to enhance learning, and to each other.