$7.5 million grant to help prepare next generation of teachers
The URI School of Education has been awarded a $7.55 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s “Teacher Quality Enhancement” program to reform teacher education and strengthen the preparation of the next generation of Rhode Island teachers.
The five-year grant is the largest ever received by the school and is targeted to statewide reform through a partnership with all colleges and agencies involved in the education and certification of teachers in Rhode Island. David Byrd, director of the School of Education, and Education Professor Peter Adamy, are co-principal investigators for the grant.
The grant will fund the Rhode Island Teacher Education Renewal project, which will form a partnership of all eight approved teacher preparation programs in Rhode Island and will support work with teachers in three high-need urban school districts, Central Falls, Pawtucket, and Newport. The arts and science faculties at each of these institutions and senior staff from the commissioner’s office for both the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Higher Education are also primary partners in the project.
The seven other teacher education programs are Brown University, Johnson and Wales University, Providence College, Rhode Island College, Rhode Island School of Design, Roger Williams University, and Salve Regina University.
“This award recognizes the value of strategies for reform that are based on both research and practice. We can no longer advance an agenda of improvement by starting with old assumptions about what works and what doesn’t. This is a statewide partnership that will help us accomplish the goal of improved teaching and learning for our future teachers and the students they will teach,” said URI President Robert L. Carothers. “As the children in these three Rhode Island school systems directly benefit from this process, we believe that what we learn in the process will improve education for children across the state and the nation.”
According to Byrd, the objectives of the new project are to: increase teachers’ knowledge of their specific subject matter; increase teachers’ ability to integrate technology into their instruction; increase knowledge of effective teaching strategies for use with diverse student communities; provide induction and mentoring for new teachers; and provide non-traditional certification in high-need areas.
“This project will address the need to enhance the content preparation of teachers statewide, and specifically advance content knowledge in areas of math, science and English as a second language. The grant provides an opportunity for professional development and enrichment with current teachers as well as mentoring new and some non-traditional teachers,” explained Byrd.
“As the population in the state and nation continues to become more diverse, this grant will also support efforts for diversity training to help teachers better understand and link to the community in which they teach,” he added.
To accomplish these goals, the project will effect changes statewide in the curriculum, assessment, and clinical experience of future teachers. Similar changes will be made in the professional development and mentoring of district-based teacher induction programs, and in student learning in PK-12 schools. On a statewide level this program will also support the development of a non-traditional route to teacher certification.
Once these program changes are recommended, tested and approved, they will become a part of the new statewide curriculum that will include standards-based coursework.
By Jhodi Redlich
