Review of (Re)designing programs: A vision for equity-centered, clinically based teacher preparation Holland, A. (2022, May 11). Review of (Re)designing programs: A vision for equity-centered, clinically based teacher preparation by J. Jacobs & R. W. Burns. Education Review, 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/er.v29.3499 May 11, 2022 ISSN 1094-5296 Jacobs, J., & Burns, R. W. (2021). (Re)Designing programs: A vision for equity-centered, clinically based teacher preparation. Information Age Publishing. Pp. 322 ISBN: 978-1-64802-471-9 Reviewed by Abby F. Holland Wingate University United States As a novice teacher on an alternative route to licensure, I did not question if individuals who looked and sounded like me belonged in the front of a high school classroom. I am a White female. In the 1999-2000 school year, my race and gender represented 84% and 75% of the teaching force in U.S. public schools (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2021). That was early in my career. In 2017-2018, soon after I left PK-12 for higher education, 79% of teachers were White and 76% were female (NCES, 2020). Yet the representation of White students in public schools fell from 61% in 2000 to 49% in 2015 (NCES, 2020). While the student population diversified racially, the demographics of the teaching force remained largely the same. So did my attitudes toward cultural awareness. The coursework that I completed during my first years of teaching offered limited discussion about the importance of becoming fluent in one or more cultures beyond my own (Ladson-Billings, 2014). I had no field experience prior to my first day. While earning my educator’s license at the local public university, I noticed that coursework did not always align with what I learned by doing in the high school. I survived, but the authors of (Re)Designing Programs may not have approved. According to Jennifer Jacobs and Rebecca West Burns, future generations of teachers must begin their careers with appropriate dispositions to instruct the diversifying student population inside PK-12 schools. They must also arrive with sufficient clinical Education Review /Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas 2 experience that involves collaboration between the university and nearby school systems. Award-winning faculty members of colleges of education in Florida, Jacobs and Burns are committed to transforming teacher education. The purpose of their text is to support teacher educators who aim to place equity, clinical experience, and school-university collaboration at the center of their programs. According to the authors, disconnects between educational theory and practice can get in the way of future teachers receiving a high-quality learning experience. The redesign of teacher preparation programs begins with university faculty working with local PK-12 schools to address inequities together and bring social justice to the nation’s students. Jacobs and Burns’ framework for equity-centered, clinically based teacher education is divided into four parts, beginning with equity as the first core value. Next are design elements, which include pedagogy, clinical experience, research, and leadership. Third are program values that emphasize a shared vision of equity and social justice among university faculty and partner schools. The last part is coherence. A coherent program is aligned structurally and conceptually to communicate a clear message. For example, a program that values care for students should not include rigid coursework policies. If the program values student choice in PK-12 settings, teacher candidates should also be allowed to choose a preferred modality to demonstrate knowledge. The structure of the book provides a logical sequence for program redesign. Following an introductory chapter on the need to redesign teacher education programs, subsequent chapters address policy, the need for partnerships, development of clinical experiences, conceptual and structural coherence, curriculum and coursework, preparation of university- and school-based teacher educators, teacher candidate supervision and evaluation, the role of research, leadership, and a call for change. Jacobs and Burns applied sufficient breadth and width to each topic to assist program directors in the redesign process. In the redesign, Jacobs and Burns maintain focus on two main themes of the text: Equity and clinical education. As the PK-12 population in public schools diversifies, its “students continue to face disparities, bias, and marginalization connected to culture, race, language, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status” (p. 5). The authors assert that the narrowing of the opportunity gap depends on preparing teacher candidates who are driven to understand the needs of all students. Therefore, teacher preparation programs must center curriculum in clinical experience, a process that requires “intentional partnerships” (p. 61) between schools and universities. This emphasis on university-school partnerships is a distinguishing feature of the text. The authors call for dismantling hierarchies of power that potentially exist between universities and PK-12 schools. A change in mindset from “us/them” to “we” requires a change in vocabulary. According to the authors, creating “boundary- spanning roles” (p. 79) can blur the line between individuals who are historically called cooperating teachers and university supervisors. In programs where teacher education is not yet clinically based, cooperating teachers are PK-12 classroom teachers who cooperate with the university to “host a student teacher” (p. 79). Review of (Re)designing programs 3 University supervisors oversee cooperating teachers and student teachers during student teaching. A clinically based program, however, would instead use the term clinical educator to refer to every educator who supports a teacher candidate’s learning. In a clinically centered partnership, clinical educators would work together to educate not only teacher candidates but also PK-12 students. Another theme of the text is the distinction between teacher candidate supervision and evaluation, an area in teacher education that I had not previously considered. According to Jacobs and Burns, supervision and evaluation are two functions that must remain separate. Supervision involves supporting teacher candidates’ learning while engaging in clinical experiences. Evaluation is a summative judgement of a teacher candidate’s ability to enter the profession. Evaluation does not exist to help a teacher candidate grow or improve their practice. Failure to delineate these two roles can lead to disempowering future teachers. Instead of learning to reflect on their teaching, they may become dependent on being told what to do to receive a positive evaluation. This topic resonated with my own experience as a cooperating teacher when I “hosted” a teacher candidate in my high school classroom. I was responsible for coaching the candidate and using a rubric to evaluate their performance at assigned intervals. Had my role been limited to supervising, I may have been a more effective mentor. The teacher candidate may have relied less on what I would do and incorporated content from methods courses to make sound pedagogical decisions. I appreciate that Jacob and Burns drew on recommendations from The American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (NCATE) and other professional communities. In response to a call for more rigorous accountability and more input from PK-12 schools in teacher certification, the Blue Ribbon Panel Report (NCATE, 2010) identified 10 design principles that set the foundation for this book. Two key principles include (a) integrating clinical practice throughout teacher preparation; and (b) forming strategic partnerships between schools, universities, teacher unions, and state policymakers to share responsibility in designing and implementing teacher education programs. In a chapter about developing coursework and curriculum, the authors advocate for applying standards from the National Councils of Teachers of English and Mathematics. To prepare teacher candidates to place equity at the center of their teaching, the authors suggest specific texts such as Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (McIntosh, 1988) and The Culturally Responsive Teacher (Villegas & Lucas, 2007). The text is accessible in terms of its language and organization. Each chapter opens with a “Before You Read” section with reflection questions about one’s experience in teacher preparation and ends with “Exercises for Action.” Some chapters include “Spotlights from Practice,” vignettes about program improvements’ successes. Some of these stories involve real-world examples from school-university partnerships at Penn State University and the University of South Florida, while others appear to be invented. Regardless of the “realness” of the spotlights, I would have appreciated more of them. For example, one program offered alternative clinical experiences in summer camps and afterschool programs, which allowed future teachers to understand funds of knowledge in the school community and make connections to students’ lives the following school year. The real-world http://www.highered.nysed.gov/pdf/NCATECR.pdf http://www.highered.nysed.gov/pdf/NCATECR.pdf Education Review /Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas 4 examples of equity-centered, clinically based teacher education motivated me to keep reading about the research that supports program redesign. While Jacobs and Burns place a great emphasis on embedding equity into teacher preparation programs in the United States, they present limited discussion about strategies to diversify the pool of students who enter teacher education programs. For example, while the authors grapple with how clinical experiences and cohort models impose upon students with work and family responsibilities, their redesign does not include strategies to recruit teacher candidates who are not White females. A university’s plan to diversify its teacher candidates could convince school partners that the university is committed to equity. Such a plan would also align with the authors’ claim that clinically based teacher preparation can benefit teacher candidates and the PK-12 students in partnering schools. According to evidence provided by Joshi et al. (2018), teachers who are the same race as their students give their students more attention, time, and support. Further, not until the last chapter do the authors mention teacher shortage in the United States, that enrollment in teacher preparation programs is decreasing, and that colleges of education in the United States are disappearing. Enrollment in teacher education programs fell 35% between 2009 and 2014 (Sutcher et al., 2019), and the national teacher shortage could climb to 316,000 unfilled positions by 2025 (Sutcher et al., 2016). Even the best teacher education redesign will have little impact without teacher candidates to sustain the program. Redesigning teacher preparation efforts must contain strategies to recruit more students, and keeping the core principle of equity in mind, more students who are male and people of color to reduce the overrepresentation of White female teachers. While I recommend this book to anyone involved in the teacher preparation process, the authors’ focus on redesign implementation directly addresses faculty in colleges of education who have authority to make changes. Such a focus may unintentionally reinstate the inequities and hierarchies of power that the authors set out to dismantle. For instance, PK-12 teachers, adjunct professors, and junior faculty with an interest in equity-centered, clinically based teacher preparation may find the strategies and recommendations in this text impractical. If a school-university partnership does not already exist, their efforts to start a conversation about clinically based teacher education may not be as easy as the authors suggest. The book might have wider appeal and applicability if it contained more of a focus on what individual clinical educators can do to support teacher candidates who seek to place equity at the center of their practice. Despite these limitations and omissions, (Re)designing Programs sets a solid foundation for designing or redesigning teacher preparation programs that graduate thoughtful and reflective teachers. A focus on equity, clinical experiences, and school partnerships can bring about real change in teacher preparation. School-university partnerships could begin with teacher candidates spending more hours inside schools. The creation of boundary-spanning roles for instructors could help future teachers to bridge theory and practice, learning about teaching and learning to teach in the same setting. Placing equity at the center of school-university partnerships would allow the next generation of teachers to understand why the opportunity gap exists and determine what they can do to narrow it. While my race and gender do not Review of (Re)designing programs 5 allow me to bring diversity to the profession, I have no doubt that I would have been a more effective teacher had I completed a program that was equity-centered and clinically based. References Joshi, E., Doan, S., & Springer, M. G. (2018). Student-teacher race congruence: New evidence and insight from Tennessee. AERA Open, 4(4), 1-25. https://doi.org.10.1177/2332858418817528 Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1),74–84. https://www.hepg.org/her- home/issues/harvard-educational-review-volume-84-number- 1/herarticle/culturally-relevant-pedagogy-2-0 McIntosh, P. (1998). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. In M. McGoldrick (Ed.), Re-visioning family therapy: Race, culture, and gender in clinical practice (pp. 147–152). The Guilford Press. National Center for Education Statistics. (2020). Condition of education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020144.pdf National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. (2010). Transforming teacher education through clinical practice: A national strategy to prepare effective teachers. http://www.highered.nysed.gov/pdf/NCATECR.pdf Sutcher, L., Darling-Hammond, L., & Carver-Thomas, D. (2016). A coming crisis in teaching? Teacher supply, demand, and shortages in the U.S. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/coming-crisis-teaching Sutcher, L., Darling-Hammond, L., & Carver-Thomas, D. (2019). Understanding teacher shortages: An analysis of teacher supply and demand in the United States. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(35), 1-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.27.3696 Villegas, A. M., & Lucas, T. (2007). The culturally responsive teacher. Educational Leadership, 64(6), 28-33. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/the-culturally- responsive-teacher About the Reviewer Abby F. Holland, PhD, directs a college access program that is a partnership between Wingate University and the local K-12 school system. She is also an assistant professor for the Thayer School of Education at Wingate. https://doi.org.10.1177/2332858418817528 http://www.highered.nysed.gov/pdf/NCATECR.pdf https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/coming-crisis-teaching http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.27.3696 Education Review /Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas 6 Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas is supported by the Scholarly Communications Group at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. 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