Continuous improvement of the MAE program is assured through feedback from and responses to multiple constituencies. Truman State University and DESE policies require regular program review while other reviews take place in response to inquiries from MAE faculty and the program’s external stakeholders. Annually, the MAE programs are accredited by DESE and they have maintained accreditation each year.
Previous Accreditation
The MAE adopted the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) upon its inception and provided annual data for our national recognition. Our most recent CAEP accreditation report (from 2016) is available here. However, we switched to AAQEP anticipating that this quality assurance system would provide more flexibility given our context and therefore, provide more useful feedback for us.
Professional Development Series
After analyzing the Professional Development Plan data from 2020-20201 interns, and recognizing that completers might need more support professionally (based upon an AAQEP monthly meeting discussion), we have created a professional development series for 2021-2022. In September the focus was social justice, October is ESOL, November is wellness and balance for teachers, February is creating a positive classroom environment, March is differentiation, and April is dedicated to critical thinking.
University-Wide Review
At Truman State University, each program is required to present a five-year review to the Faculty Senate. These reviews include numbers of graduates and other information pertinent to changes in the program. A detailed list of the data required by the Faculty Senate is available here. The Education Department’s five-year review was disseminated in 2017 without recommendations for improvement.
Department-Level Internal Review/External Outreach and Recognition
One tenet of the MAE is to be a reflective practitioner. With this in mind, we have a highly reflective faculty who are frequently examining our practices and refining what we do based upon assessments. We have monthly department meetings—one is a meeting of the entire faculty and the other is a working meeting where faculty can work in groups or alone to complete assigned tasks. These meetings contribute to our continuous improvement as we discuss initiatives and other information that is relevant to our students for growth and development of the MAE. Faculty who work in other departments will share information about the MAE with their faculty and solicit their input to inform our decision-making.
We have an Advisory Board that meets twice a year to discuss innovations in the MAE and to provide input regarding what is happening in K-12 and how our candidates are prepared. The feedback from the Advisory Board is shared by Dr. Lochbaum through emails and at Department meetings (see Section 3c).
We have an Assessment Committee [current members are Dr. Strange, Dr. Pendergast, Dr. Maglio, Dr. Miner, Charisse Hatfield (certification/assessment), Karlie Minnehan (GTRA) and Shannon Fetzner (GTRA)] that meets monthly reviewing data and research to disseminate to the faculty. In addition, the assessment Committee organizes two retreats a year that focus on our long term goals and national recognition. Last spring, we designed our retreat as a conference giving faculty and students choice for what they wanted to participate in with sessions lasting approximately 30 minutes. We recorded the sessions in case someone wanted to go back and listen to something, however, we did have several sessions with the whole group. We learned to incorporate bathroom breaks, which we had forgotten about the first time.
In Summer 2020, the MAE elementary program created a Virtual Enrichment Summer School with the support of the Kirksville School District, due to COVID-19 canceling the typical summer school where the teacher candidates taught. The school was highly successful during a period of turmoil and provided the teacher candidates with invaluable experience teaching online. Truman Today posted an article about it.
Dr. Stacy Davis was awarded the Academic Innovation Award. She used Flipgrid, a free social learning platform, in her classes to encourage using the target language outside of school. This tool helped with personal communication between classmates, as they created videos of themselves and responded to each other in the target language. Dr. Davis offered professional development to the MAE faculty on this initiative.
Asynchronous, synchronous, hybrid, and face to face classes are common now in our department and we have discussed different teaching methods and what is working–informally and formally. All of our Department meetings are held by Zoom.
Social Justice Engagement
We are extremely proud of our work with social justice and technology for this particular aspect of AAQEP. In 2018, we had several years of focus on the Truman State University budget from the state and the stress with less funding and fewer students. Faculty were feeling the pressure of financial struggles. We decided to change the focus and instead examine something we could control. Therefore, the MAE faculty developed a list of characteristics and outcomes we wanted for our graduates in 2028. After we created our initial list, we had stakeholders (e.g., current students, graduates, administrators, teachers, Advisory Board, and other faculty who work with our students) weigh in on our list. Two outcomes rose to the top as critical areas. One was technology and the other was social justice. The Department Chair worked with GTRAs to think about how we would begin implementing professional development to aid us in meeting those goals.
We had our first social justice training in Fall 2019 from an English/MAE faculty member, Dr. Summer Pennell, and the Interim Director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion, Brad Turnbull–both of whom are experts in social justice. We invited students who were interested to participate and bought the book, Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education by Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo for everyone to study. The authors are recognized as experts in the field and this book is now in its second edition — experts agree that it is a valid text for learning about social justice education. The intent of our professional development was to start conversations about what faculty and students felt were important goals for us and next steps. We created a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) document and from that discussion, the Department Chair worked with GTRAs and our multicultural liaison (Bertha Thomas) to inform our next steps.
In Fall 2020, after rich discussions, the MAE faculty agreed upon a social justice definition during a department meeting. Faculty agreed to add this definition on their syllabi if they were comfortable with it and we added the definition to our website. Furthermore, MAE faculty identified XXX 608G Management of Instruction and ED 609G Internship, as the two courses where we would add a social justice rubric for students, mentors, and University Supervisors to complete. In addition, individual faculty members discussed different units/activities to incorporate social justice into their classes. For example, in the CML 608G course, MAE students use Words and Actions: Teaching Languages through the lens of social justice from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
In Fall 2020, GTRAs and faculty worked together with multiple drafts to create a tool to measure social justice dispositions. After discussions, XXX 608G and ED 609G faculty piloted this rubric in Spring 2021 with MAE students and mentors. Three different surveys were given to mentors, faculty and students depending on their role and course regarding the social justice rubric in April 2021. Data collected from all the stakeholders were analyzed. We found that the rubric was not as useful in its design with a quantitative focus rather and several recommendations pointed us in the direction of a more qualitative focus. In addition, mentors responded with a wide range of responses regarding the use of the rubric from strongly disagreeing to strongly agreeing and between those from mentors. Overall, we learned that more examples and professional development were needed in understanding some of the components that were listed in the rubric. Our Advisory Board was highly supportive for us to further develop the measure and felt like we were right on track in terms of actually examining social justice in the classroom. Several members of our Advisory Board commented that they hoped the use of this rubric would encourage their teachers to examine their own practices.
Based upon the data and information from the Advisory Board, Dr. Jones and Dr. Miner worked with the elementary graduate students teaching summer school in ED 618G to revise the rubric. We created a checklist for the majority of standards. We then asked mentors and students to use it as a pilot during summer school. Mentors and students gave us feedback, including asking for examples, which were added. We are piloting this form Fall 2021 with ED 609G and XXX 608G students, mentors, and supervisors. To continue with our work in social justice, we have asked Dr. Saint Rice, Director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion, to provide professional development on September 30, 2021, for current MAE students and completers based upon our social justice checklist.
In addition to the rubric, we instituted a portfolio for interns enrolled in ED 609G. In the portfolio, the MAE faculty asked for students to write a one page reflection and to provide one artifact for each of the MEES standards. Students were instructed to make one reflection address technology and one address social justice. Faculty were randomly assigned to review two or three students’ portfolio submissions. They rated each MEES standard for each of their students by determining whether or not the artifact and the reflection meet the content of the standard. MAE faculty marked where they saw exemplars and where the student addressed social justice and technology. The Department Chair of Education read everyone’s portfolios and the faculty assessments. Any student whose submission had been marked as an exemplar was asked by the Department Chair for permission to use their reflection and artifact as a model for F21 interns.
During Summer 2021, a student worker and the Department Chair identified the MEES standards that had been used for technology and social justice. Based on the analysis used to determine the method in which students addressed these two components, faculty agreed that we would not require a scaled standard for these components, but would instead score as present/not present. Furthermore, we are creating a portfolio example for current students to use as a model. This portfolio is designed to provide interrater reliability for faculty in scoring the MEES in addition to improving our program by analyzing where students may have gaps in their learning.
Innovations in technology since the last national review include a renovation of one of our classrooms to include a smartboard, nureva wall, Virtual Reality, and flexible seating. GTRAs offered faculty training and student training to use the technology in that room and developed a manual to help solve problems if there were any. In November of 2019, students and faculty were given a short survey to describe their current comfort levels of using the Smartboard, Nureva wall and Virtual Reality. Participants reported that the SmartBoard was the most comfortable (48%), while 36% were comfortable with the Nureva Wall and 20% were comfortable with the VR. Therefore, we developed more training as 63% of participants agreed that technology effectively enhances teaching. Multiple faculty utilize that space and all ED 393/ED 394 courses are taught in that room. We hold Showcase events for prospective students in that space, too. In Spring 2021 the MAE Department offered professional development on digital equity for pre-MAE and current MAE students and faculty. Feedback on the digital equity professional development (which was conducted in two sessions) was collected via surveys, and results from both sessions illustrate that the majority of participants found the sessions informative and the content important. Third, with the impact of COVID-19, the Department Chair offered to buy the text Distance Learning Playbook for K-12 Learners by John Hattie, Douglas B. Fisher, and Nancy Frey. In addition, the Department Chair bought Engaging Learners through Zoom by Jonathan Brennan for faculty that needed extra support.