Chapter 8: Preparing School Leaders to Meet The Needs of Alternative Certification Teachers Through a Collaborative Partnership

Alternative routes to obtaining teacher certification have become a seemingly viable solution to a teacher shortage in the United States dating back to the 1980s (Aragon, 2016; Lewis-Spector, 2016). Through the alternative route to teaching, an individual who holds a bachelor’s degree in a non-education field can enter the classroom as the teacher of record, while meeting expedited requirements to earn permanent certification (Woods, 2016). However, because of the short duration of most of these programs, some researchers have found that alternatively certified teachers lack depth in knowledge of educational practices and pedagogy (Unruh & Holt, 2010). Therefore, questions of alternative certification teacher quality and retention, and their potential to impact student achievement negatively have arisen (Foote et al., 2011). Some have suggested that a potential solution to concerns about alternatively certified teachers’ quality and retention is for school districts and university-based teacher preparation programs to collaborate in the development and delivery of such programs, hoping that the ultimate benefit will be increased teacher and student success (Dana, 2010; Parfitt & Rose, 2018).