Chapter 10: Professional Pathways: Redefining School and University Partnerships

Faced with persistent state-wide teacher shortages, with fewer individuals choosing to enter the teaching profession and conditions within the profession that were making it more difficult for teachers to stay, this college of education reconceptualized its traditional one-to-one student teacher-mentor model. The professional pathways partnership features teacher candidates (TCs) working in teams with lead teachers who provide modeling, coaching, and management, and redesigned university methods courses to assure practice-based teacher preparation for elementary (K–8) and special education program majors. Tactically, this partnership model provides school districts with a way to staff hard to fill positions. More importantly, the college and its partners are co-constructing systems-level changes that deepen and personalize learning for students, are building team-based models staffed by educators with distributed expertise and are offering professional advancement pathways to experienced educators.