Created by partnerships of educator preparation programs, school districts, and community-based organizations, grow-your-own programs recruit, prepare, and place community members as teachers. They typically recruit and prepare high school students, school classified staff (e.g., paraeducators, afterschool workers, bus drivers), career changers,…

"Mister, what time is it?" is an account of the evolution of a traditional teacher education program into an alternative certification program in the Arizona borderlands, outlining the theoretical frameworks that shaped the program redesign, program design elements, and challenges encountered along the way. We found many of the perennial…

In response to community and sector needs, in 2020 an Initial Teacher Education (ITE) provider in Aotearoa/New Zealand developed a Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) programme with a unique design as an alternative pathway into the profession. The design elements of the programme included being field-based, online, and with a bicultural kaupapa. This…

IBEC program is an international certificate program aiming at educating in-service teachers to be IB teachers by offering them opportunities to improve the quality of their classroom teaching, increase their access to teaching jobs worldwide, interact with leading academics for research and publishing consultation, demonstrate their deep…

Teacher shortages in the United States have resulted in the development of alternate route teaching programs to better provide teachers, especially in difficult to staff schools such as those in rural communities. In order to address rural teacher shortages, the Mississippi State University College of Education implemented a fully online,…

In this article, we describe the evolution of a statewide alternative teacher preparation program for teachers of students with disabilities and explain current processes to revise and expand the program to increase accessibility to teacher candidates in rural schools. We will identify important features of the program including (a) significant…

In response to local districts' needs for certified teachers with community roots who understand local schools and students, the authors developed an innovative alternative route for paraprofessionals based on a traditional bachelor's program. Their goals were to provide a rigorous, research-based program that allows paraprofessionals to get a…

This article introduces a strategy to diversify the teaching workforce through de-centering teacher education as the primary stakeholder in the preparation of diverse teachers. The article expands the focus on teacher recruitment and retention by proposing a model that counters the educational context of White supremacy through Grow Your Own (GYO)…

This article describes a statewide online alternative teacher preparation program in early childhood special education. The history and evolution of the program is explained along with the programmatic changes that resulted from working with noncertified teachers with a wide variety of backgrounds in both rural and urban districts. Challenges and…

Grow Your Own programs, with their focus on preparing and placing community teachers, are increasingly being identified as a viable solution for addressing ethnoracial diversity and teacher shortages in schools. Given the heightened interest in these programs, the focus of this article is to consider various "projects," or rather,…

Teach For America (TFA), an organization that places college graduates in urban and rural classrooms for two-year terms of service, is lauded by reformers who see its five-week summer training institute as evidence that teachers have little to learn before entering classrooms. Yet, while boosters see TFA as a radical alternative to traditional…

This qualitative study describes the development of hybrid teacher preparation programs that emerged as a result of a "forced" partnership between university-based and alternative teacher preparation programs in New York City. This hybrid experiment was a short-lived, yet innovative by-product of a somewhat pragmatic arrangement between…

Policies for principal preparation and licensure are important levers for improving school leadership. By developing a rubric of research-based practices, this University Council of Educational Administration study aims to provide a formative tool for policy makers. Using a policy analysis frame by Roach et al., this study explores the state code,…

Teacher shortages are a pervasive global issue that is expected to continue, especially in low-performing, high-needs schools [O'Connor, E. A., Malow, M. S., & Bisland, B. M. (2011). Mentorship and instruction received during training: Views of alternatively certified teachers. "Educational Review," 63(2), 219-232]. In an effort to…

When addressing the ongoing shortage of family and consumer sciences (FCS) teachers, it is important to accommodate those unable to follow a traditional college program. This article describes a program that is beneficial to practicing professionals; it utilizes technology to aid in effective communication and efficiency of content delivery.…