Co-teaching is recognized as a best practice that is increasingly being utilized to meet the needs of diverse learners in the classroom. All teachers need to be prepared to meet the needs of diverse learners, including students with disabilities. However, few teacher preparation programs lead to dual certification in general and special education,…

Teach For America (TFA) is an organization that aims to address educational inequity in part through a program of training and placing teachers in U.S. K-12 public schools that have the highest proportions of high-poverty students. In this report, the authors quantify the impacts of Teach For America Indianapolis (TFA Indy) on student and school…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Teaching Quality." Contents include: (1) State Policy Recommendations for…

New teachers who entered the profession through alternative pathways often teach in high-need urban environments, which means there may be a significant number of English Language Learner (ELL) students in their classrooms. In order to best support these students, techniques can be employed to best facilitate learning for students who do not have…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children in Texas and across the United States. The theme of this issue is English Learner Literacy. Articles include: (1) School Leaders Improve…

Mathematics and science education has increasingly become more important for students in our globally competitive society. New alternative certification teachers, particularly in mathematics and science, need to support student learning in these areas in order for the United States to stay globally competitive. This article presents some ideas…

Over the past decade, as their work has grown increasingly complex, teachers have come under increasing scrutiny. Most are coping with more students, smaller raises, and fewer resources. Educators are expected to meet higher standards and demonstrate their impact on student learning, often with an increasingly diverse and challenging student…

For decades, for-profit educational provision has been merely tolerated, often grudgingly. In the world of charter schooling, for-profit providers are lambasted and sometimes prohibited. In higher education, for-profit institutions have grown rapidly, enrolling millions of nontraditional students and earning enmity, suspicion, and now…

In this powerful collection of personal accounts, successful and respected teachers from across the country reveal how recent education policies have played out in their schools and classrooms in negative and counterproductive ways, and offer teacher-led alternatives for providing equitable, engaging, and empowering education. Framed by critical…

This paper examines the ways that one group of US pre-service teachers, enrolled in an alternate route teacher education class, expressed and challenged each other's contradictory discourses about teaching for social justice. Particularly significant are the many ways that this group of students enacted subject positions around race and sexuality…

In recent years teacher educators have witnessed an increase in the number of alternative pathways to university-based teacher education for prospective teachers. One option is for second-career teachers to enter post-baccalaureate programs in education; however, the experiences of second-career teachers are largely unexplored in the international…

Ten alternatively certified teachers provide advice to other non-traditionally certified teachers via in-depth interviews. The alternatively certified teachers interviewed had retained their teaching positions and achieved longevity in the teaching profession. Data collection and analysis resulted in alternatively certified teachers' advice to…

The purpose of this phenomenographic study was to: (a) gain an understanding of the meaning of inquiry held by beginning science teachers and their instructors in an Alternative Teacher Certification Program (ATCP); and (b) compare science teachers' views of inquiry with what they learned in their ATCP. Participants were four beginning science…

Conceptions of mentoring held by six mentors and six beginning science teachers in an alternative certification program were explored qualitatively by means of case studies and phenomenography. Interviews with the six mentors and six beginning teachers produced 379 statements that were grouped into six conceptual categories. The categories of…

This article argues that the stifling of innovation in teacher education has threatened the vitality of the field. Departing from the typical debate over the merits of the traditional versus the alternative route, this article encourages a pluralistic approach to teacher preparation that the author believes holds promise for revitalizing the field…