College of Education

Program accreditation

Accreditation Report

Section II: Conceptual Frameworks

The conceptual frameworks establish the shared vision for a unit's efforts in preparing educators to work effectively in P-12 schools. It provides direction for programs, courses, teaching, candidate performance, scholarship, service, and unit accountability. The conceptual frameworks are knowledge-based, articulated, shared, coherent, consistent with the unit and/or institutional mission, and are continuously evaluated.

Conceptual Framework for Teacher Education Program

The following describes the teacher education program conceptual framework. For information about the development of the conceptual framework and how it addresses the NCATE Indicators for Conceptual Frameworks, see Teacher Education Conceptual Framework Indicators.

A constructivist conceptual framework based on current research and best practices guides the teacher preparation program at WSU. The constructivist conceptual framework is cohesive and integrated, is performance-based, addresses state and national standards for P-12 students and teacher preparation, and reflects the understanding that professional educators need dispositions as well as cognitive understanding.

Effective teaching requires that educators draw upon students' social, cultural, linguistic, and academic strengths. To accomplish this task, teachers must have an understanding of (a) learners, (b) learning, and (c) teaching, as well as the disposition to employ this knowledge in the service of individual welfare and social justice. The following sections explain more fully the conceptual framework that supports the WSU teacher preparation program.

Understanding Learners

Central to learning to teach in a culturally and linguistically diverse society is the teacher's understanding of children's understanding (Cochran-Smith, 1995). Reflective practice related to learners requires that teachers have the dispositions and skills to actively pursue an understanding of the social, cultural, linguistic, academic, and life contributions students bring to the classroom (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). Through their inquiry, teachers draw on their own knowledge of how children develop understanding, begin to view children as "at promise" (Mulhern, 1995), and draw upon the strengths of all students when constructing educational activities. Teachers must understand students' backgrounds, behaviors, and interactions with others, and engage in what Duckworth (1987) calls "giving reason" to the ways students construct meanings and interpretations.

This perspective on learners focuses on what students have rather than on what they lack (Ernst, 1993). Acknowledgment of students' cultural and intellectual contributions to the classroom stimulates learning and helps students construct meanings by making connections between what they already know and what schooling offers them (Ernst, Castle, & Frostad, 1992; Han & Ernst-Slavit, 1999).

What happens in the classroom is more than what is planned by the teacher, suggested by the materials, outlined in the curriculum guide, or defined by state and national standards. Rather, classroom events are constructed by the joint contributions of teacher and students. This idea implies, as Freire (1970) suggested, moving from a banking mode of teaching to a problem-posing mode, drawing on experiences and knowledge developed both in and out of school. By making content problematic, teachers support reflection and meaningful engagement with ideas, processes, and mental dispositions that can facilitate genuine learning (Dewey, 1933; Hiebert et al., 1996). But this can only occur when both teachers and students engage in dialogue to enhance understanding and break down any walls that might separate them (Wertsch & Toma, 1995).

The implications of these ideas are that pre-service teachers need to develop proficiency at inquiry and ways of encouraging dialogue between themselves and students (Young, 1998). They need dispositions and skills for fostering classrooms where there is respect for the individuality of others, authentic problem solving and intellectual pursuit of knowledge, commitment to inclusiveness and community, and openness to diverse viewpoints. Given that inquiry generally includes observations and conjectures about situations, followed by evaluation of those conjectures, the teacher preparation program should include opportunities for pre-service teachers, in consultation with school teachers and college instructors, to engage in inquiry about students in actual school situations. In addition, pre-service teachers need to identify and use multiple data sources in order to learn, understand, and describe students from various perspectives.

Understanding Learning

Although learners must ultimately construct their own meaning and understanding, they do not do so in a vacuum. The teacher, as well as the students, plays an active role. The students' interactions with the teacher and other students influence their engagement (or failure to engage) in the cognitive processes necessary for learning to occur (Anderson, 1989). The ability to reflect on these interactions takes one to the psychological plane of cognition, enabling doubt and the search for resolution (Dewey, 1933; Maturana, 1978; Piaget, 1973). Further, students' reflective capabilities allow them to "step out of the stream of direct experience, to re-present a chunk of it, and to look at it as though it were direct experience, while remaining aware of the fact that it is not" (Von Glasersfield, 1991, p. 47).

The teacher decides how to enhance engagement in those cognitive processes. To facilitate and support the development of academic success and the achievement of state and national learning goals, the teacher builds classroom goal structures and social arrangements that maximize students' learning (Borkowski, Weyhing, & Turner, 1986; Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Lord, 1998; Nicholls, 1983; Nicholls & Thorkildsen, 1995). The teacher employs a vast array of techniques and strategies, including the use of technology, to meet the individual needs of learners and allow them greater facility in constructing meaning.

The teacher must also decide whether children are engaging in the cognitive processes necessary for learning. If learning is viewed as a collective, social enterprise, which occurs not only by hearing others' ideas, but also from trying to explain things to others, the teacher will encourage dialogue and interpretive discussion, rather than just present information (Pressley & McCormick, 1995). During these interactions, the teacher actively inquires into and engages students' prior knowledge and understandings, and mediates ways to make instruction more meaningful.

Educators who adhere to the constructivist philosophy believe that thought and experience are inseparable from the context in which they occur (Gergen, 1995). From this perspective, educators guide student discovery, facilitate student learning by doing, and utilize students' past experiences in social interactions to help students negotiate connections between new knowledge and prior knowledge in order to construct new meanings, knowledge, and understanding. In addition, educators utilize multiple approaches to assessing student learning because they understand the individuality of the learning process and the potential impact of culture, language, gender, and learning needs on the ways students construct meaning and demonstrate learning.

Understanding Teaching

The image of the teacher implicit in an inquiry or constructivist approach is a person who builds and evaluates knowledge and theory in order "to interpret, understand and eventually transform the social life of schools" (Erickson, 1981). The teacher thoroughly understands content, thinks critically about beliefs and practices, and seeks alternatives that are effective and equitable. The teacher does not simply apply other peoples' principles or accept the knowledge of outside experts or colleagues about the appropriate placements, groupings, labels, expectations, and limits for a particular child. At the same time, children are not regarded as passive agents or receivers of others' actions, but as active agents--always learning, always involved in the business of making sense of what is going on around them (Cochran-Smith, 1995).

Understanding teaching within a constructivist framework requires contextual reflective thinking and work. The contextual reflective teaching perspective requires that educators appreciate the extent to which learners' interests and modes of learning are different at different times. Contextual reflective teachers have the dispositions and skills to strive to find the educational experiences that allow all children to learn. They use the students' responses to those experiences to inform decisions. This practice requires that teachers are prepared to be flexible and sensitive, to be willing to closely observe a child's actions, to utilize multiple approaches to assessing learning, to reflect on the child's actions, to learn from the child, and to be guided by the child's interests and experiences (Young, 1998). It also requires that teachers have the dispositions and skills to recognize and utilize students' unique social, cultural, linguistic, and academic strengths in the classroom to facilitate learning for both students and teacher.

Contextual reflective educators also reflect on the needs of communities from which students come. They recognize the need for collaborative efforts with agencies and groups to form educational partnerships to meet the needs of students. Collaborative partners working together can achieve many goals that would be difficult if not impossible to accomplish as a single entity. For example, collaboration can facilitate such efforts as school-community cooperation, partnerships with parents, student incentives, curriculum enhancement, staff development, student responsibility and leadership, and meaningful research activities (Stephens, 1995).

Teachers find themselves in a paradoxical relationship with the society they serve because of the inherent tensions and ambiguities in the democratic educational process. Schools are conservators of the past, while at the same time, they are shapers of the future, providing students with the knowledge, skills and dispositions that will help them meet the challenges they will likely face. Teachers play an essential role in this process. Their instructional decisions help define the operational goals of the school and their daily example provides an important model for the awakening moral and civic consciousness of students. In fulfilling these responsibilities, teachers must exercise an unwavering commitment to democratic values and social justice. This means that teachers must seek to create spaces in which students can openly and safely grapple with the implications of democratic citizenship.

A teacher preparation program cannot prepare teacher candidates for all eventualities they will encounter, given the complexity of educational settings, the relationship of teaching to larger social issues and values, and the connections between teaching and one's personal experiences and philosophies. The goal of preparing teachers to engage in contextual reflective practices, however, will promote lifelong learning aimed at recognizing the needs of students and schools and encourage efforts toward solutions to educational problems.

The old adage, "The human mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled," succinctly describes the constructivist theory of human learning. Constructivism is about constructing knowledge. Engaging learners in investigating, reasoning, predicting, inferring, inventing, and problem solving is the core of constructivism (Marlowe & Page, 1998). Since all learning, except for simple memorization, requires the learner to actively construct meaning, not accumulate bits of information and isolated skills, the faculty views its role as co-creator of knowledge about teaching and learning. In short, the focus of the teacher preparation program is to provide opportunities for students to construct knowledge--not receive it. Furthermore, students in the program must demonstrate, through multiple performance-based assessment approaches, that they can effectively utilize this knowledge and positively impact the learning of all students in P-12 classrooms.

Constructivist teachers do not regard teaching as transferring knowledge to students. They believe their task is to help learners acquire the skills and dispositions needed to carry out the work of learning. Accordingly, teacher education courses and practicum experiences have been designed to assist preservice teachers in forming dispositions, understanding academic content, acquiring learning and thinking strategies, acquiring the metacognitive understanding needed to choose appropriate instructional strategies for instructional tasks, and monitoring the impact of instruction on student learning.

In summary, the constructivist framework guides the curriculum in the teacher preparation program around the themes of understanding learners, learning, and teaching. The faculty assumes that students and preservice teachers are active constructors of their own knowledge. The faculty, including the supervisors of practicum experience, views itself as facilitator and collaborator in this construction of knowledge about learning and teaching.

References

Conceptual Framework for Administrator Preparation Programs

The programs in Educational Administration are oriented toward educational leadership, and are designed to prepare educational leaders who function as scholar/practitioners. The work of schools is scholarship, the work takes place in complex organizations, and these organizations are embedded in a complex, diverse, technological society. Hence, for educational administrators to function as educational leaders, they must be practitioners and scholars. (See Administrator Certification Programs--Principal, Superintendent, and Program Administration for a more detailed discussion of the Washington State University programs in educational administration.)

As practitioners, educational administrators must have highly developed practical skills and concomitant knowledge in order to lead contemporary school districts and schools in the 21st Century. A specific focus of educational administrators as practitioners at all levels is to provide leadership specifically oriented toward student learning. In addition to being skilled practitioners, educational administrators must be scholars. A high level of scholarship is necessary to read, understand, and critique the plethora of research and related literature concerning schools and schooling in a complex, diverse, technological society. A specific focus of educational administrators as scholars is to be knowledgeable of, have a deep understanding of, and be able to critique the scholarly and research literature concerned with the impact of school leadership on student learning. Additionally, because educational administrators are in charge of schools and schooling, they must have achieved a high level of scholarship in order to be viewed as authentic educational leaders of districts and schools.

In the preparation programs for educational administrators, the practitioner and scholar aspects of the program are separated but clearly overlap. The scholarly aspects of the program are primarily embodied in course work and research projects. The practitioner aspects of the program are primarily embodied in internships. However, theoretical aspects of administration encountered in course work and related activities are useful in providing practical and theoretical understanding of administration with respect to districts, schools, and communities during internships. In addition, practical experiences encountered in internships provide a rich body of knowledge and experience that are useful in theoretical discussions that occur during course work.

Given the educational leadership orientation to the preparation of educational administrators-educational leaders who are practitioners and scholars-the conceptual framework for the knowledge base can be understood in terms of educational leadership in a complex and diverse educational organizational context within a complex, diverse, technological community context. Educational leadership can be considered as one of several leadership roles within an organizational context. These roles include principal, program administrator (including supervisors and curriculum directors) and superintendent. Moreover, within the organizational context, educational leadership can be regarded as functioning at different levels. These are the institutional, managerial, and technical levels. The institutional level represents and gains external support in order for the organization to reach its goals. The managerial level administers the technical level. The technical level is where the core work of the organization is performed. Although each role has institutional, managerial, and technical functional components, the superintendent role primarily functions at the institutional level, the principal role primarily functions at the managerial level, and the program administrator primarily functions at the technical level.

Figure 1: Conceptual Framework for Programs in Educational Adminsitration presents a graphic summary of the conceptual framework for programs in educational administration in the Department of Educational Leadership & Counseling Psychology in the College of Education at Washington State University. The key concepts in the conceptual framework include educational leadership (educational leaders who are practitioners and scholars), community context, leadership roles, (including principal, program administrator, and superintendent), and organizational context (including the institutional level, the managerial level, and the technical level).

Conceptual Framework for School Counselor Preparation Program

This section of the Institutional Report presents a description of the conceptual framework upon which the school counseling preparation program is built. For information about the development of the conceptual framework and how it addresses the NCATE Indicators for Conceptual Frameworks, see School Counselor Preparation Program Conceptual Framework Indicators.

The Master's program in Counseling at Washington State University (WSU) subscribes to the scholar-practitioner model of training. Students develop the skills to critically evaluate the literature and to apply it in their counseling. The common thread of all training is a balance of applied, theoretical, and scientific components in the practice of counseling with a knowledge base drawn from existing practice, theory and research in counseling (Brown & Lent, 2000) and in alignment with knowledge and skills stipulated by state standards.

The WSU school counseling preparation program emphasizes the facilitation of psychological growth and development. It stresses the interaction of individual, environmental and socio-cultural factors in both the treatment of psychological problems and the promotion of health through better self management and self renewal. This focus provides coherence to curriculum, instruction, field experiences, clinical practice and assessment and evaluation across the Ed.M. and M.A. program in school counseling. The program emphasis also is consistent with recent definitions describing the focus of counseling, in general. For example, Gelso and Fretz (1992) describe the field of counseling in terms of three major roles and five predominant themes:

The major roles are (a) remedial (assisting in remedying problems), (b) preventive (anticipating, circumventing, and forestalling difficulties that may arise in the future), and (c) educative and developmental (discovering and developing potentialities). Thus, the predominant themes are (a) a focus on intact rather than severely disturbed people; (b) a focus on assets, strengths, and positive mental health regardless of the degree of disturbance; (c) an emphasis on relatively brief interventions; (d) an emphasis on person-environment interactions rather than an exclusive emphasis on the person or the environment; and (e) an emphasis on educational and career development.

The WSU school counseling preparation program also stresses "The importance of viewing people and their behavior in a contextual manner because psychology itself exists in a socio-cultural context influenced by ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, and socio-historical perspective (Kagan, et al., 1988, p. 351).

Recognizing that the role of a counselor varies depending on the sociocultural and environmental context of the position in consideration, the primary intent of the program is to train generalists (i.e. professionals who have the knowledge and skills to function in diverse community and school settings). This is accomplished by applying the scientist/scholar-practitioner model to three major themes in the curriculum: (a) understanding counseling, (b) understanding P-12 students (the "clients"), and (c) counseling in context. Each of these themes is elaborated below:

Students who are pursuing initial certification as school counselors receive training to be effective in school settings as a complement to their generalist training. Specifically, school counseling students are prepared to serve P-12 students within the framework of comprehensive, developmental counseling models using the knowledge and skills required by state standards. Student performance is systematically evaluated relative to the state standards (see Table 2: Performance Based Preparation Program in School Counseling). Emphasis is placed on supporting learning for all students through educational development, personal/social development, and career exploration. The school counselor's role is defined broadly and may include individual counseling, group counseling, consulting with parents and teachers, offering prevention programs, coordinating resources and referrals, assessing and using data, assuming leadership roles, and collaborating with other school personnel in order to support student achievement and to create a safe, positive school climate (Schmidt, 1998; Sears, 1999). School counseling students are exposed to educational technology consistent with their future professional roles (e.g., searching the ERIC database, using career counseling software and web sites, and doing computerized class scheduling).

References

Conceptual Framework for School Psychologist Preparation Program

The WSU/EWU Post Master's School Psychology Certification Program is modeled after the EWU residential school psychology program. The EWU residential school psychology program was recently granted "Conditional Accreditation" by the National Association of School Psychology (NASP) (see Philosophy and Aim of School Psychology Program). As part of the framework it is acknowledged that the school psychology training is delivered within a context of commonly held and publicly known values and clearly articulated training philosophy, mission, goals, and objectives. Training includes an integrated program of study delivered by qualified faculty as well as supervised field experiences necessary for the preparation of competent school psychologists whose services positively impact children, youth, families, and other consumers.

Consistent emphasis throughout the program of study addresses the need for a foundation for all professional practices not only in theory, but in empirical knowledge, as well. Professional preparation concentrates on specific skill development in a number of areas of professional practice. However, the major emphasis of the program is the preparation of the school psychologist as a highly competent problem solver. Thus, in addition to being trained to respond to specific problems in specific ways, students are prepared to draw upon personal foundations in psychology and education in order to develop and implement effective empirically based strategies for preventing or resolving problems as they occur. They also learn to collaborate with other helping professionals and with parents in serving the mental health and educational needs of all children and youth.

Unique to the WSU/EWU Post Master's School Psychology Certification Program is an underlying belief that professionals who already possess a master's degree in an education related field have training and experiences that should be recognized as meeting some of the state training standards for school psychology prior to their acceptance into the program. Additionally, this certification program is designed to deliver training compatible with working professionals particularly those in the education field who want to re-specialize in school psychology. This is accomplished by offering course work in the summers, evenings, and on weekends; furthermore, these courses are offered through traditional educational classes in the Spokane area, as well as telecommunication of these courses to other parts of the state.

The program of study and field experiences is based on knowledge and skills of professional practice, theory, and current research. Consistent with the scientist-practitioner perspective, continual attention is given to integrating empirical findings within and across the profession of school psychology. Toward this integration, formative and summative evaluation methods will be used to evaluate performance of professional staff, course work, and program development (For details, see Standard 2).

 

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