Mike Trevisan

I am pleased and honored to be the interim dean for the Washington State University College of Education. After 19 years with the college, I know how both it and WSU work. I am fairly good at putting compelling arguments together, so you can expect that I will go to great lengths to advocate for the College of Education.

Based on feedback from my colleagues both inside and outside the college, here are the priorities I see for the spring term:

• Our vision of “one college, four campuses.” I will regularly visit Spokane, Tri-Cities and Vancouver and, when I am home in Pullman, will stay in touch with faculty around the state.
• Our slant towards R-1, the top tier of research universities. Our researchers collaborate with each other, with faculty in other WSU colleges, and with colleagues throughout the United States and beyond.
• Teacher preparation. This is, and will remain, a core mission.
• Educational leadership. One of our college’s greatest contributions to the state is preparation of principals, superintendents and other leaders through our certifications and Doctor of Education programs.
• Development. Fund-raising is high on the list of the dean’s responsibilities, especially given the drop in state funding. I enjoy meeting with donors to explain our programs, contributions and needs.
• Employee searches. We’re hiring a dozen new faculty and administrators this year.

I want to thank former Dean (now Distinguished Professor) A.G. Rud for his leadership, particularly with respect to the idea of “one college, four campuses.” His attention to all campuses has raised expectations for the College of Education. In addition, A.G. set the college on course to R-1 work. I continue to hear from faculty members that they appreciate this focus, as I did in my previous role as associate dean for research.

Ours is a college on the move. There is much work to be done. I know I’ll be working long hours, traveling a good deal, and getting lots of e-mail. (If you write, be patient! I will get back to you, though maybe not as quickly as in the past.) With an able leadership team and the top-notch support of Stacy Mohondro, assistant to the dean, I am optimistic that the college will do well in 2013.

A.G. Rud

This fall, I was proud to be asked to visit Japan with four colleagues to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the partnership of the Washington State University College of Education and the Nishinomiya Board of Education.

The board had requested specific topics for this anniversary visit, so our faculty were chosen to share their expertise at faculty seminars. Tom Salsbury spoke on “Rousing the Will to Learn and Motivating Foreign Language Education,” Paula Groves Price on “School Management – The Independence and Autonomy of Schools” and Jane Kelley on “Immutability and the Educational Trends: The Potential of ICT Application in Classrooms and Preschool.”

Gisela Ernst-Slavit’s contribution was a meeting with the Nishinomiya Superintendent Akiharu Manabe, his associates, and me regarding a potential study abroad program for WSU undergraduate and graduate students.

For four days we visited schools in the morning and led our seminars in the afternoon. The agenda was packed, but stimulating. On Friday we all went to Kyoto. On Saturday, some of us went to downtown Nishinomiya for a festival and others, including me, went by bullet train for an unforgettable visit to Hiroshima.

Plans are afoot for a visit to Pullman by Japanese delegates in 2015, as well as a possible WSU study abroad program that could start as early as 2014. An additional partner, Mukogawa Women’s University, has approached us, and we spent a day visiting its campus as well as its junior and senior high school. MWU, which has a satellite campus at Fort Wright in Spokane, is an all-female private institution with many international satellite campuses. For developments on the possible study abroad program, contact Jane Kelley or Gisela Ernst-Slavit.

Faculty show off the Cougar flag in Kyoto

In my Nishinomiya keynote speech, I focused on the challenges facing public education in the United States. In my farewell remarks, I commented on two topics that were on my mind during that week: hospitality in education, and food. I said, in part:

Hospitality to me is treating the stranger as a friend, and being open to that person or non-human animal. There is such suspicion of “the other” in our world and lives that it is refreshing, and humbling, to come to a culture that values hospitality and treating guests with openness and warmth. May we continue to see hospitality as an educational value, and have it in our teaching, learning, and leading in schools.

Secondly, I have noticed how healthy and freshly prepared Japanese cuisine is. Though I have eaten such food before in the USA, I did not think of it as a cultural value in the way I do now. Fresh food is good for one’s health, and we in America do not heed that common enough and undisputed advice. My country is experiencing an epidemic of weight gain, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other preventable diseases that can be traced in part to our consumption of processed foods. I learned this week not only of Japanese hospitality, but of the healthy body practices of this country that will inform my own life and my views on how we educate our children.

My colleagues and I are grateful for the inspiring time we had in Nishinomiya.

A.G. Rud

There is much disagreement about how much testing is too much, and which tests are best. But we can all agree on the value of understanding test results. So I am pleased to report that the Washington State University College of Education has a young expert who is focused on finding a good way to detect change and growth in what teachers know about assessment and measurement.

Chad Gotch is a research associate in the Learning and Performance Research Center and a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling Psychology. He did his doctoral research under Professor Brian French, focusing on measurement literacy. I attended Professor Gotch’s dissertation defense and then sat down with him to learn a bit more about his important work.

He showed me a report, “Teachers’ Ability to Use Data to Inform Instruction: Challenges and Support,” that gave the steps he and like-minded researchers and policy makers believe are necessary for teachers to master to be able to use test data in their teaching. They include the following:

• Find the relevant pieces of data in the data system or display available to them (data location)
• Understand what the data signify (data comprehension)
• Figure out what the data mean (data interpretation)
• Select an instructional approach that addresses the situation identified through the data (instructional decision making)
• Frame instructionally relevant questions that can be addressed by the data in the system (data posing)

Chad Gotch

Chad asks this question in his research: To what extent are teachers prepared to interpret test data, such as those provided by Washington’s Measurement of Student Progress and High School Proficiency Exam—or smaller tests that are woven into the curriculum—and use that information to improve instruction?

Classrooms in the state of Washington are becoming increasingly diverse, and teachers are facing the challenge of providing instruction to many different students from diverse backgrounds. If teachers get access to data about student achievement, they will be able to tailor their teaching to a particular student or group of students.

As teachers get more test results, they need to learn how to use that information. Chad expects that, ultimately, his research findings will be used in professional development programs and in teacher preparation programs such as ours. He notes that the kind of data-driven decision making that we want to see in our schools is already required of professionals in business, government agencies and universities.

Chad’s work so far has been supported by a College of Education Faculty Funding Award, laying the groundwork for what he and Brian French hope will be a large federal grant. What they’re learning, we need to know.