During the 2011-2012 academic year, the Interdisciplinary Studies (EC-6) program was very successful.  Our goal of “Candidates will be able to plan an effective lesson was met at the 98.4% level.  Not all students were successful but after reviewing all data in the program, the faculty feels the area of modification of learning for all students should be a key focus during the 2012-2013 year.   For this reason, the main goal for 2012-2013 will be “Candidates will be able to plan, implement, assess and modify effective instruction.  This will give the faculty an overall, and actually, a more complete picture of how the candidates impact the learning of EC-6 students.

Faculty will work this next year to infuse the technology and ELPS into instruction which have been added to the TExES PPR.

For two academic years prior to 2012-2013, we have reported progress on 3 goals for the Interdisciplinary Studies EC-6 Program (Elementary Education).  After input from the faculty it was decided to merge the two goals into one goal since there was so much overlap between the two.  In place of the lesson plan (as the indicator), we used the Teacher Work Sample (TWS), completed in student teaching semester,  in order to present palpable evidence that our candidates are not only able to plan, implement, and assess instruction but that they are also making positive impact in theirs students’ learning and achievement.  As stated in the 2011-2012 report, we have implemented several initiatives to help candidates succeed on the TWS using the set criterion.  Some of these included: requiring TWS in the methods semester, getting extensive feedback from the instructors on improving the TWS, and conducting workshops/help sessions during the student teaching semester. These measures seemed to have worked as revealed in 2012-2013 data showing that our candidates surpassed the 87% criterion (set for 2012-2013) on the TWS as data showed 97% met expectations.  

The faculty teaching in the EC-6 Program will continue to meet and plan collaboratively, as a committee, to identify areas of improvement and ways to support our teacher candidates in becoming highly effective teachers for a diverse population. For example, we will review our course syllabi before the start of each semester to ensure that both national and state standards are addressed. We will continue to analyze data (from TK20) to help with program improvement. More specifically, the instructors will prepare teacher candidates to teach 21st century skills such as, critical thinking and problem solving. To support these goals, the faculty will continue to model and adapt project based learning (PBL) as a primary methodology in all our courses. We will require at least one major PBL assessment during the content methods semester. All these should help us meet goal 1 with more depth and rigor. Our candidates should be able to plan, implement, assess, and modify effective instruction that supports 21st century skills (communication, critical thinking, problem solving).

For goal 2 (demonstrate mastery of the state educators standards assessed in the PPR), the original criterion (85% first time passing rate) has been met. In addition, our higher criterion (93%) set for 2012-2013 was met (98% passing rate for first time test takers).  In anticipation for a much more rigorous revised PPR (for EC-12 certification) examination, the faculty will have the following measures in place in order to improve weak areas.  Two domains on the PPR (Designing Instruction, assessment to promote student learning, and Implementing effective and responsive instruction and assessment) will be reinforced in all our content methods courses. These two areas will be addressed in previous courses where lesson planning to meet the needs of diverse learners is taught. To help candidate become familiar with the rationale, language, and format of the PPR teacher certification examination questions, each instructor (in the methods semester) prepares 10 sample questions from his/her content area (includes Classroom Management) and use these items for either pre or post assessment in the course. Both instructors and candidates will discuss/analyze questions and rationalize choice of acceptable and unacceptable answers.  The faculty will further involve the certification office to provide feedback on the practice test results so that areas of concern can be identified prior to the state examination date. Finally, the content methods instructors in the EC-6 program will emphasize modeling and requiring interdisciplinary learning units (with technology integration). This will result in a stronger alignment with  the PPR state teacher examination. This plan should raise our passing rate (first time) to 95%.