Candidate Evaluation

In addition, students in the Multiple and Single Subject Programs complete the PACT assessment, while students in the Preliminary Education Specialist Program complete a similar assessment in EDSP 460. During this assessment, completed during clinical practice, candidates are required to reflect upon how diversity influences instruction via a focused look at the context for instruction. This includes an examination of the students’ community and family as well as students’ academic, language and social skills. Building on the results of this examination, each candidate plans, delivers and evaluates an instructional sequence of related lessons, with a focused lens on student learning and academic language proficiency.  PACT and the Teaching Event are critical assessments.  If candidates do not successfully pass, they will not be awarded their credential. 
Candidates in the advanced programs complete assignments and field experiences in educational settings (Table 4.3.a-j)with diverse populations. For example, The Summer Reading Academy offers candidates in the Advanced Reading and Language Credential and Certificate programs to work for four weeks with ethnically and linguistically diverse and low income PreK-8 students in an intensive literacy workshop at a local school site (EDRL 527 A&B). In the PPS program, candidates have a structured field placement process, consisting of sequential training opportunities that provide fieldwork settings to process and apply the information about working with diverse students and their families gained in credential coursework focused on multicultural competence (COUN 570).  Candidates in PASC I engage in a number of assignments and activities designed to increase their awareness and knowledge of the diversity of the school and community constituencies. Among these assignments are school and self- assessments of cultural competence (EDEL 589).  Candidates in the Education Specialist program focus on cultural competence in EDSP 514 through a series of readings and online assignments.

Supporting the curricular content and focus on the importance of helping candidates provide instruction to support all learners are the faculty members who teach the SOE courses. Candidates interact with professional education faculty, faculty from other units, and/or school faculty, both male and female, from a variety of ethnic/racial groups. Two linked tables, report on the gender and ethnic diversity of the SOE faculty in 2003-04 (from the last Institutional Report) and in 2010-2011. Currently, the female-male ratio among faculty matches that of the teaching candidates. Faculty ethnicity matches that of candidates. Minority faculty comprises 27.8 % of the faculty.