History

The College of Education at UGA was one of several institutions awarded a U.S. Department of Education contract in 1998 to develop a model of excellence for contextual teaching and learning in pre-service education or professional development. The overall goal of the UGA project is to develop and implement a pre-service teacher education model that:

• is based in a theoretical framework of contextual teaching and learning
• permits preservice teacher education students to move through core courses in professional education and content areas which integrate contextual teaching and learning concepts into their instruction
• utilizes a broad range of contexts (schools, community, work places) both to inform teaching and learning and to provide places for them to occur beyond the classroom
• allows pre-service teacher education students to experience contextual teaching and learning and authentic assessment in diverse settings, and
• provides opportunities for pre-service students to reflect upon and integrate their experiential learning into contextual curriculum and pedagogy that can be used in their teaching.

To create initial direction for the project, a conceptual framework was created from a detailed review of literature and the thinking, reflection, and collaboration of project faculty. The framework builds considerably on the work previously completed at Ohio State University (in collaboration with Bowling Green State University). The theoretical underpinnings of the UGA framework rest on (a) the situated cognition literature, (b) constructivism, and (c) multiple intelligence theory.

UGA's project on contextual teaching and learning in preservice teacher education has focused on four types of activities:

• Conceptual Framework: Theorizing, reviewing the literature, developing, and defining the concept and providing examples of CTL for project faculty
• Professional Development: Faculty in the project participate in business internships, seminars with business people and educators, and on-site interviews to (a) enrich faculty understanding of CTL, (b) help them integrate more context-based teaching strategies into their existing courses, and (c) help them develop new components of the program model
• Program Design: Design and implement CTL concepts and strategies into core and content courses for a cohort or community of learners
• Evaluation: Ongoing examination of processes and results of efforts to accomplish project goals, including research and dissemination activities.

In preparation for actual curriculum, course, and instructional reform, one of the most significant professional development activities for project faculty consisted of their immersion in work-based learning. Five local area businesses, in collaboration with the local Chamber of Commerce, provided tours, speakers, on-site observations, time to interview with workers and managers, and internships to project faculty in May and throughout the summer. The purposes of these activities were to help University faculty: (a) understand how to prepare future teachers to make classroom teaching and learning more relevant to the world of work; (b) learn about current, practical applications of content area disciplines in workplaces and what is expected of workers in modern technical and professional work settings; and (c) begin to identify experiences that can be designed for pre-service students in teacher education programs to help them learn about work contexts and applications to teaching/learning in various subjects.

To date, project faculty and advisory groups have primarily: (a) agreed upon the initial conceptual framework for contextual teaching and teaming to guide our work; (b) taught a pilot CTL section of the sophomore core educational psychology course; (c) organized several faculty professional development activities (see above); (d) developed (now teaching) a pilot CTL section of the core sophomore/junior foundations of education course; (c) planned 3 seminars for students on sources of discipline knowledge, academic community learning, and work-based learning; (f) finalized the design for the model; and (g) collected and analyzed much formative data.

The specific components of the redesigned teacher education program model at UGA include:

Pre-professional Courses: Educational Psychology (Learning and Development) and Educational Foundations are existing, required courses for teacher education and other majors are being revised to include contextual teaching and learning principles.

Community Work Experiences: Service Learning is an existing course involving service projects in various community agencies, programs, or settings. A new course to be developed by project faculty will introduce other structures field experience opportunities (internships in business, industry, or professional work settings) for teacher education students.

Seminars: A new series of seminars is being developed to reflect upon how field experiences connect education and the world outside of schools. They will include: Disciplinary Knowledge; Basic Principles and Ways of Knowing Workplace and Community Experiences: Connecting Academic Learning to Out-of-Classroom Contexts; and Contextual Teaching and Learning in Schools.

Disciplinary Courses: Required courses in methods of teaching and subject matter disciplines will be revised to incorporate contextual teaching and learning examples and concepts so that students can experience and apply these strategies in school settings.

Mission

The University of Georgia in Athens is a vibrant campus of 30,300 students, qualifying as both the oldest state-chartered land-grant college in the nation and consistently as a nationally recognized Research I institution. It is often referred to as the flagship in Georgia's system of 34 state-sponsored public higher education institutions. Thirteen schools and colleges, with auxiliary divisions, carry on the University's programs of teaching, research, and service.

The College of Education is the University's second largest college (the College of Arts and Sciences is first) and probably one of the largest colleges of education in the nation. The College has been in existence in some form since 1908. Today, there are about 225 tenured or tenure-earning faculty, another 150 academic professionals and credentialed support staff, over 400 graduate assistants, nearly 5,000 majors (about 3,000 undergraduates and 2,000 graduate students) and another 500 working for certification only. There are 18 undergraduate majors offered in the college and over 90 graduate programs. The College is by far the largest K-12 teacher preparation program in the state, with about 750 BS Ed degrees awarded last year. The College is consistently ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the best colleges of education in the country.

The College is decentralized into 4 schools: Leadership and Lifelong Learning; Teacher Education; Health and Human Performance; and Professional Studies. 20 departments are dispersed throughout the schools.

Key Partnership Representatives

Two schools, The School of Leadership and Lifelong Learning and the School of Teacher Education, are assuming major leadership for this project. Faculty and students from the Departments of Mathematics Education, Science Education, Social Science Education, Language Education, Middle Schools Education, Social Foundations of Education, and Occupational Studies are principally involved. In addition, the School of Professional Studies is contributing faculty to Educational Psychology and Measurement, Instructional Technology, and Counseling and Human Services. The College of Arts and Science has several contributing departments.

Community partners include the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce and its affiliated businesses and industries and six local school systems. An Advisory Committee for the project includes members from several local businesses as well as 12 academic and occupational teachers from area middle and high schools.

For more information on this model pre-service teacher education program, contact:

Dr. Richard L. Lynch, Director
School of Leadership and Lifelong Learning
The University of Georgia
129 River's Crossing; 850 College Station Road
Athens, GA 30602-4812
Phone: 706-542-3891
E-mail: rlynch@coe.uga.edu

Dr. Michael J. Padilla, Director
School of Teacher Education
The University of Georgia
316 Aderhold Hall
Athens, GA 30602
Phone: 706-542-4047
E-mail: mpadilla@coe.uga.edu

Dr. Dorothy Harnish, Coordinator
Occupational Research Group
The University of Georgia
129 River's Crossing; 850 College Road
Athens, GA 30602-4812
Phone: 706-542-4690
E-mail: harnish@coe.uga.edu

Program Two - University of Washington:

History

The Center for the Study and Teaching of At-Risk Students (C-STARS) is one of seven institutions awarded U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) contracts in 1998 for the purpose of preparing teachers to use contextual teaching and learning strategies. These awards were generated through a joint initiative of USDOE?s Office of Vocational and Adult Education and the National School-to-Work Office. These contracts address three components of teacher education and awards were made to the University of Georgia, Ohio State University and the University of Washington focusing on pre-service teacher education; to Bowling Green State University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison focusing on in-service teacher education, and to Recruiting New Teachers/Council of Great City Schools focusing on teacher recruitment.

The Washington State Consortium is currently facilitating a year-long Contextual Education Academy designed to increase opportunities for pre-service teacher education students to collaborate with K-12 teachers recognized for their exemplary CTL teaching knowledge and skills in planning, delivering, and evaluating CTL learning activities for K-12 students in classrooms, and particularly in local community and employment settings. K-12 teachers and education professors from Washington?s diverse colleges, universities, and school districts are collaborating with a variety of local community-based organizations and employers to produce exemplars of CTL strategies and activities that work well both at the K-12 and the pre-service teacher education levels. Beginning the summer of 2000, the Consortium plans to initiate a series of regional variations of this academy approach throughout the state and involve several hundred additional K-12 teachers and professors who agree to collaborate in demonstrating a variety of alternative learning environments and PDS-type approaches for enhancing attention to CTL in pre-service education programs. The Consortium is referencing much of the work reported in Contextual Teaching and Learning: Preparing Teachers to Enhance Students Success In and Beyond School (ERIC, Information Series, 1998) which presents a series of USDOE commissioned papers by Hilda Borko, Linda Darling Hammond, Kenneth R. Howey, Richard Lynch, Susan Joan Sears, et.al.; and also PDS literature by Bock, Gehrke, Clift, Butler, et.al. reported in the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, Second Edition (Sikula, 1996).

An Adaptation Professional Development School Model for CTL

Professional development schools (PDSs) have been recommended by some educators as having good potential in partial response to current calls for educational reform and the professionalization of teaching. When pre-service teacher education students in traditional teacher education programs are placed in K-12 schools for fieldwork or student teaching, relationships between universities and schools are generally top-down and directed exclusively by the universities. These arrangements tend to provide very limited opportunities for balanced collaboration among K-12 teachers and university faculty. In contrast, when universities and schools enter into an agreement to create professional development schools, the expectations and roles for university and school personnel are significantly more complex, evenly distributed and intertwined than in the traditional relationships. This new "professional" culture relies on more peer-like relationships between professors and teachers and transforms both institutions and the personnel within each. The term professional development school was originated by the Holmes Group (1986) in the writing of Tomorrow?s Teachers in which teacher educators created a vision about developing schools that:

Would provide superior opportunities for teachers and administrators to influence the development of their profession and for university faculty to increase the professional relevance of their work through (1) mutual deliberation on problems with student learning, and their possible solutions; (2) shared teaching in the university and schools; (3) collaborative research on the problems of educational practice; and (4) cooperative supervision of prospective teachers and administrators (p. 56).

The Holmes Group (1990) further elaborated the concept of professional development schools in Tomorrow?s Schools by explaining that PDSs would focus on providing professional development for both novice and experienced professionals as well as developing research about teaching. Their vision for PDSs was influenced in part by the medical profession?s teaching hospitals which place those in training with those who are providing medical services in real contexts augmented by interaction with medical researchers.

Definitions Used and Guidelines Being Applied

The application of contextual learning to the American classroom has its origins in the experiential learning traditions of John Dewey who in 1916 advocated a curriculum and teaching methodology tied to the child?s experiences and interests. Our consortium?s operational definitions for contextual teaching and learning are rooted in Dewey?s progressivism and in research findings which show that students learn best when what they are learning is connected to what they already know and when they are actively engaged in their own learning. In the course of conducting a literature review it became clear that CTL is an integration of many "good teaching practices" and several education reform approaches intended to enhance the relevance and functional utility of education for all students. The following working definitions are currently being used by the Consortium; however, we anticipate modifications as the project evolves:

• Contextual Teaching is teaching that enables K-12 students to reinforce, expand and apply their academic knowledge and skills in a variety of in-school and out-of-school settings in order to solve simulated or real-world problems.
• Contextual Learning occurs when students apply and experience what is being taught referencing real problems associated with their roles and responsibilities as family members, citizens, students, and workers.
• Contextual Teaching and Learning emphasizes higher level thinking, knowledge transfer across academic disciplines, and collecting, analyzing and synthesizing information and data from multiple sources and viewpoints.

The following Guidelines are used by the Consortium to identify and describe quality contextual teaching and learning, both at the pre-service teacher education and the K-12 levels:

• Active Engagement

Are learners actively participating in learning activities in an interactive manner?
• Engagement in Real World Experiences

Are learners actively engaging in experiences that compel them to either simulate or emulate how adults use the content of what is learned across natural, real-life situations?
• Engagement in Meaningful Learning

Are learners actively engaged in real-world experiences that motivate them to connect a sense of personal relevance, value, and meaning with the content of what is learned?
• Engagement in Authentic Assessment

Are learners actively engaged in multiple assessments that provide the opportunity to demonstrate performance of the content of learning according to real-world conditions and standards?

CTL Activities and Strategies Being Demonstrated

The Consortium's dual emphasis on pre-service teacher education and K-12 education brings into focus several teaching strategies that place the student in meaningful contexts that connect the students with the content of what they are learning. This holds true for both the K-12 student and the pre-service teacher education student. The most prevalent strategies typically referred to in the literature on contextual teaching and learning that our Academy professors and K-12 teachers have selected to demonstrate are different combinations of the following:

Authentic Instruction
Authentic instruction is instruction that allows students to learn in meaningful contexts. It fosters thinking and problem-solving skills that are important in real life settings.

Inquiry-Based Learning
Inquiry-based learning entails teaching strategies patterned after the methods of science and provides opportunities for meaningful learning.

Problem-Based Learning
Problem-based learning is an instructional approach that uses real-world problems as a context for students to learn critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and to acquire knowledge of the essential concepts of a course.

Service Learning
Service learning is an instructional method that combines community service with a structured school-based opportunity for reflection about that service, emphasizing the connection between service experiences and academic learning.

Work-Based Learning
Work-based learning is an instructional approach in which students use the context of the workplace to learn content of school-based courses and how that content is used in the workplace.

Evaluation

External evaluators from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) are currently contacting all Academy professors and K-12 practitioners to arrange for a series of site visitations designed to generate information in order to document case studies and assess the extent to which CTL practices and related procedures outlined in the action plans of these professors and K-12 practitioners have been and/or are currently being implemented. More specifically these site visitations will:

1. Document the extent to which the Academy fellows have carried out their Action Plans and the factors that have supported or limited their activities.
2. Assess the impact(s) of the Action Plans, (a) on their teacher education activities, (b) on school education throughout their respective institutions, and (c) on their pre-service teacher education students.
3. Assess the extent to which the Project has contributed to improving the quality of teacher preparation and staff development in Washington State.
4. Identify exemplars of best practices in CTL and the extent to which they reflect the Project's guidelines for quality CTL.
5. Document any initial impact(s) of the Project on enhancing attention to CTL in Washington's teacher training programs.
6. Utilize results of Case Studies to (a) provide a contextual base for development of survey instruments and other evaluation tools for use with K-12 teachers, Professors, and pre-service teacher education students, and (b) interpret and validate other data and information collected through the evaluation process.

For more information on this PDS-type model for pre-service teacher preparation for CTL contact:

Dr. Albert Smith, Principle Investigator
Center for the Study and Teaching of At-Risk Students (C-STARS)
University of Washington
4725 30^th Avenue NE
Seattle, WA 98105-4021
Phone: (206) 543-3815; Fax: (206) 685-4722; Email: alsmith@u.washington.edu

Dr. Tom Owens, External Evaluator
Assistant Director, Education and Work Program
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
101 SW Main, Suite 500, Portland, OR 97204-3297
Phone: (503) 275-9596; Fax: (503) 275-0443
Email: owenst@nwrel.org

[Return to Exemplary Practices]