1. Framing the Education Continuum to Elevate the Profession
Mary Vixie Sandy, Executive Director
California Commission on Teacher Credentialing
Katherine Bassett, Executive Director
National Network of State Teachers of the Year
June 7, 2015
NASDTEC, Portland Oregon
11/16/2018

2. Overview Conference structure
What is a continuum of professional practice?
How can state policy be shaped to promote and support the continuum?
The case of California
SWOC Analysis: what are your state’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges?
11/16/2018

3. Our frame…
Learning to teach, well, is a lifetime undertaking that is informed by a prospective teacher’s own educational experiences, how they approach learning, how they were PREPARED to teach, how they are supported during ENTRY into the profession, the kinds of professional GROWTH opportunities they have access to over the course of their careers, and the kinds of LEADership opportunities available to them. 
State policy, standards, and licensure requirements across the country take advantage of these aspects of learning to teach in varying degrees; it is our belief that states that put in place a policy structure that supports educator development across this continuum are doing the best job of developing the teaching force.
11/16/2018

4. Continuums of Professional Practice
Most professional fields have career paths, ladders, lattices and continuums such as:
student-intern-resident-physician
student-apprentice-plumber-master plumber
Continuums allow a practitioner to grow and develop, plan career trajectories, and advance in their careers.
Teaching does not currently have this structure.

5. Uses of Continuum Models
Assessing progress in the development of skills.
Helping to define a desired level of competence.
Supporting progress in the development of skills, by understanding the learning needs and styles of learning at different levels of skill acquisition.
Helping to determine when a learner is ready to teach others.

6. A Continuum of Teacher Expertise Development
Novice
Advanced Beginner
Competent
Proficient
Expert
Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986)

7. 11/16/2018

8. Key Points
Becoming an expert practitioner takes time, and deliberate practice.
Great teachers are not born, they are made.
Early career development requires controlled, effortful processes; these become more automatic over time, with practice.
Expertise is difficult to teach because it involves a tacit knowledge component (which is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing or verbalization).
Major personal skills to become an experienced practitioner appear motivation and perseverance.

9. Organizational StructuresB. D. C.
Hierarchical relationships and teacher autonomy 9

10. Distributed leadership model
Sources:
Ancona and Bresman. X-team: how to build teams that lead, innovate, and succeed. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007
Ancona, Malone, Orlikowski, Senge, In Praise of the Incomplete Leader. Harvard Business Review, February, 2007. .
Distributed leadership model
…no one omniscient leader at the top. Instead, multiple leaders work within a team structure. This team creates a network of connections (See Figure 2) that carry out the leadership functions of making sense of a changing environment, creating a web of relationships that foster commitment to change, establishing a vision of what is possible in the future, and inventing new structures and processes that make the vision a reality.
11/16/2018

11. Trends We Can Learn From
Flattening of organizations
Ladders to Lattices
Mass Career Customization
Social media is encouraging collaboration
Shared knowledge
Works from the bottom up – worker-driven
Open workspaces to encourage collaboration
Leadership moving towards teaming approaches to problem-solving
Focus on teamwork in corporate culture
Rewarding teams rather than individuals
11/16/2018

12. State survey findings 1
11/16/2018

13. Continued findings
11/16/2018

15. California Strengths - Preparation - Performance Assessment Weaknesses
- Induction
Weaknesses
- Growth
- Leadership
Opportunities
- Undergraduate preparation
- Professional growth and evaluation
- Strengthening leadership
Challenges
- Local control
- Partnering with labor to strengthen policy
California
11/16/2018

16. What changes could your state enact that would move it forward?
Strengths:
What is your state doing to support teacher development across the continuum?
Weaknesses:
What is your state not doing (well) that impedes or undermines the continuum of teacher development?
Opportunities:
What changes could your state enact that would move it forward?
Challenges:
What interferes with the advancement of a continuum of teacher development?
Your State
Your role(s)
11/16/2018