SOE News

This year, as part of the Teacher Education Initiative (TEI), a group of faculty members and doctoral students in the school has been working to articulate a proposed set of ethical obligations that would undergird our redesigned teacher education program. Their work was supported by a grant from President Coleman’s Ethics in Public Life Initiative, which is led by John Chamberlin, professor at the Ford School of Public Policy. The seminars we have held this year helped us bring other experts and other perspectives to the work of this group.

The group is nearing the completion of its work, and will soon have an elaborated list of ethical obligations to propose for incorporation into our new program. Members of the group will share this list with the school, discuss the work that they have done in order to arrive at the list, and solicit feedback and suggestions in a seminar on Wednesday, May 6, at 3:00 p.m. in the Tribute Room (1322). This will constitute the final seminar in this year’s series on ethics in teaching. Professor Harry Brighouse, University of Wisconsin-Madison, our seminar guest from December, will be back to provide critical commentary.

I hope that you will join us on May 6 to learn about the group’s work, to review and discuss the proposed set of obligations, and to provide feedback and suggest revisions. The creation of an ethics curriculum for our student teachers is a fundamentally important goal and one that would benefit from the involvement of everyone in the school. We are especially eager to hear the ideas and suggestions of faculty members and doctoral students who work directly with our student teachers.

Draft copies of the proposed set of ethical obligations will be available electronically to all several days before the meeting. If you are unable to attend, you may also contribute questions and suggestions electronically, and we will make clear how to do this.

Everyone is welcome at this school-wide event. I hope that as many of us as possible will attend and participate in what I anticipate will be an invigorating and very rich conversation. Please mark your calendars for Wednesday, May 6, 3:00 p.m., in the Tribute Room! Refreshments will be served.

On Monday, May 4, the Dean’s Advisory Council (DAC) will be meeting in the building from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The DAC is made up of experts in education, business, the media, government, and others with strong interests in education and its improvement, both in the U.S. and internationally. This meeting will focus on our plans for designing our building to support the sort of work we are doing here – teaching, research, and professional education. This means that they will be discussing learning and research environments and how they might drive the future renovation of the School of Education building.

As part of the meeting, we will be taking the DAC members on a thorough tour of the building. I would appreciate it if you could make sure that workspaces are straightened up so that we can make the strongest possible impression on these alumni, donors, and experts. We want them to see that although we have considerable space challenges in our “legacy building,” we do take pride in and care with it.  And if you see these guests in our building next Monday, be sure to share a friendly word with them!

Spring commencement activities will take place next Saturday, May 2. The university’s undergraduate commencement begins at 10:00 a.m. in Michigan Stadium. Google co-founder and 1995 U-M graduate Larry Page will address undergraduates and be presented with an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree. A native of East Lansing and son of one of the university’s earliest computer science graduates, Page developed the PageRank algorithm with his partner Sergey Brin in the late 1990s. In 2004 they launched Google Books, an ambitious plan to boost access to the world’s libraries, including U-M’s massive library collection.

The School of Education’s commencement activities will begin at 4:00 p.m. in Hill Auditorium with a reception following on Ingalls Mall. Our speaker will be Dr. Lisa Delpit, executive director of the Center for Urban Education and Innovation at the College of Education, Florida International University. Dr. Delpit is well-known for her work on teaching and learning in urban schools and in diverse cultural settings. She has studied education in both Alaska and New Guinea, published several books, and is widely sought after as a speaker. Dr. Delpit earned doctoral and master’s degrees from Harvard University, and a bachelor’s degree from Antioch College. She has won many awards and was recognized with the high honor of a MacArthur genius fellowship. I am truly delighted that she has accepted our invitation to address our graduates and their families.

In addition to Dr. Delpit, three students also will speak at commencement. Representing the teacher certification graduates will be Emily Gedert, a senior in the elementary education program. Venice Thandi Sule, who earned her doctorate in higher education, will represent the graduate students, and Sarah Scott, PhD in educational studies, will speak on behalf of all of our students.

Today, April 27, from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. in the Brownlee Room (2327), the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education (CSHPE) will host a brown bag presentation by Carol Mitchell, University of Michigan African presidential awardee and CSHPE visiting scholar from the University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. Ms. Mitchell’s talk, “Campus-Community Engagement: The Case of Sizabantwana,” will discuss the Sizabantwana Project (meaning ‘helping children’ in isiZulu), a partnership between the School of Psychology at the University of KwaZulu Natal and various disadvantaged schools in the Pietermaritzburg region in South Africa.

Ms. Mitchell will present on this project and the challenges and developments over the last 12 years of the project’s existence. Sizabantwana aims to develop educators’ capacity to assist children with difficulties in their classrooms. Over the years these Sizabantwana educators have become catalysts for change in their communities and schools.

Ms. Mitchell is a counseling psychologist lecturing in the School of Psychology at the University of KwaZulu Natal, Pietermaritzburg, where she teaches various courses including the professional training of psychologists. Her main area of research is in service-learning broadly, with a particular emphasis on social justice. Her current focus is on working to de-construct the critical reflection process in an attempt to focus on the social processes (ideological and political) that underlie critical reflection in action. Ms. Mitchell has a particular interest in developmental psychology, which includes working with children and adults over the lifespan, as well as organizations and systems and their developmental processes. She has been involved in developing a number of community-based initiatives.

I hope you can participate in what promises to be an interesting and engaging presentation and discussion.

The 2009 U.S. News and World Report rankings of graduate programs in education were released at the end of last week. We continue to have a strong showing across many of our programs but also saw some drops that are disappointing. Our 2009 rankings are as follows: overall (14); administration/supervision (10); curriculum/instruction (7); educational psychology (3); educational policy (6); elementary education (10); higher education administration (2); and secondary education (7). These rankings are based on weighted averaging across a number of categories, including data on research funding and on applicants and admitted students, as well as surveys of deans and superintendents.  So as always, please keep in mind these results reflect the magazine’s methodology, which rests on individual opinions and decisions regarding the weighting of the categories.  Our peer ratings have remained high across years; other indicators deserve closer analysis.  The methodology is a topic of some debate and it is certainly subject to error and bias.  The validity rests in what the magazine uses as criteria and the evidence for them, and in how these gathered and weighted.

We can be proud of our consistently strong performance over many years, which is reflected daily in many ways beyond rankings.  Still, this year’s rankings, especially the overall ranking, do not seem to me to represent well the quality of scholarship, teaching, and research that occur at the School of Education. We will be analyzing the factors that affected our rankings this year to help us consider how we can learn from the process and its outcomes. This has been our stance every year, wherever we have ended up on the list.

In an editorial in the April 30, 2009, Detroit News, Deborah Loewenberg Ball, dean of the U-M School of Education, considers problems with current teacher certification practices and discusses reforms being developed at the School of Education.

Ball writes: “The University of Michigan School of Education is developing a teacher education curriculum that focuses squarely on developing teachers’ skills with the core tasks of teaching.

“We are designing coordinated performance assessments that will determine whether teacher candidates can perform each one competently. The curriculum will include carefully sequenced opportunities to practice these skills in a variety of settings. We will require students to demonstrate proficient performance with each set of skills before we recommend them for an initial teaching license. We should not allow people to enter classrooms who cannot demonstrate that they are safe to practice, based on entry performance standards.”

On April 15, 2009, the University of Michigan issued a news release on this topic featuring Deborah Loewenberg Ball and Francesca Forzani, doctoral candidate and project manager for the Teacher Education Initiative.

The Office of Student Affairs is hosting a retirement party for Robert Scroggins this Friday, April 24, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in the Tribute Room (1322). Robert has worked as the secretary for the Office of Student Affairs for the last four years. Prior to his time at the School of Education, he worked at Michigan Administrative Information Services (MAIS), formerly known as the university’s Data Systems Center, for 14 years. We thank him for his years of service and wish him well with his new endeavors. At 4:00 p.m. we are planning on honoring him with the presentation of a gift.

Cake, punch, and fruit will be served. Please bring your appetites and warm wishes.

April 29: Dissertation Defense by Mark Thames on “Coordinating Mathematical and Pedagogical Perspectives in Practice-Based and Discipline Grounded Approaches to Studying Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching,” 9:00 a.m., Brownlee Room (2327).

April 29: CPEP and Psychology Colloquium Series:  Eric Anderman and Lynley Hicks Anderman, Ohio State University and CPEP alums on “Motivation in High School: Two Studies of Effective Classrooms,” 12:00 noon, Whitney Auditorium (1309).

May 2: School of Education Spring Commencement, 4:00 p.m., Hill Auditorium.  Reception follows on Ingalls Mall.

May 6: 2008-09 Teacher Education Seminar Series Part II:  Toward Developing a Professional Ethics Curriculum, 3:00 pm, Tribute Room (1322).  Ethics Project Working Group Members, commentary by Harry Brighouse, University of Wisconsin – Madison: topic:  Seminar Closing:  Toward an Ethics Curriculum for Student Teachers. (What progress has the TEI Ethics Project made this year? What contributions does this work stand to make to the fields of ethics and teacher education?)

May 7: Ed Studies Colloquium: Nuria Castells, University of Barcelona, on “Reading, Writing and Learning in Secondary and Higher Education,” 12:00 noon, Tribute Room (1322).

May 21: IRB on the Road with Cindy Shindledecker, 9:00 a.m.—noon, room 1350.  Cindy will take scheduled appointments from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m.; walk-in appointments will take place from 11:00 a.m. to noon.  To arrange for a scheduled appointment, please email Cindy at cshindle@umich.edu.

May 27: Dissertation Defense by Carrie Beyer on “Using Reform-Based Criteria to Support the Development of Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Pedagogical Design Capacity for Analyzing Science Curriculum Materials,” 10: 00 a.m., Brownlee Room (2327).

May 29: Dissertation Defense by Cory Forbes on “Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Development of Pedagogical Design Capacity for Inquiry:  An Activity—Theoretical Perspective,” 9:00 a.m., Brownlee Room (2327).

Topics include: AERA; Diane Larsen-Freeman’s Fulbright Distinguished Chair award; Susan Dynarski’s editorship of the Journal of Labor Economics; Robert Scroggins’ retirement party.

Update:

1.  The School of Education hosted a reception for our alumni and friends at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association meetings in San Diego last week.  We had a good turnout and it was great to see people.  I provided some updates on our work here at SOE and people were excited about our project and progress. Thanks to Marti Dalley for arranging a lovely reception at a much reduced cost over previous years.  I would not have been able to tell had I not seen the bill.

2.  I am delighted to announce that Diane Larsen-Freeman, professor of education and professor of linguistics, has been awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Awards in the Fulbright Distinguished Chairs Program are viewed as among the most prestigious appointments in the Fulbright Scholar Program. Diane will fill the chair for the winter term of 2010. This is a tremendous honor and speaks to Diane’s international reputation as a leading scholar of second language acquisition, language teacher education, English linguistics, and language teaching methodology.

Professor Larsen-Freeman also will be the commencement speaker this spring at the SIT Graduate Institute. Please join me in congratulating Diane on these wonderful honors!

3. Susan Dynarski, associate professor of education and associate professor of public policy, has been selected as an editor for the Journal of Labor Economics. The JOLE is the top journal that publishes research related to the economics of education and employment. Professor Dynarski has been an associate editor for JOLE since 2008. Please join me in congratulating Susan!

4. The Office of Student Affairs is hosting a retirement party for Robert Scroggins this Friday, April 24, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in the Tribute Room (1322). Robert has worked as the secretary for the Office of Student Affairs for the last four years. Prior to his time at the School of Education, he worked at Michigan Administrative Information Services (MAIS), formerly known as the university’s Data Systems Center, for 14 years. We thank him for his years of service and wish him well with his new endeavors. At 4:00 p.m. we are planning on honoring him with the presentation of a gift.

Cake, punch, and fruit will be served. Please bring your appetites and warm wishes.