COLLABORATIVE INITIATIVES AND RESOURCES FOR PARTNERS

Faculty in the Teacher Education Program engage in collaborative activities both at the national and local levels. At the national level, faculty collaborate with their colleagues in other universities and with other entities; at the local level, they collaborate with their colleagues from other colleges across campus as well as with Fayette County and other school systems. The effort more actively and explicitly connects teacher preparation with school improvement goals and promotes ongoing professional development needs of career teachers for additional training in new standards, new technologies, and improved methods of professional collaboration. This multi-focused collaboration also emphasizes professional teaching standards, curricular changes at the school and university levels, research-based practice/teaching, and utilization of information technologies.

Benefits to Partnership

Benefits to partnership include, but are not limited, to the following:

• Identification, implementation, and evaluation of mutually determined goals;
• Conducting research on issues related to teaching, learning, and school effectiveness;
• Increasing and improving professional development opportunities for teachers through specially tailored graduate courses and programs to address specific classroom issues;
• Strengthening collaboration with faculty who work in related fields in other campus units and at other universities;
• Engaging members of the broader community in related issues;
• Building teamwork by working together on authentic tasks;
• Increasing contacts and expanding expertise while building networks.