Woodrow Wilson News & Publications
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM ENCORE PERFORMANCES
What Policymakers Can Do:
- Support programs that use rigorous selection processes, as well as those tailored to adult learners.
- Design incentives that respond to the needs of the most desirable candidates.
- Support high quality teacher preparation by providing resources for promising programs and innovative new pathways for mid-career changers;
- Help develop a teaching pipeline that provides more thoughtful transitions to teaching, particularly in high need settings.
- Focus on stronger and more systematic approaches to mentoring; thoughtful, cohort-based preparation and placement; scaffolded placement, avoiding the assignment of novices to the most difficult situations; and more graduated assumption of teaching roles and responsibilities in hard to staff schools.
- Expand opportunities for prospective mid and second career teacher candidates to explore teaching via well-supervised short-term or part-time roles in schools, prior to their making a high stakes decisiion to switch careers.
- Provide mentors with better preparation to work specifically with adult learners.
- Focus upon improving working conditions in schools.
- Support the development of state and district data systems to make clear the links between teachers’ preparation, teachers’ performance, and students’ learning.
Teacher Recruitment and Preparation
- Use targeted selection processes that identify the strongest candidates.
- Design programs that take into account the specific needs of adult learners.
- Ground pedagogy in content and the needs of diverse learners, integrating theory and practice.
- Provide strong clinical experiences in schools that prepare candidates’for the settings in which they will teach.
- Assist with appropriate job placement in schools that make efforts to support novice teachers.
- Ensure that teacher preparation programs are organized to promote students’ success as learners.
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