Reimagining Teacher Preparation: Harnessing AI for Scalability, Equity, and Reflection
With teacher shortages increasing nationwide, particularly in high-needs fields and underserved communities, educator preparation programs (EPPs) face a major task: preparing more beginning teachers to enter K-12 classrooms without compromising the quality and level of support those teachers receive.
At Valdosta State University, the opportunity and responsibility to meet this need has led us to develop a more scalable, equitable, and reflective preparation model – one that leverages technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to take it to the next level.
Introducing a Fully Online Primary Education Program
In fall 2022, Georgia public schools hired just over 10,000 new teachers, while the state’s public and private universities had just 5,000 students complete teacher preparation programs that year.
To address this shortage, Valdosta State University launched a fully online undergraduate education program in summer 2022. This program was aimed at adult learners with eight-week asynchronous courses and a flat tuition rate with no hidden fees. This program is designed specifically for paraprofessionals. We hoped to give them the opportunity to become classroom teachers in the rural areas where they already worked – the same areas where it is often most difficult to recruit new teachers.
Our online program has proven to be extremely successful with more than 500 students currently enrolled. Due to high demand as well as the physical location of our pre-service teachers across the state and beyond, the traditional model of supporting our pre-service teachers’ practicum and clinical teaching placements was unsustainable.
Because we must maintain our reputation for producing excellent teachers, we needed to find a way to work with these beginning teachers to provide high-quality, feedback-rich observations of their experiences in the classroom. Supervising hundreds of prospective teachers in dozens of school systems is not sustainable using traditional observation models alone.
To this end, we have turned to technology as a thoughtful enabler of this process.
Supporting Prospective Teachers Through Video Coaching
Edthena provided our program with the technology and support needed to make high-quality observations a reality. Through the VC3 video coaching platform, our trainee teachers upload videos of their teaching and then receive time-stamped feedback from our clinical supervisors.
The benefits of video as a tool for teacher training are extensively studied in a vast academic literature. However, as with any observation process, there is still a lot of time invested in this process: there is the time of actual teaching in the classroom, the time the supervisor watches the video, and the time the trainee teacher watches the video with the embedded feedback. Of course, the observation process is just one of the tasks of our clinical supervisors.
As our enrollment continued to grow, we wanted to find a way to give more time back to our clinical supervisors so that they could, in turn, better support our student teachers.
In steps AI.
Implementation of AI as a Cooperation Partner to Support Teachers’ Self-Reflection
Edthena launched the AI Coach platform right when our clinical supervisors were really feeling time pressure. The platform’s computational AI support model provides our pre-service teachers with the opportunity to engage in scalable, self-directed reflection.
Of course, we initially had some skepticism about a computer-based coach that would actually support the training of prospective teachers according to our rigorous program and state standards. However, upon investigation, we found that this technology is not only viable, but also immediately usable.
On the platform, prospective teachers enter their own pedagogical goals for a specific lesson and then reflect on their lessons via video. The AI Coach platform also provides the feedback they need to determine whether these goals have been met, as well as tips and resources to help them improve their practice. The AI-powered process encourages our pre-service teachers to think independently and take ownership of their learning, which we continue to see as a critical goal of our pre-service teacher training experience.
While the AI Coach platform does not eliminate the need for human clinical supervision of our teaching practicum and pre-service clinical experience, it significantly reduces the time burden on our supervisors, allowing us to continue to grow and scale the program. This is partly because the AI coaching experience is based on research on teacher perception, improvement science, and iterative practice. Now our human supervisors can read the “conversations” between the trainee teachers and the virtual trainer instead of having to watch all the videos directly.
Pushing Boundaries to Meet Today’s Demands
As Georgia’s 2022 data shows, traditional EVPs have not kept pace with demand in this area. Traditional EPPs are also facing increasing competition from online solutions that deliver faster and cheaper results. Therefore, we must find ways to innovate to maintain high-quality programs while meeting the needs of our future students.
In our case, using AI-powered coaching has allowed us to support our beginning teachers while pushing the boundaries of how, what, and where we can deliver excellence to meet the needs of school systems in Georgia and beyond.
Now is the time for all EPPs to innovate and leverage our shared commitment to rigorous, reflective, and research-based practices to prepare more beginning teachers to enter the classroom.
David A. Slykhuis, Ph.D., Valdosta State University
David A. Slykhuis, Ph.D., is a 21-year veteran of higher education and holds a doctorate in science education, with much of his research focused on educational technology. He is currently dean of the Dewar College of Education and Human Services at Valdosta State University in Georgia. He is chair of the National Technology Leadership Summit and past chair of the AACTE (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education) Standing Committee on Innovation and Technology. Slykhuis is a past president of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE). He is one of four researchers who developed the Teacher Educator Technology Competencies and was awarded the AACTE Edward C. Pomeroy Award for outstanding contributions to teacher education.
Latest posts from eSchool media contributors (view all)
Source: Here
“`
