Interested in learning more about the research on teacher preparation? The Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest team curated the following resources including research reports, blogs, and archived webinars from across the REL network and the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center). Another great place to dive into REL resources is the REL topics page. Here you can search the teacher preparation topic page, or any of the others that may interest you, for previous work from across the country.
REL Midwest
- REL Midwest partnered with Detroit Public Television to produce a 30-minute, documentary-style public television program, State of Teacher Preparation: Research and Stories from Early Years in the Classroom. In addition to the program, REL Midwest created a viewing guide as a tool to help stakeholder viewers start a discussion on ways to improve teachers' early years in the classroom.
- We worked with the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) to conduct a training to explore the potential of teacher residency programs. This training handout describes characteristics of successful clinically oriented teacher preparation programs and profiles 10 of these programs throughout the United States. Learn more about our MDE training in this blog post.
- Our Ask A REL reference desk covered a number of questions on teacher preparation topics last year such as alternative teacher licensing, teacher accountability ratings and student outcomes, development of charter school leaders, and teacher retention in high-poverty or high-minority schools.
REL Network
- REL Central recently produced a report on the Retired Mentors for New Teachers program that uses recently retired, master educators to support probationary teachers in high-need elementary schools.
- In 2015, REL Central hosted a webinar about its 2014 report, Approaches to Evaluating Teacher Preparation Programs in Seven States, which described how states in the REL Central Region (Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming) evaluate teacher preparation programs.
- Last year, REL Southwest held a webinar highlighting the key findings of its report on the Oklahoma Teacher Professional Development Survey, which compared development opportunities in rural and nonrural schools.
- REL Southwest held a webinar, archived into four videos, on effective teacher mentoring programs and lessons learned from research and the field.
GTL Center
- The GTL Center has a Mentoring and Induction Toolkit designed to help state leaders effectively work with districts on designing and implementing mentoring and induction programs.
- On their website, you also can find three reports that are a part of a teacher-driven research project that aimed to cover how great teachers become excellent educators and what experiences and supports helped refine their practice.
