The National Center for Teacher Residencies and EdReports highlight Phase 1 learnings from an innovative new pilot program to infuse curriculum literacy into teacher preparation.
Students learn primarily through their interactions with teachers, whose instructional decisions and behaviors are deeply influenced by the instructional materials they use. Yet, across the country, approximately 70 percent of teachers do not use or have access to high-quality standards-aligned curriculum that can truly help to accelerate learning for all students.
Despite its critical importance, curriculum literacy—the awareness of what rigorous, grade-level content looks like and the ability to implement it effectively in the classroom—is rarely emphasized in teacher education programs.
The National Center for Teacher Residencies and EdReports announced a new partnership to tackle this disparity head-on and fill an unmet need in the field of teacher preparation. The goal of the project is to provide new teachers undergoing a period of supervision in the classroom with support to become savvy consumers and users of high-quality instructional materials, too rare in teacher preparation programs across the country.
In this pilot program, EdReports and NCTR worked with three teacher residency programs around the country—Alternative Pathways to Education Certification Program (South Carolina), Kern High Teacher Residency (California), and William Carey University School of Education (Mississippi)—to train their students in the use of high-quality instructional materials via a series of workshops.
Explore findings from Phase 1 of the pilot program and learn more about the critical role of curriculum literacy to prepare day-one ready teachers.