Ball State University’s Teachers College is among the nation’s top academic departments when it comes to training students how to become teachers.
A U.S. Department of Education report that evaluates the quality of novice teachers recognized Teachers College’s Learning Assessment Model Project (LAMP) as one of the best teacher preparation programs in the country. The annual report — “The Secretary’s Fourth Annual Report of Teacher Quality: A Highly Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom” — noted Ball State’s focus on the critical teaching skills all teachers must learn.
“Too often, students leave class wondering when they will use the information being presented, and LAMP provides an excellent opportunity to put it all into practice within their own classrooms,” Jim Powell, assistant professor of educational studies and one of the project’s creators, said.
LAMP requires prospective teachers to use different instruction styles during their student teaching, while they develop instruction methods with standards that the program sets. Afterwards, they reflect on their own teaching and make effective decisions based on the assessment results.
In order to assess the improvement of a student teacher’s class, the students in the class complete a pretest at the beginning of the semester and a posttest at the end.
“Our hope was to create a project that would focus our education students on their students’ learning rather than just presenting material through teaching, as well as work on improving our teacher candidates’ ability to assess learning,” Greg Marchant, professor of educational psychology, said.
The project was created by Merchant, Powell and Melinda Schoenfeldt, associate professor of elementary education. The three professors came up with LAMP after attending a special training seminar in Washington, D.C., on the topic of measuring the learning of student teachers. Disappointed with the seminar, they said they began developing their own project with an emphasis on interpreting assessment of student learning.
LAMP began in order to meet the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act, which aims to have qualified teachers in classrooms around the nation by the end of the 2005-06 academic year.
“Ultimately, LAMP will allow the means necessary for a teacher candidate to demonstrate their understanding of their students’ learning and how that relates to their own teaching,” Marchant said.
The project has taken more than two years to develop, and the test pilot began with student teachers at two of Ball State’s professional development schools. Professional development school faculty members meet with university faculty and discuss what is working and what is not working with the curriculum. Some professional development schools include Anderson, Muncie Central, Broadripple and Southside high schools.
“[The semester after the test pilot], a couple more schools participated, followed by all of the professional development schools and now all student teachers, regardless of their placement,” Marchant said.
Powell said he hoped the process will help students utilize the many different strategies they learned in their previous courses at the university.
“LAMP provides the means for our students to provide evidence that the learning in fact did take place,” Powell said. “A number of students have reported that during job interviews the ability to demonstrate growth with numerical data has been an important factor in getting a teacher position.”
Amy Truitt, who graduated from Ball State in July with a degree in elementary education, completed her LAMP project when she did her student teaching in Germany.
“Overall, LAMP is a wonderful project. I found it difficult to do, but the information I was able to come up with as part of my analysis for my teaching experience helped give me a job teaching in Kentucky,” she said.
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