Conceptual Framework Artifacts     

Conceptual Framework

The mission of the University of Georgia is expressed in its motto: “To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.” The mission of the College of Education elaborates on that institution-wide commitment in the context of education and schools: “to provide the highest level of leadership in furthering education and lifelong learning for all citizens. This mission must be pursued at local, state, and national levels, and it must permeate academic preparation programs, community collaborations and partnerships, and the domains of teaching, research, and service.”  The unit’s Conceptual Framework is grounded within both the university and college missions.

In brief, the College of Education’s Conceptual Framework serves as the introduction to a carefully articulated philosophy. From that philosophy, the college created a comprehensive, flexible Framework for Accomplished Teaching that identifies the skills, knowledge, capacities, commitments, and dispositions that are associated with exemplary professional practice in educator preparation at UGA. The unit built assessments based on the Framework for Accomplished Teaching customized to assess candidates, courses, and programs at all levels. In addition to other assessment modalities, this rubric, designed for self-evaluation, formative evaluations, and summative evaluations, stands as one of the unit’s most comprehensive assessment tools. The Conceptual Framework is, then, deceptively simple, but it provides the grounding for a broadly conceived, comprehensive vision of the college’s work:

The College of Education prepares exemplary reflective professionals to serve a diverse, global community; it achieves that end through teaching, scholarship, outreach, and partnership at local, national, and international levels.

Toward this end, the College of Education has adapted the Georgia Framework for Accomplished Teaching developed by the Georgia Systemic Teacher Education Program (GSTEP) to include all educators. This adapted model, The Georgia Framework for Educators, is used as the core of the assessment of candidates in all certification programs.

The seven principles on which this framework is based include the following:

1. Process: Learning to work in an educational setting is a career-long process of growth.
   
   
2. Support: Multi-layered support and continued professional development for all educators involve various participants (e.g., school, district, community).
   
   
3. Ownership: Each educator designs his or her own career path.
   
   
4. Impact: Effective work in an educational setting yields evidence of student learning and achievement.
   
   
5. Equity: All students and educators deserve high expectations and strong support to achieve their best.
   
   
6. Dispositions: Positive and productive dispositions, attitudes, and temperament have an important impact on student growth, educator growth, and school climate.
   
   
7. Technology: Technology facilitates teaching, learning, community building, resource acquisition, and school improvement.

The Georgia Framework for Educators is organized around six domains across which all candidates in all certification programs are evaluated. These domains are:

1. Content and Curriculum: Educators demonstrate a strong knowledge of content area(s) appropriate for their certification levels. 
   
   
2. Knowledge of Learners: Educators support the intellectual, social, physical, and personal development of all learners.
   
   
3. Learning Environments: Educators create learning environments that encourage positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.
   
   
4. Assessment: Educators understand and use a range of formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous development of all learners.
   
   
5. Planning and Instruction: Educators design and create instructional experiences based on their knowledge of content standards, curriculum, learners, learning environments, and assessment date.
   
   
6. Professionalism:  Educators recognize, participate and contribute to education as a profession.

While the Framework includes criteria in all domains as examples, each program is expected to develop its own criteria appropriate for their unique specialization. Initial certification programs use a minimum of four assessment points; three while candidates are enrolled (1. entry to program, 2. entry to field experience, 3. program completion) as well as one follow-up during their second year of employment (4. induction). Advanced programs include a minimum of three assessment points (1. entry to the program, 2. program completion, and 3. a one-year follow-up).

Developing the Conceptual Framework: A Shared Vision
In 2000, a team of college faculty was charged to develop and gain college-wide assent to a conceptual framework for its 2001 NCATE/PSC accreditation. The team was formed in response to an NCATE finding in 1995 faulting the college for its lack of any unifying vision, a legacy of strong individual departments each of which had its own conceptual framework. The team gathered documents from all departments and then conducted an inductive analysis of the conceptual frameworks and mission statements governing departmental and programmatic work. This process revealed a high degree of unanimity regarding basic goals and a good deal of commonality in the normative language employed by the various departmental documents, indicative of a shared, if theretofore unarticulated, vision cutting across the college. From that analysis, the committee identified five common themes.

Those common themes and the descriptive language from the documents provided the basis for an initial conceptual framework statement for the college. The initial statement was distributed to departments with a request that each department would consider the statement at a departmental meeting and send comments to the team. Simultaneously, the team distributed the statement to every individual faculty member, along with an extensive statement explaining its origins in departmental documents, its purposes, and the process for refining it. That mailing was repeated a month later to gain as much response as possible. Responses and critiques from departments and individuals were then subjected to further iterative processes of refinement and responses until the team arrived at a statement that won the assent of the college by August 2001.

PSC & NCATE Continuing Report 2001

Refining and Extending the Conceptual Framework: A Broader Shared Vision
The college developed its Conceptual Framework during a particularly creative period in the college’s history. From the late 1990s, the college has been engaged in college and university-wide efforts to comprehensively review and restructure teacher education at the university. That effort began with involvement in the Systemic Teacher Education Project in 1998 and the creation of the cross-college Deans’ Forum. Those two initiatives moved the college into another, even more fruitful initiative, the Georgia Systemic Teacher Education Project (GSTEP). This collaborative endeavor involved faculty from the colleges of education and arts and sciences from the University of Georgia, Valdosta State University, and Albany State University, along with a dozen school districts throughout the state, aided substantially from a U.S. Department of Education grant in 2000. The GSTEP teams focused on (1) the development of a comprehensive framework for teacher education; (2) creation of early field experiences; (3) curricular redesign; (4) induction; and (5) research and evaluation. The requirement for each of these teams was that they were made up of one-third P-12 faculty, one-third arts & sciences faculty, and one-third College of Education faculty as well as representatives from community agencies (PSC, Board of Regents, and RESA’s).

GSTEP Progress Report 2002

Although funding expired in 2005, the project continues in the college and university, and led to dramatic changes in the teacher education programs and teacher induction within the three universities and across partner institutions. The college believes that no parallel effort in the nation engaged a greater proportion of the faculty in thinking systematically about teacher education than this effort. At the University of Georgia alone, at least 80 College of Education faculty members and 40 faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences participated in work groups, pilot studies, collaborative projects, and other long-term projects associated with the effort. By the third year of the project, over 300 educators were contributing to the GSTEP effort.

The GSTEP Principles and Framework for Accomplished Teaching: Making History
GSTEP Progress Report Year Three: May 2002-May 2003
GSTEP Progress Report , June 27, 2002

Early in the GSTEP initiative, participants became convinced that the college needed to investigate developing a framework that would, as comprehensively as possible without falling into the mechanistic trap of “competency-based” teaching, identify the sine qua non of professional practice across all of its technical, intellectual, and ethical aspects. They began with existing frameworks but found that they could not adequately critique the frameworks and build from them until the participants, and eventually the college, reached broad consensus on the philosophical principles that underlay their work. From that realization evolved a set of the six philosophical principles listed above that all faculty associated with GSTEP, and eventually the college as a whole, could embrace.

With those principles as their foundation, GSTEP participants returned to published frameworks for teaching and found that none of them fit the college’s philosophical beliefs. Many, including prominently Danielson (1996), conceive of professional practice as a primarily technical process with no ethical dimensions, little attention to issues of diversity, and inadequate conceptions of desirable teacher dispositions. Others were unwieldy or repetitious. As a result, the faculty chose to create its own Framework for Accomplished Teaching that, while drawing liberally from existing models, accords comfortably with the college’s philosophical stance. Throughout the process, participants reported the work to their colleagues in department meetings, and the leadership regularly reported to the faculty on aspects of the work through a variety of information channels. Beginning in 2004, the work was disseminated even more broadly through competition for mini-grants to pilot aspects of the Framework for Accomplished Teaching in undergraduate and graduate courses and through the launch of Building Resources: Induction and Development for Georgia Educators (BRIDGE), the project’s on-line teacher education and induction resource.

GSTEP Framework June 2003
BRIDGE Framework Pilot Test Group: Final Report - May 14, 2003

Simultaneously, the college charged a group of senior faculty members with the task of revisiting the original mission, vision, and Conceptual Framework. After careful study and input from the faculty, that group reported to the college Administrative Cabinet that the mission and vision statements and the Conceptual Framework continued to reflect very well the work of the college. The Leadership Team approved the committee’s work on March 25, 2004, and distributed the approved statements to the faculty.

COE Conceptual Framework Leaderhips Meeting Handout: 3/25/2004
Leadership Team Meeting Minutes: 3/25/2004

The Conceptual Framework describes the goal that unifies the college’s work: the nurture of exemplary, reflective professionals prepared for service to diverse learners. It identifies the means by which the college realizes its goal: through teaching, scholarship, outreach and partnerships. Meanwhile, the college’s philosophical principles developed within the GSTEP effort frame the six central beliefs and commitments about those means and ends; the Framework for Accomplished Educators gives expression to the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that the faculty believes are the aims of the exemplary, reflective professionals it aspires to nurture. The Conceptual Framework employs the language of exemplary professionals, while the Framework for Accomplished Educators employs the language of accomplished professionals. The college understands these terms to be interchangeable and mutually elaborative.

To reiterate, then, the Conceptual Framework can be imagined as the bedrock on which stands the philosophical principles as a six-point foundation. On the foundation stands the Framework for Accomplished Educators. The terrain, foundation, and superstructure that provide the overarching vision for the college have evolved over a decade, with the active collaboration of a very large segment of the college, scores of faculty from the arts and sciences and other universities, and public school professionals.

Knowledge Bases: Exemplary Professionals
The College of Education has spent the last seven years attempting to identify the primary skills, knowledge, and dispositions that distinguish exemplary or accomplished professional practice. The faculty is convinced that gaining clarity on the markers of accomplished professional practice provides clear means of evaluating its efforts. It has established the Framework for Accomplished Educators as simultaneously a guide to professional action and a means of assessing its success in nurturing exemplary professionals.

The concept of frameworks to identify elements of professional practice and dispositions probably has its roots in assessment regimes and the trend toward competency-based professional education. Their origins, then, lay in normalizing, standardizing, and policing behavior (Fiddler, 1995), and those negative potentials remain a concern for the college and for researchers (Wood, 2004; Purdon, 2003). Beginning in the mid-1990s, however, professional educators and researchers began to develop and deploy frameworks as tools created by and for the profession itself, with professional excellence and improvement, rather than summative evaluation, as the goal. These frameworks provided a means to assess the impact of particular reform efforts (Teitel, 2001; Valli & Rennert-Ariev, 2000), a means to reconcile competing professional education traditions (Gore, 2001), or a means to promote critical reflection on professional practice (Yost, Sentner & Forlenza-Bailey, 2000). Many retain an assessment component (Delaney, 1997; O’Brien, Payton, Resnik & Weissberg, 2003; Weller & Weller, 1997; Tenenbaum, 2000), though they intend to promote self-assessment and formative assessment in the spirit of professional development and professional autonomy (Smith, 2003; Vedros, Butchart & Lamoreaux, 1997).

The spirit of professional development and autonomy lay at the heart of the college’s decision to create the GSTEP Framework for Accomplished Teaching. As Ross and Sztajn (2005) explain, the faculty and others involved in creating the Framework

were fully aware of the risk of becoming prescriptive or having the document be appropriated by others to serve unintended and unanticipated purposes.... The necessity of articulating educators’ views of accomplished teaching, however, was essential for honest, long-term collaborations across groups that did not historically work together: preschool through grade 12 (P-12) teachers, faculty members in colleges of arts and sciences (A&S) and education (COE), and state policy leaders (p. 5).

The original GSTEP team created the GSTEP Principles and the GSTEP Framework for Accomplished Teaching. Since the framework was initially designed for the preparation of teachers, its 41 indicators are more appropriate for initial and advanced programs for teachers. However, the six overarching principles and six major domains are shared by faculty in the programs that prepare other school personnel and are aligned with the national standards and Board of Regents principles that guide those programs. Assessments in both the initial and advanced programs for teachers and other school personnel reflect the philosophy and six major domains of the conceptual framework.

In 2006, theProfessional Education Advisory Committee (PEAC) established an Assessment Committee that was charged by the dean’s office to examine the unit’s assessment system and make recommendations to ensure that the system was both comprehensive and integrated so that candidate and unit performance could be managed at the unit level and that data-based improvements were being made. This committee, made up of representative program coordinators from all educator preparation programs, continues to work together to centralize and streamline the unit’s assessment system where appropriate. A major effort of this committee was to change the language of the GA Framework for Accomplished Teaching to include the GA Framework for Accomplished Educators (see Standard 2 for elaboration of this process).

GA Framework Self Assessment Validation Study 2007

Professional Commitments and Dispositions Promote Coherence Within and Across Programs
The Framework for Accomplished Educators, then, operationalizes the first part of the Conceptual Framework’s aspiration: to prepare exemplary professionals. It provides a detailed elaboration of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions expected of all professionals. By teaching and assessing the mastery of each of the major domains in the Framework listed above and urging professionals to gain progressively greater mastery over each, the college moves toward realizing its aspiration.

Knowledge Bases: Reflective Professionals
The Conceptual Framework identifies reflective professionals as the second half of the college’s goal, equal in importance and inseparable from the goal of exemplary professionals. The expectation of systematic, thoughtful reflection on instructional practices is clearly evident throughout the GA Framework. It does not prescribe actions in a one-size-fits-all mode; rather, it indicates the major domains of professional action, the varying contextual settings for that action, and the professional dispositions expected of education professionals in a democratic society. Reflectivity--the careful consideration of experience, contextually constrained alternatives, and ends--marks professional practice. The professional decision-making required of education professionals, in contexts of diversity, equity, and collaboration, requires practiced, critical reflection that considers past experience, present practice, child development, social theory, learning theory, research, and the ends toward which professional practice is aimed (Elbaz, 1983; Schon 1983). The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (1996) wrote that “teachers must be able to think systematically about their practice and learn from experience. They must be able to critically examine their practice, seek the advice of others, and draw on educational research to deepen their knowledge, sharpen their judgment, and adapt their teaching to new findings and ideas.”  That observation applies to all education professionals.

The nurture of reflective professionals in the unit begins from the constructivist claim that learning to teach or perform other duties of education professionals involves a continual process of building and rebuilding, structuring and restructuring the budding professionals’ understanding of practice. The process must engage the learners in interpretations of educational events through the lens of beliefs, dispositions, prior experience, existing knowledge, and new insights (Borko & Putnam, 1996; Feiman-Nemser & Remillard, 1996; I’anson, et al., 2003; Putnam & Borko, 1997). The process must respect the power of candidates’ prior beliefs and knowledge regarding learning, children, schools, and subject matter as the initial filters through which the candidates make sense of professional action and constrain the ways they think about and respond to professional challenges (Wunder, 2003; Griffin, 2003). Getting beyond the limiting potential of pre-existing understandings requires that professional education provides opportunities to reflect on those understandings in light of multiple subsequent experiences, both those encountered in the field and those encountered in theory and research (Basile et al., 2003). The building and rebuilding, structuring and restructuring noted above can, with careful coaching, result in authentic new questions and new perspectives, expanded options for action and exploration, and altered horizons (Schoonmaker, 2002; Richardson, 1999; Short et al., 1996; Clandinin, 1989).

Reflectivity is not simply a private act engaged by lone professionals, but an important collective practice as well. Through school-based professional collaboration, joint action research, and other work with one’s professional community, education professionals extend their knowledge of professional practice (Uhlenbeck et al., 2002; Putnam & Borko, 1997). Further, for the unit faculty, the results of critical reflection must lead to action (Rogers, 2002); reflective professionals, in other words, act on their critical insight to improve learning, schools, and their profession.

Commitment to Diversity
Publications, both popular and professional, and other news sources are filled with information about diversity and multiculturalism here in the United States as well as internationally. The need for educators to appreciate and understand the complexities associated with diversity has never been greater. The professional education unit is committed to diversity, helping our candidates, faculty and staff understand the issues from local and global perspectives.

The college has an established campus reputation as a leader in multicultural education. The multicultural initiative was formally launched in the college in 1993 when Dean Alphonse Buccino established multicultural education as one of three “primary agendas” for the College of Education. During the 1993-1994 academic year, the college established a college-wide initiative in multicultural education and established a Multicultural Task Force (MCTF) for education. The MCTF worked for over 10 years to lead efforts in the college related to multicultural education, ranging from seminars to mini-grants to support multicultural research to a local conference related to multicultural and diversity issues. Other colleges on campus have looked to the multicultural education initiative established by the college as a model for their own efforts. The current Dean's Council on Diversity (DCOD), an evolution of the MCTF, continues to help facilitate and lead multicultural and diversity initiatives in the college.

In the last decade, the college has continued to extend the commitment to diversity through a variety of activities and initiatives, including an enhanced curriculum to address diversity needs, expanding our research efforts in the area of diversity and multiculturalism, increased service activities related to diversity, and administrative commitment to diversity in policies and procedures in the college. This level of commitment reflects the multicultural education mission statement, which specifies that the college's instruction, research, service and administration all share a role in fulfilling the goals of diversity in the college. The College of Education is committed to making itself more diverse by developing programs, practices, and policies that enable candidates, faculty, and staff to lead productive lives in a diverse context and to effectively educate students from various sociocultural backgrounds.

Curriculum. Department efforts at the undergraduate and graduate levels have enhanced our diversity curriculum for initial and advanced candidates. There are many courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels that enable candidates to focus on issues related to diversity. These courses are aligned with college-wide diversity plans. Each department created diversity plans in 1999. These plans provide information on department-level courses and experiences for candidates specifically in regards to diversity experiences, in class as well as in the field. Diversity plans were reviewed and approved by the College's Curriculum Committee. While the university intended to initiate a similar effort in the fall of 1998, it was not until the fall of 2002 that the university was able to officially implement the Cultural Diversity Requirement at the undergraduate level. With the College of Education plans in place at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, the college has served as a resource for others on campus.

Since the 2006 NCATE visit, the unit in collaboration with the Board of Regents developed a new set of Area F pre-education courses required of all candidates that include a mandatory diversity course. This course has been fully developed and will begin to be offered in the college as soon as January 2008. In addition, a second course within Area F, Critical and Contemporary Issues in Education, is designed to raise candidates’ awareness of current educational issues, including diversity in all its forms.

Recruitment and Retention. The college administration is committed to increasing the number of minority faculty. In 2007, faculty of color account for 20% of the total full time college faculty, compared with a university-wide minority presence of 15%. Further, half of the minority faculty are tenured and hold the rank of associate professor or professor. 

The administration has also worked aggressively to retain faculty of color. The multicultural education initiative is a positive influence on the retention of faculty of color. Additionally, the college has established a number of centers and sponsored a number of projects specifically focused on underserved populations (e.g., CLASE, TELL). Faculty working in or with the centers has helped to increase retention in the college.

The college's efforts to recruit candidates from underserved populations have also been successful at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In fall 2006 minority undergraduate education majors constitute 11 % of the student body. The college has continued to extend its efforts focused on undergraduate minority student recruitment, such as participation in Diversity Awareness Week at Georgia (D.A.W.G. Days), a university-wide effort to promote campus visits and orientations for students and parents of color. Through participation in the Graduate School's recruitment work, active representation on the Graduate Student Recruitment Committee, and attendance at recruitment fairs and related events, the college has increased its minority graduate population. Graduate candidates of color made up nearly 18% of all graduates in the college in the fall of 2007, with African Americans composing 13%. Student who are non-U.S. citizens account for 2% of the college's undergraduate population and 8% of its graduate population. Further, the college is retaining and graduating graduate candidates of color.

Research and Scholarship. Since the initiation of the multicultural initiative in the early 1990s, several specific programs have been put in place in the college to promote research and scholarship into diversity issues and multicultural education. Grants from the National Science Foundation (The Conference on Diversity and Learning) and the Goizueta Foundation are examples of external funding specifically focused on diversity. A high percentage (20%) of faculty publications during 2004 were related to diversity. This level of focus on scholarship related to diversity continues today.

Professional Development for Candidates, Faculty and Staff. In addition to formal experiences, candidates in the college have several opportunities to raise awareness of the importance of diversity in teaching and learning. The DCOD has been holding diversity seminars for over a decade. In 2006, the DCOD joined efforts with the Center for Latino Achievement & Success in Education (CLASE) to offer a series of seminars related to diversity. These seminars have continued throughout 2007 and are scheduled for the current academic year. The DCOD also sponsors an annual “Fall Fling” on the lawn outside Aderhold to increase awareness of diversity issues in the college as well as across the university that has been highly successful for the past several years.

Dean Castenell's Fall 2007 Welcome

Commitment to Technology 
A commitment to technology is reflected in the implementation and ongoing renewal of college-wide technology goals initiated in 1993. These goals have guided strategic planning and resource allocation dedicated to the integration of technology into the teaching and learning process. In 1995, the technology initiative provided the means to meet the State of Georgia legislative mandate, HB 1187, to prepare pre-service teachers to incorporate technology into the classroom.  In 2005, the college recognized the need to update the strategic technology plan with a focus on 21st century knowledge and skills, global communication, leadership, and technology integration. The 2005 technology plan is based on the conceptual framework and aligned with the college strategic plan.

A commitment to technology is reflected in the technology resources, professional development, and technology integration that facilitate candidate mastery of technology.  The college supports 9 open access computer labs with 175 computer stations.  Macintosh and Windows environments are supported and each lab contains a standard software image, virus protection, and network and Internet access. Additional curriculum and digital production software are provided in targeted labs. The college provides 50 classrooms with standard configuration of computer, projector, speakers, video and DVD display, overhead projector, and wired and wireless connections to the network and Internet resources. Larger lecture halls are equipped with presentation technology, computer technology and Internet access. Two IP videoconferencing labs connect candidates, faculty and staff to a global community. Each IP video system has shared desktop, collaboration tools and multi-media display. An editorium provides six video and digital media stations featuring Macintosh computers and development software.  Candidates and faculty are also served through the UGA Student Learning Center. The facility, opened in 2003, provides classrooms and large lecture halls, library research and technical support, collaboration rooms, and over 500 computer stations.

Technology resources are supported through the COE Office of Information Technology and UGA Enterprise Information Technology Services (EITS). An appropriate coordination of local and central IT services provides network, email, security, systems administration, application development, web services, video production services, equipment checkout, and help-desk support.  EITS provides connectivity to the Internet, Internet 2 and the Lambda Rail. Additionally, EITS provides centralized applications including the student information system, distance learning applications, UGA web portal, business applications, enterprise security, policy development, and standards development.

All candidates have access to University of Georgia Libraries, including three principal libraries on campus: the Main Library, Science Library, and Student Learning Center.  Together, the libraries own over 4 million volumes and 5 million microform units.  Additionally, candidates have access to Galileo, a web-based virtual library that includes over 500 databases indexing periodicals and scholarly journals. Over 27,000 scholarly and popular journal titles are provided in full text.

The College of Education is providing technology resources to support candidate mastery through reflection as part of professional growth. An e-portfolio pilot using LiveText was initiated in 2004. The success of the pilot prompted the identification of funds to provide licenses for teacher candidates at the beginning of their education coursework. In 2005, over 1000 candidates were using e-portfolios to collect artifacts of their work, synthesis papers reflecting their growth and dispositions, and peer and faculty reviews based on program and course rubrics. Further evaluation of the impact of e-portfolios on candidate preparation will be continued through 2007. If supported by evaluation data, a college-wide implementation will be initiated.

LiveText Account Distribution 2004-2007
LiveText Uses 2004-2007
LiveText Department Use Summary - 2004-2007

The college provides numerous opportunities for candidates to master technology and curriculum integration. Since spring 1999, 3,108 candidates have enrolled in courses offered through the Instructional Technology program. These courses, EDIT 2000, 2010, 2020 and 2020H focus on creating teaching and learning environments using technology.  Additionally 117 courses are offered to meet program requirements of candidate proficiency in the use, application, and integration of instructional technology. Data summaries from teacher candidate exit surveys capture effectiveness of the college in preparing teachers to use technology and technology resources.

Another technology resource for candidates is the Technology Training Center (TTC), a collaborative partnership between the University of Georgia and the Georgia Department of Education.  The mission of the center is to provide high quality service, consulting, and professional learning for Georgia's pre-service and in-service educators to advance the effective use of technology for teaching, learning, and leading. The centers, located at River’s Crossing and the Gwinnett University Center, provide comprehensive instructional, administrative and technical training for educators in order to enhance teaching and learning in Georgia's classrooms. Over 594 pre-service graduate and undergraduate teachers and over 2,200 in-service teachers have participated in technology professional development such as InTech, MediaTech, the Jason Expedition and Technology Bridges. Additional TTC opportunities include PROMOTE Georgia, No Child Left Behind, Annual Yearly Progress, and numerous training sessions in software applications.

Faculty and candidates benefit from professional development opportunities to improve technical proficiency and to facilitate candidate mastery of technology. Customer surveys in 2003 reflected the need for training available online to support distance education and flexible schedules. The COE Office of Information Technology developed the Teaching with Technology portal to provide anytime, anyplace professional development and support for candidates, faculty and staff. Additional opportunities for faculty are developed and delivered by Instructional Technology faculty and IT professionals in the Office of Information Technology. Lunch and Learn gatherings, workshops, and classes include software training, introduction to resources such as the Georgia Learning Connections, security awareness, and focused training on LiveText, WebCT and Horizon Wimba.  A project initiated in 2004 provides candidates and faculty access to unlimited technology courses through Element K, a professional development tool. These online courses include possible IT certification options, skill assessments, and training materials. 

A commitment to technology is demonstrated through the scholarship, research and community service focused on the use of technology and its impact on teaching and learning. Grants awarded for technology research have exceeded $13 million since 2001.  Additionally, the 2004 COE Faculty Activity Report (FAR) captured over 128 entries of published technology research and other creative activities. Faculty also reported service to professional communities including over 87 manuscript reviews in journals and other outreach activities with a focus on technology.

Technology is used to provide access to examples of best practices among partnerships and teachers through several ongoing initiatives.  The Office of Information Technology launched a public service and outreach project in 2006.  The Teacher’s Corner provides resources for classroom teachers and COE candidates with a focus on technology integration, information literacy and emerging technologies.  The Center for Proficiency in Teaching Mathematics (CPTM), the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE), and the E-TEACH  project directed by the Learning and Performance Support Laboratory (LPSL) have a focus on providing resources and professional development for new and in-service teachers. Additionally, technology promotes a means to communicate among partners and educators locally, nationally and internationally concerning these centers, their resources and other college activities. 

Another ongoing initiative demonstrating the college commitment to the use of technology is the BRIDGE, an online representation of GSTEP’s Framework for Accomplished Teaching. The goal of this initiative is to improve access to the elements, indicators, and corresponding descriptions explaining good teaching practices. The BRIDGE is similar to other technology-based knowledge and support systems in the way that resources are contributed by the teaching community and organized according to frameworks (e.g., standards or rubrics).

Commitment to Candidate Proficiencies Aligned with Professional and State Standards
The conceptual framework and GSTEP Framework for Educators is fully aligned with, and goes well beyond, INTASC, NCATE, and National Board standards and Georgia’s Board of Regents Principles for Educator Preparation. The Professional Standards Commission, Georgia State Department of Education, and the University System Board of Regents found the Framework so compelling that in fall 2005, the state adopted it as the Georgia Framework for Teaching; it will now serve as the standard for professional education throughout the state. The GSTEP chart shows how the Framework aligns with other standards. The USG Board of Regents working through its Educator Preparation Academic Advisory Council (EPAAC) not only adopted the GA Framework, its assessment committee made up of deans and associate deans used the framework as a basis for a new graduate and employer survey that is now being piloted by UGA and will be administered by the Board of Regents beginning spring 2008 with data reported back to each professional education unit.

In summary, over the last decade, the unit has developed a conceptual framework that is supported by the work of a broad base of university faculty and professional educators in the form of the Georgia Framework for Accomplished Teaching, later expanded to the Georgia Framework for Educators to include other school personnel. This framework articulates seven philosophical principles undergirding professional practice and six major domains for accomplished educators. The Georgia Framework for Accomplished Teaching was adopted by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission (PSC), the Georgia Department of Education, and the University System Board of Regents. All three agencies expect professional education units to use this framework to inform their programs.  At UGA, our expanded Georgia Framework for Accomplished Educators makes the language of the original framework more inclusive for use by all our educator preparation programs. The unit’s assessment system is built on the larger theme statement  created and adopted in 2000 as well as the domains of the Georgia Framework for Accomplished Educators finalized since that time.