Contact: Joe Farris
Changing the way teachers teach and students learn is the aim of a far-reaching project spearheaded by Mississippi State and Alcorn State universities.
Four community colleges and 24 public school districts in Mississippi also will participate in the effort to reform teacher education with the aid of a five-year, $8.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
The ACHIEVE Mississippi Partnership will train 1,800 college students preparing to become elementary and secondary school teachers in problem-based and studio-based learning techniques that rely heavily on technology. The new teachers will continue to get instruction and support from the project for three years after entering the classroom.
Participating school districts include Amory, Calhoun County, Chickasaw County, Claiborne County, Choctaw County, Clay County, Columbus, Greenwood, Houston, Jackson, Jefferson County, Kemper County, LeFlore County, Leland, Louisville, Lowndes County, Meridian, Natchez, Noxubee County, Oktibbeha County, Starkville, West Point, Wilkinson County, and Winona.
Other partners in the project include the Public Education Forum of Mississippi, the Oktibbeha County Business and Industry Roundtable, and Port Gibson Bank. Business and industry leaders in those groups will offer advice to the project from an employer perspective.
More than 300 university and community college faculty and more than 600 veteran public school teachers also will be taught to use the technology-oriented, hands-on methods. They will apply the techniques in their own teaching, as well as helping train new teachers.
MSU's College of Veterinary Medicine will provide training in the problem-based method used to teach veterinarians and the university's School of Architecture will show teachers how it uses studio-based instruction to prepare architects.
The colleges of Arts and Sciences at MSU and Alcorn will use the same techniques in some courses taken by prospective teachers.
Both the problem-based curriculum in veterinary medicine at MSU and the university's studio-based instruction in architecture have been nationally recognized by professional groups for innovation and effectiveness and have been adopted by other professional schools.
Both techniques emphasize "learning by doing." Rather than relying primarily on lectures, architecture and veterinary medicine students are confronted early and often with "real-world" type design problems or medical cases that they must work in teams to solve. Both disciplines make heavy use of computers for problem solving and as instructional tools.
The project will provide $1.7 million to participating public school districts to help them upgrade their instructional technology.
"Success of the partnership will be judged on how much it increases student achievement in grades K-12 based on national standards," said MSU Dean of Education Bill Graves. "It is expected to lead to higher student test scores in math, science, and reading."
Project plans call for earlier, more intensive practice teaching experiences for teachers-in-training, beginning in the first year of college. Freshmen will be encouraged to work with participating school districts, for example, as tutors in the Mississippi Reads project.
Second-year and third-year students will get progressively more hands-on classroom experience, and fourth-year students will spend eight weeks as classroom observers and 16 weeks as student teachers.
New teachers who have been trained through the ACHIEVE Mississippi program will be recruited to begin preparing for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification through the World Class Teaching Program at MSU or one of the other certification training programs in the state.
Another goal of the project is to better prepare teachers to understand issues related to diversity and recruit more African-Americans to the teaching profession. Alcorn State University will take the lead in those aspects of the project.
More than 300 prospective teachers will receive scholarships through the project to assist with expenses during their final two years of college.
"ACHIEVE Mississippi will require close cooperation among the participating universities, community colleges, and public school districts," Graves said. Community college teachers will adapt problem-based and studio-based instruction to their own classes, he added.
Community college students bound for teaching careers will participate in practical teaching experiences during their freshman and sophomore years, rather than waiting until they have transferred to a four-year university to begin professional training.
Partners in the project are Copiah-Lincoln, East Mississippi, Meridian, and Itawamba community colleges.
Mary Howe, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction in the MSU College of Education, is project director for the ACHIEVE Mississippi Partnership. Melvin Davis is project coordinator for Alcorn State University.