Meeting NCATE Standard 4: One University’s Plan to Help Preservice Teachers Develop Knowledge, Skills, and Professional Dispositions to Ensure that All Students Learn

Abstract

Standard 4-Diversity of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) requires that preservice teachers, or candidates, demonstrate and apply proficiencies related to diversity. To that end, preservice teachers need to develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to enable them to successfully work with diverse populations of students. In turn, teacher education programs must have in place curricula and experiences beyond the classroom so that candidates learn about diversity and the implications it has for pedagogy. However, providing extracurricular experiences to foster a deeper understanding of issues relative to diversity may be more challenging than offering coursework that teaches candidates about diversity, particularly in higher education institutions and teacher preparation programs that face "geographic isolation in relatively homogeneous settings". Therefore, this article addresses that challenge through a description of efforts undertaken by the teacher education program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), a relatively homogeneous, mid-to-large sized public university, to meet NCATE's diversity standard and to earn national accreditation. The authors begin with an overview of initial steps taken to meet NCATE Standard 4 followed by an explanation of the plan's origin. Next, they elucidate the specifics of their plan. Finally, they examine assessment, explaining how data are generated and then conclude by noting how the plan allows for continual development and improvement. (Contains 1 figure, 5 tables and 2 endnotes.)