Guiding our commitment to excellence in next-generation teacher education
Our long-term vision is to become a local, national and international trendsetter in next-generation teacher education that develops a synergy between initial teacher education, induction into teaching, and in-service teacher education and blends theory, practice and policy.
We build meaningful partnerships based on mutual respect, shared learning, and collaborative growth between educators, researchers, and practitioners.
We foster cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional partnerships, bringing together diverse perspectives to address complex educational challenges.
We extend our impact beyond campus boundaries, serving communities, schools, and educators across Texas and beyond with dedication and purpose.
We maintain openness and clarity in our processes, research, and collaborations, building trust and accountability with all stakeholders.
Our mission is to address the grand challenges of teaching and teacher education in Texas. These challenges emerge in the many sites where teaching and teacher education take place.
Separations between and among content, pedagogy and clinical practice have fractionalized teaching and teacher education. An urgent need for convergence exists. At points of contact, the Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education will seam together previously fractured pieces and rigorously examine them from an interdisciplinary perspective.
New unions and novel approaches to known problems are anticipated outcomes of our collaborative work.
Our overall purpose is to pool our efforts and address the needs of the new-normal 21st century learners in our university classrooms and in the public schools where our preservice interns will eventually be teachers and will work alongside teachers who have their own set of needs in their particular contexts. With this purpose, our goals address three areas of high priority.
As we define teacher education as the education of teachers along the continuum, we aim to improve teacher recruitment, preparation and induction into the teaching profession and focus on their retention and sustenance throughout their careers.
We seek to contribute to evidence-based and translational teacher education research. As bidirectional (theory ↔ practice) and tri-directional (theory ↔ practice ↔ policy), our research will not simply produce findings; those findings will be made meaningful and action-worthy in practice and policy making settings.
The Collaborative for Innovation in Teacher Education will act as a clearinghouse for promising teacher and teacher education practices and a source for professional development. We will build important college and state capacity and be a catalyst for change in teacher education, teaching and school contexts. It will mend theory-practice-policy gaps by taking up a research agenda specific to teaching and teacher education.
Our comprehensive approach integrates practice, scholarship, and support to meet the evolving needs of modern education