STRENGTHENING TEACHER EDUCATION
IN THE UNDERGRADUATE YEARS AT
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO

Undergraduate teacher education at CSUS has been addressed unevenly over the past decade. While our three major programs -- Child Development, Liberal Studies, and Social Science -- receive more attention at CSUS than do their counterparts on many CSU campuses, they clearly are in need of examination given current public interest and investment in California's K-12 educational system. This is especially the case regarding the Liberal Studies Program; hence the majority of the following comments pertain primarily to Liberal Studies. We have identified a number of significant problems to be overcome if we are to address teacher education in stronger fashion:

1) Our current Liberal Studies curriculum lacks overall thematic integration and leaves little room for the introduction of teacher-prep courses.

2) The program's administrative structure is underdeveloped.

3) Advising for Liberal Studies and our other teacher education programs is excellent but now operates at close to its limits. As potential teachers enter our programs in greater numbers, we will have great difficulty advising them.

4) Single-subject and multi-subject approaches to teacher education are not well integrated.

5) Discussion and collaboration among university program faculty and administrators, community college administrators, and K-12 officials regarding goals and methods of teacher education are insufficiently developed.

6) Quality control of the scheduling of and instructor assignment to Liberal Studies courses has been inadequate.

7) Students in teacher education programs have little identification with each other since the "teaching" element of their major is not addressed until after completion of the liberal arts segment of the major.

8) Though the Child Development and Social Science programs have begun assessing learning outcomes for their students, the Liberal Studies program has not yet begun this process.

We have begun a number of initiatives to respond to these problems:

1) The President and the Provost have alerted the University community that teacher education must become a major priority at CSUS. The deans of the schools in which the three major teacher education programs are housed (the School of Education and the School of Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies) have joined forces with the deans of schools in which the majority of courses for the programs are taught to provide direct administrative support for necessary program changes. Budgeting for the Liberal Studies courses in CSUS schools will now be based upon memoranda of understanding that acknowledge the schools' obligation to respond to an interdisciplinary major that directs large numbers of students into their programs.

2) Efforts are now under way better to identify current faculty and to recruit new faculty sympathetic to teacher training. We are trying to move away from a model that relegates teacher education to "adjunct" curricular status in the traditional Liberal Arts and Sciences disciplines.

3) We recently enhanced the administrative structure of the Liberal Studies program, increasing the release time available to the program coordinator and assigning the coordinator more responsibility for development and quality control of the program.

4) The Liberal Studies coordinator will work directly with deans, as well as with department chairs, to address scheduling and instructor issues pertinent to the program.

5) Efforts are underway to develop course and instructor evaluation methods that are more sensitive to the needs of teacher education students.

6) During the coming year, attempts will be made to experiment with new Liberal Studies course delivery and quality control structures in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. The aim of this effort is the development of a relatively generic program management and curriculum development model for use with other CSUS schools.

7) An external advisory committee for Liberal Studies will be recruited during the Spring 1998 semester. The committee will consist of persons in the field of education and members of local community colleges.

8) Faculty members who routinely teach Liberal Studies students will be asked to meet with regularity regarding program issues. Hopefully, they will become identified publicly as the "Liberal Studies Faculty."

9) Meetings are now underway between members of the School of Education and members of the Mathematics Department to discuss how better to bring teacher training into the Math curriculum. These discussions will serve as the basis for addressing the larger curricular issue of integrating the Liberal Studies curriculum (currently with little flexibility) and teacher preparation courses (currently taken in the fifth year).

10) During the coming year, in concert with the other teacher education programs at CSUS, the Liberal Studies Program will begin to develop methods of assessing learning outcomes for its students.

11) Centralized housing and advising duties for the three major teacher education programs at CSUS soon will be in place.

12) The Liberal Studies Program coordinator has been asked to review CSUS efforts to develop an entry level, cohort experience for transfer students. This will involve greater program articulation with community colleges.

In sum, the goal of CSUS efforts regarding Liberal Studies and other teacher education programs is to make the University more "teacher friendly." We want to remove obstacles to students' consideration of teaching as a career choice. We wish to make the teaching majors at CSUS more like other majors in the University. Students should identify with each other and with faculty as they proceed through their programs. They should develop a pride in their major that both shapes and is reflected back in CSUS's attention to its role in educating California's future teachers.