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Projects & Initiatives

SMTI Projects

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Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership
The MTE-Partnership provides a coordinated research, development, and implementation effort for secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs. The Partnership was initially formed to meet the challenges of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and to embody research and best practices in the field.
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STEM Education Centers Network
The goal of the Network is to foster communication and interaction among STEM education centers to enhance their capacity to support effective undergraduate STEM education. We are focused on opportunities to learn, communicate and share, and develop leadership. Our goal is to catalyze a learning network that becomes self-sustaining.

Past Projects

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Teacher Education Program Assessment
TEPA began the process of creating a classification, almost a taxonomy, of the critical components, goals, objectives and strategies that codify a shared language of concepts, strategies and assessments that are particular to science and mathematics teacher preparation. The AF is intended to be a useful tool in creating and achieving greater program coherence – and providing greater assurance that program completers will possess sufficient knowledge and skills to teach effectively.
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Promising Practices for Science and Mathematics Teacher Preparation
APLU/SMTI undertook this pilot effort in the summer and fall of 2011 to develop an approach to identifying promising practices.  We invited the participants in The Leadership Collaborative to submit nominations of elements of their programs for consideration as “promising practices.” An essential criteria for acceptance as a “promising practice” was submission of evidence supporting the impact on the quantity, quality and/or diversity of teacher candidates.
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The Leadership Collaborative
In August 2008, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded APLU a $1.5M RETA grant under the auspices of its Math & Science Partnership program. Twenty-five institutions partnered with APLU as part of The Leadership Collaborative (TLC). The grant, “Promoting Institutional Change to Strengthen Science Teacher Preparation,” tested a theory of action that institutional change could be enhanced both by top leadership commitment and faculty ownership of the actions.
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Improving State STEM Teacher Need Assessments
A few states have sophisticated teacher data systems that ensure a high degree of uniformity and completeness of data from throughout the state, but most states must still rely on local data sources that may not be completely reliable. It is the precisely the purpose of Establishing a State’s Current Need for Science and Mathematics Teachers to provide guidance in developing the sort of thorough and reliable assessment that would make such a satisfactory answer possible.