UW-Madison teacher education students must meet all state licensing requirements for initial teaching certification in Wisconsin. These requirements, sometimes referred to as administrative rules “PI 34,” mandate that individuals demonstrate proficiency on state-approved teaching standards. Each teacher education institution in Wisconsin has adopted a set of teacher education standards that must be met by all students completing a licensing program. Following are the standards of the UW-Madison School of Education:
Standard #1: Teachers design learning environments and pedagogical practices for students that are grounded in concepts and interpretive frameworks provided by disciplines that study human development and learning.
Standard #2: Teachers understand how local, state, national, and global social and political contexts differentially affect schooling and its outcomes for students.
Standard #3: Teachers understand the central concepts, assumptions, tools of inquiry, ways of reasoning, uncertainties, and controversies of the disciplines that they teach to students.
Standard #4: Teachers are knowledgeable about the problems, challenges, and opportunities that commonly arise as students develop understanding or competence in particular domains.*
Standard #5: Teachers can articulate and defend their curricular and instructional choices with sound ethical and pedagogical justifications.
Standard #6: Teachers use the knowledge and abilities necessary for collaboration with individuals, groups and agencies within the school and community. They base instruction of students on an understanding of curricular goals, subject matter and the community, and help the students make connections between community-based knowledge and school knowledge.
Standard #7: Teachers understand and adapt to students' multiple forms of expressing and receiving experiences, ideas and feelings.
Standard #8: Teachers understand and thoughtfully use formal and informal evaluation strategies to assess students' achievements, strengths, challenges and learning styles for continuous development.
Standard #9: Teachers establish and maintain an environment that engages students in learning while providing for their physical and socio-emotional well-being.
Standard #10: Teachers understand and use a variety of instructional strategies to enhance students' learning.
Standard #11: Teachers appropriately incorporate new and proven technologies into instructional practice. They understand the major social, cultural, and economic issues surrounding their implementation.
Standard #12: Teachers design educational environments and use instructional practices that accommodate students' achievements, strengths, challenges, interests and learning styles.
Standard #13: Teachers are reflective practitioners who evaluate the effects of their assumptions, choices and actions on others (students, parents, and other professionals in the learning community) and who actively seek out opportunities to grow professionally. They examine assumptions enmeshed in ways of thinking and in familial, institutional, and cultural lore and practices.
Standard #14: Teachers relate to students, families and community members in a fair, respectful and sensitive manner. They show an appreciation for the cultural** diversity of our society.
Standard #15: Teachers understand the legal rights and responsibilities of professional educators and the law as it applies to their specific domains of teaching.
*The term domain was chosen because teachers are called upon to teach school subjects, not necessarily academic disciplines. Those school subjects include content and skills that fall within particular disciplines but often cut across those disciplines.
**Culture is broadly meant here to include the social patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions and all other products of human work and thought characteristic of a community or population. Cultural patterns are related to language, sex/gender, race, national origin/ethnicity, social class, creed/religion, disability, and sexual orientation.
Future teachers at UW-Madison demonstrate that they have certain knowledge and can perform successfully as beginning teachers through a performance-based assessment system. In January, 1998, the School of Education adopted the Teacher Education Standards noted above as the benchmark for the assessment process. Students in each licensing program will have multiple opportunities to learn and to demonstrate knowledge of issues, information, and content related to the standards. These standards are integrated into the professional education courses in all teacher education programs and are further defined in each of the program areas.