Tine Sloan of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School is a co-editor—with Charles A. Peck, Kristen Cuthrell, Désirée H. Pointer-Mace, and Diana B. Lys—of the new volume Using Data to Improve Teacher Education: Moving Evidence to Action (Teachers College Press 2021). One of the book’s chapters is a “Program Portrait: University of California, Santa Barbara,” co-authored by Sloan and Jennifer Scalzo, M.Ed. Coordinator at UCSB’s Teacher Education Program.
The book offers concrete examples of how data can be used by faculty, staff, and program leaders to improve their collective work as teacher educators. Strong external accountability mandates often lead to tensions that undermine local morale and motivation. This volume focuses on the practical work of navigating these tensions so that valuable programmatic change can happen. It describes policies and practices drawn from a study of “high data use” teacher education programs from around the country that have strategically engaged the challenges of learning to use data for program improvement. Readers will see how the data-use work carried out in these programs strengthened local program identity and coherence. Representing a collaborative effort between researchers and practitioners, this volume presents lessons learned to assist teacher educators who are engaged daily with the challenges of making data useful and used in their programs.
“Using Data to Improve Teacher Education takes an in-depth look into how teacher preparation programs can take a different approach to data use,” writes Sarah Beal, executive director, US PREP. “Data can be a tool for collaboration, learning, and engagement. By making space and time for data use and inquiry, program leaders can re-conceptualize what data is most important and involve faculty in the design, implementation, and dissemination processes. There are many lessons to be discovered here—I believe everyone in teacher preparation should read this book.”
Tine Sloan is a teaching professor in the Department of Education at the Gevirtz School and director of the California Teacher Education Research and Improvement Network, a research collaborative across nine UC campuses working with CSU and private universities to understand and improve the preparation of teachers for California. Sloan is actively involved in state policy issues on teacher preparation and represents the University of California as a Commissioner on the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.