September 6, 2022 — In 2020, the National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR) and EdReports, a nonprofit that provides free reviews of instructional materials, forged a partnership to address the need for teacher awareness of high-quality instructional materials during their preservice training. The partnership led to the creation of a Phase I report, titled “Preparing Day-One Ready Teachers,” that looked at Year 1 learnings from teacher residency programs that participated in three workshops that focused on utilizing quality instructional materials.
Now with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, NCTR is focused on infusing curriculum literacy into its programming and aligning its data collection instruments with a focus on using high-quality instructional materials in the residency year experience. EdReports is providing consultative support focused on content- and program-specific questions in the national context of high-quality instructional materials.
By working specifically with NCTR’s Residency Design Academy (RDA), the goal is to introduce teacher candidates to the use of high-quality instructional materials at the start of their career, prior to becoming a teacher of record, to encourage the use of these instructional materials from day one and increase their effectiveness in the classroom.
“Because teacher residency programs focus on rich, lengthy clinical experiences, they are ideally positioned to prepare their teacher candidates to use high-quality instructional materials before they ever take roles as a teacher of record. Additionally, teacher residencies are, by design, partnerships between the preparation provider and school districts, which creates an opportunity for a productive, ongoing focus on curriculum and its role in resident preparation,” said NCTR Chief Program Officer Erica Hines.
“This work will impact conversations and decisions about how teachers are prepared and how they prioritize high-quality instructional materials in their instructional practice,” said NCTR CEO Kathlene H. Campbell, Ph.D. “Prioritizing high-quality instructional materials is a lever for equity and one that NCTR views as a key to eliminating achievement gaps and expanding opportunities for students of color.”