Academic #1
Summary: The accreditation process of a widely-used accreditation agency is evaluated to find it’s effectivness in testing for diversity in teacher-training colleges.
Topic: Accrediting schools of education
Category: Institutional
What is it? Article in academic journal
Author: Sean McKitrick
Accessed: Jan. 31, 2009
Support:
- The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)
- Teacher candidates at Indiana State University (ISU)
- The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)
This article is set up in a fashion similar to a scientific hypothesis. Each source is a variable, all working together to create a working thesis. McKitrick uses surveys done by the NSSE to critique the NCATE, an accreditation agency that is used by over half of the colleges in the U.S. The results were achieved using students in teacher-training programs at Indiana State University. His support was simple but purposeful and McKitrick’s inferences made by evaluating this data provided the meat of the article.
Audience and Agenda: The article was published in the academic journal, “Assessment Update.” It deals, primarily, with higher education assessments and covers also other aspects of educational institutions and the teaching of its students and faculty. Its purpose is to update and inform educational leaders.
Usefulness: While the focus is mainly on diversity, and whether the accreditation agency is accurately measuring the colleges’ ability to teach it, this article also challenges the accreditation process as a whole. In making inferences that standaridized tests do not prove teachers worthy, this article becomes valuable to my research because the basis of its argument runs parallel with my topic, both questioning the accreditation process and whether or not it is necessary.
Works cited: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-AU.html
