Department of Early Childhood Education

Department of Early Childhood Education

College of Education

Georgia State University

Academic Program Review

External Evaluation Team Report

Dr. María E. Fránquiz

Dr. John McIntyre

Dr. Deborah Cassidy

Submitted May 15, 2015

Academic Program Review

External Evaluation Team Report

Department of Early Childhood Education

Introduction

The review committee expresses deep appreciation to the administration, faculty, staff, and students of Georgia State University’s Department of Early Childhood Education for their kind attention to every detail of the site visit. The College of Education atGeorgia State University is fortunate to have a capable Department Head,Dr. Barbara Meyers, and the strong leadership of Professor Lynn C. Hart, chair of the thorough, succinct and thoughtful Academic Program Review Self-Study Report provided to the external committee. The willingness tooptimize the strengths of the faculty, staff and students by taking on new programs such as the Birth-5 program or re-conceptualizing the Masters in Education is laudable. We congratulate the leaders and members of the Department in advancing an ambitious educational mission that connects with the larger university community, the state, and beyond while remaining fiscally astute. Since 2005 the Department of Early Childhood Education has courageously chosen among many educational options to engage their students in the finest experiences possible in a research-intensive institution. Throughout transitions the staff has remained loyal and embraced the mantra of doing more with less.

Three pieces of information that were not included in the Academic Program Review Self Study Report that are important to our findings were: 1) the consolidation of Georgia Perimeter Community College with Georgia State University, 2) the college is changing its name to the College of Education and Human Development, and 3) the initiation of a Bachelor Degree in Human Learning and Development Interdisciplinary Studies (B.I.S.) program. The reviewers note that these omissions were due to college wide decisions, rather than departmental decisions.

Overview

Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Provost, Dr. Risa Palm, charged the Review committee to examine the strengths, weaknesses, and challenges of the Department of Early Childhood including but not limited to quality of faculty, students, programs, research, and teaching. This charge was taken seriously in all interviews and deliberations. The result was that many of the questions raised by the Committee over the course of the review centered on three critical areas:

1)Establishing a merged identity as the department consolidates students from Georgia Perimeter Community College

2)Refining the BIS interdisciplinary major for more robust contributions from the sub-disciplinary area of Early Childhood Development

3)Addressing the loss of recent retirements, departures, and limited-term faculty positions that are critical to fulfilling and stabilizing the work load needs of the department.

Executive Summary of Findings

Georgia State University has dedicated faculty in the Department of Early Childhood Education, a sub-disciplinary area in the field of Education. Students, peers, and staff consider the faculty - both seasoned faculty and newly hired faculty - as excellent. The Department has added a new Bachelor Degreein Human Learning and Development Interdisciplinary Studies (B.I.S.) and has created opportunities that faculty should continue to investigate.

We take note that Georgia State University has suffered budget cuts at the state level andthe administration has responded in a number of ways including recommitting to graduate and undergraduate education with earnestness and efficiency. As the department thought creatively about its course offerings a new undergraduate major was developed and offered to undergraduate students. Also,previous Masters in Education programs have and continue to be refined in areas of public and professional interest such as a Masters in Elementary Education with endorsements in mathematics, science and reading. The department is well poised to explore integration through interdisciplinary approaches for teaching in the STEM areas, and such exploration ought to continue to be a high priority.

Department of Early Childhood Strengths and Contributions

Leadership, Willingness to Serve, and Common Vision. The Department of Early Childhood (ECE) has talented, compassionate, and visionary leaders. The faculty has resolved problems that have decimated many other departments of education. Not only do the leaders take care of problems, they do it in in such a way that staff and faculty feel affirmed, valued, cared for, and helped in terms of personal growth and development.One faculty stated, “our department chair is an advocate for ECE”. At the same time faculty are provided access to leadership and they take it up. For example, the strategic plan “bucket leaders” spent systemic periods of time and are proud of constructing a strategic plan that aligns well with the college and university goals. Alignment included a process of reviewing syllabi for quality control, addressing diversity in human resources and pedagogy, familiarizing faculty with institutional challenges, among other considerations. There appears to be a common departmental vision and shared goals. These include, cultivating an environment of acceptance, giving up things when change is necessary, respecting an honoring each other’s expertise, increasing research and improving teaching. A senior faculty member summed it up: “The department is collegial and the department chair cares about us. The department has high standards and good programs.”Similarly, a staff member stated, “we’ve been like a family; we work well together; I wish I could get more money but I love working here. The chair as well as any faculty member would advocate for me.”

Quality of the Degree Programs.
The ECE department is in compliance with and communicates respect for CAEP and edTPA standards of the teacher educationprofession. The latter in particular, requires unprecedented collection and management of data from all teacher education candidates that may require additional personnel to support the licensure program, the Early Childhood Education (B.S.Ed) P-5 licensure program. The B.S.Ed is selective and rigorous as described online, on the Self Report and from student testimonials. The Birth through Five Education program (B-5) is fairly new and fills an increasingly important need that has been traditionally neglected in the field of Education at 4-year institutions. The cohort model has been in place for the B.S.Edfor some time and the expectation is to growand serve 3 cohorts per year (currently serving 2 cohorts). The retention rate of the undergraduates seeking teacher certification is absolutely impressive, given that the majority of students we talked with were teacher candidates of color, and this is the most critical need in the profession. Dean Alberto also stated that, 70% of graduates take up jobs in high needs schools and 3 years later are still there. Such statistics go beyond the gold standard in the profession.

Masters programs also offer teacher education with licensure. This is the intent of the Early Childhood Education M.A.T. degree for preK – fifth grade. According to the Program Assessments section of the Self Study Report the student learning outcomes were 100% met or exceeded. The focus of another graduate program, the M.Ed in Early Educationcenterson improving instruction in urban settings through instructional strategies for specific disciplinary areas namely reading, science and mathematics. It is a very young program with admission of students beginning in summer 2013. All targeted 4 assessment measures were met by students. It was our understanding this graduate program was refined to include more content in the STEM areas. Such deliberate refinement is in concert with the direction of other colleges of education across the nation. A third Masters with teacher certification (UACM) is a two-year value added cohort program in which graduate students earn an elementary education certificate, an ESOL endorsement, plus a Masters Degree. The uniqueness of this program is that it is responsive to school districts and has received grant support. The students in the Masters programs that met with the review team were very pleased for reasons including a pay raise with completion of the degree, peers in the profession reenergizing each other particularly when working in the same county, the part 1 and part 2 sequence feels like a cohort, and the endorsements that can be embedded in the degree. A prominent feature of the undergraduate and graduate programs is the ability for teachers to acquire an ESOL or Special Education endorsement in the undergraduate licensure program and to acquire a new endorsement in the graduate program (ECE, science, math, or literacy). In the words of a Masters student who also completed initial licensure in the B.S.Ed, “We are so much more marketable than other candidates. The endorsements really help!”

TheEarly Childhood and Elementary Education doctoral program was completely revamped and streamlined during the review period to improve the theoretical and methodological foundation for conducting research and to align more closely with the urban mission of Georgia State University. Currently there are equal numbers of part-time (n=23) and full-time (n=23) doctoral students at different stages in completing requirements for the Ph.D. This means practicing teachers are working alongside peers who are supervisors or instructors in the undergraduate teacher preparation program and/or working on research with a professor. This is a typical range of professional preparation distribution in doctoral programs of state universities. The completion rate appears strong and the preparation excellent. Reviewers found the GRE exam median for admission to the ECE doctoral program to be adequate and noted that since the last external review doctoral admissions on a full-time basis increased. However, it was brought to our attention that for a five-year period the ECE department was asked to constrain admissions to the doctoral program by a former dean. Among the doctoral students who spoke with the reviewers positive comments included: freedom to explore a wide range of departmental offerings, provided many opportunities to conduct research, the schedule is flexible (scholarly writing and reading class, a 3-hour elective meets on Saturdays), everyone is encouraged to be collaborative, and the faculty connect them with students with shared interests. Doctoral students reported they liked that Dr. Meyers invites them to participate in book clubs and a celebration at her home each year. Most students take advantage of $400 travel stipend that is available to attend and present a research paper at a scholarly conference.

Research Culture. The Department of Early Childhood has been resourceful in terms of raising funds/revenues to maintain a healthy profile for research and to develop research opportunities for graduate students.

Faculty members report they have adequate support in securing external funding.In 2014 they secured $3,310,225 in external grants. The department nearly doubled publications in peer-reviewed journals indicating a thriving research culture.

Strong revenue effortsare possible with thecontributions being made to the new BIS major in the Birth through Five-concentration area. If this concentration area continues to grow the reviewers are impressed with the potential for funding in the ECE Department. The Georgia State University’s Child Development Center, a part of the College of Education, is also well positioned for improvements in order to increase observation spaces that can facilitate mediated learning for funded research opportunities in the B-5 age range. Finally, the PreK to grade 5 program is of such quality and attraction that enrollment revenues should increase.

The ECE Department has auxiliary units such as Best Practices that supports itself completely through external funding and has been delivering important training for Pre-K lead and assistant teachers. Delivering exemplary early care and education programs that improve the quality of early learning experiences, increase school readiness, and improve overall child health and performance is critical for Georgia and the nation.Doctoral Fellows have benefitted greatly from Graduate Assistantships with Best Practices. Another unit, the Reading Recovery Center, while not having a direct focus on research, has consistently been the recipient of private and public funding to provide professional development services to improve the literacy achievement of struggling readers in urban and rural Georgia and beyond.

Goals and Next Steps. The Early Childhood teacher education is commendable; however, maintaining the standards required by the edTPA assessment process will require attention to rigorous and systematic content instruction and supervision. Combined with a plan to increase enrollment in the preparation of elementary pre-K to fifth grade teachers from 2 to 3 cohorts and the goal to establish a cohort of Birth to age 5 teachers, human resources must be taken into account. The greatest constraint toward achieving an efficient process toward continuance of growth seems to be limited term-positions. The reviewers agree limited-term positions should be made into more stable clinical hires. Optimal outcomes for a community of education scholars rely on full-time clinical instructors rather than part-time instructors particularly since there is a history in the ECE department of clinical professors providing strong support in the conducting and disseminating of research and in participating in grants. Two critical areas that ought to be addressed in the immediate future with Tenure/Tenure track and clinical faculty is STEM education and Bilingual education. These two critical areaswould be responsive to local, state, and national needs. It is unfortunate the M.A.T in Early Childhood Education is temporarily not admitting students as it seems a natural first step toward feeding into the doctoral program. The Masters of Arts in Creative and Innovative Education slated to begin in Summer 2016 may be a better option.

Summary and Recommendations

Georgia State University is clearly rising as a leader in urban early childhood education. Undergraduate to doctoral student experiences are relevant to the Education profession the candidates are entering. Targets on multiple assessment learning outcomes are typically met 100% or exceeded. Embracing change based on student feedback and data learning outcomes describe the opportunity momentsthe Department of Early Childhood takes up to assure student success. It would be beneficial for the department to be provided institutional support as it addresses current challenges.

The urban focus in undergraduate and graduate programs is responsive to the needs of the community within and outside the perimeter of the city. The consolidation with Perimeter Community College is an opportunity for the various early childhood education programs from the community college that feed into the ECE Departmentto align their visionsto maintain the urban focus as one solid identity. An opportunity for growth is available.

The Child Development Center is an exemplary servant to the community on and off campus. Faculty and students from various university colleges and departments collect data for research at the center. The physical plant problems at the Capitol Hill location mandate renovation where both locations could be combined and additional space provided. The high quality of the early care program and the diversity of the families enrolled deserve further fiscal investment.

Given the changing demographics in Georgia particularly the Latino population (doubling between 2000 and 2011) and the goal for more students to study abroad, more strategic focus ought to be placed in students having international linguistic and cultural experiences in Spanish-speaking countries. The dual language option for teacher preparation is also highly recommended.

The limited-term hires are integral to the success of the undergraduate and graduate programs. However, limited terms disrupt strong relationship with colleagues,staff, partners and students. It was useful to have limited-term hires when FTA teachers requested the department to set up certification with a Masters degree but the present configurations requireda tighter and stable community.

For continued growth, efficiency, and service of the ECE department, searches for full time faculty in literacy, mathematics and social studies should be supported as well as a search for a more senior tenure/tenure track faculty member to continue the quality work in child development, science/STEM/urban education of a key faculty member who is retiring. Given the population of the city and the diversity of candidates served in the undergraduate and graduate programs target of opportunity hires of diverse faculty is highly recommended.

A more recognizable mentoring process in the ECE department will provide new hires pathways to success.