Research on Alternative and Non-Traditional Education

Teacher educators face many challenges such as preparing high quality teachers, maintaining up-to-date research based information for programs, and recruiting high quality individuals. In an attempt to meet the challenge of preparing a significant number of teaching candidates, many alternative routes to teacher certification have appeared across the country. The Thirteenth Annual Yearbook of the Association of Teacher Educators provides a collection of well-researched chapters on alternative and non-traditional approaches to teacher preparation. Editors Julie Dangel and Edith Guyton provide three sections to frame the dialogue: successes and challenges, effects of models, and non-traditional models of professional development. This yearbook provides: *A cross-case description and analysis of a five site program ranging from small town to highly urban *A description of four distinctly different routes to certification that were developed to recruit diverse and non-traditional individuals into teaching *A summary of findings of an alternative certification program that career changers either performed well below or exceeded expectations *A comparison study of regularly certified first-year teachers with Teach for America first-year and second-year teachers *Information on a longitudinal study of 1,702 novice teachers *A summary of a unique approach to offering professional development opportunities to meet the academic and personal needs of teachers of English language learners *Several barriers to coaching practice, lack of time, teacher resistance to change, lack of trust, and inconsistencies in definition of the coaching role. *Details on how online events can be useful and usable by a broad population of teachers. For teachers and teacher educators.