Online Teacher Preparation
A Status Report on Three Strategies
The momentum to develop ways to use cutting-edge multi-media Internet technology to prepare Montessori teachers is apparent.
One issue is ownership. Here are tales of three strategies.
Tim Seldin and his colleagues go the route of the independent entrepreneur, even establishing their own “recognition” system that will accredit their course.
LaVonne Plambeck and Barb Jens try to collaborate with the University of Nebraska-Kearney.
Chaminade University, with its own Montessori teacher education program, is happy simply extending its existing online catalog.
Entrepreneurs: Seldin Groups Offer Course, ‘Recognition’
Tim Seldin and his associates are rolling out both a teacher education program and an accreditation credential for teacher education programs.
The preschool teacher education course is schedule to begin in January, operating through the Center for Guided Montessori Studies (CGMS), a limited-liability corporation in which Seldin, Kitty Bravo, Jonathon Wolff and Mark Seldin, Tim’s son, are principals.
The accreditation operation, described as “recognition,” will come through the International Montessori Council, of which Tim Seldin is chair, Wolff is a board member and Bravo is the chair of the teacher education committee. It will, according to Tim Seldin, recognize teacher education programs that meet its standards, as presumably the CGMS course will.
Teacher Ed Program
CGMS plans to offer the distance and residential courses.
Bravo, the lead developer of the high-tech early childhood distance teacher education course, said it is progressing well toward a January start date.
“Every aspect of a typical early childhood course will be offered,” she said. “It will include streaming video, lectures and presentation of the lessons.
“Every presentation will be done to an actual child. Students will see a teacher give a presentation and see a child do it and then have a chance to discuss it with cohort group.”
The course, she said, will include hundreds of videos. “In Language alone there will probably 60 to 70 lessons. Every lesson that a traditional teacher training program gives will be available to students online.”
Students will do a video record of their practice and send that video for evaluation. Students, Bravo said, “will be evaluated by themselves, peers and an instructor.”
Bravo expects students to adjust easily to high-tech elements of the course. “We will provide some technical support—how to get set up online, a list of equipment. A regular digital camera now has video capability. It sounds more daunting than it is.”
In addition to course instructors, each student would also be assigned an “instructional guide” to help him or her through the entire course.
Bravo said the course will take about 15 months, with some breaks, and require 10 to 15 hours each week.
Albums, she said, will be “interactive. Students won’t have to write up the whole books. We want them to analyze presentations.”
Bravo is still working on standards for acceptable learning environments. “Students will have to be able to put hands on materials and practice it. But we know there may be some extenuating circumstances. There may be some challenges.”
She said she hoped to seek accreditation from the Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education when that organization formally begins to accredit distance education. IMC, she said, will require a residential component for full certification.
Bravo said IMC is also developing a combined distance and residential course and could seek MACTE accreditation for it.
“It is a very comprehensive course,” she said.
CGMS’s distance course is expected to cost about $4,000. Residential courses, according to Tim Seldin, will probably carry a $6,000 to $6,500 fee.
TEP Recognition
The IMC teacher education program (TEP) recognition initiative, according to a June draft document, will offer “Full” certification for residential courses and an “Associate” certificate for a distance course.
Tim Seldin said the recognition program is open to other distance learning programs, although none he has invited to join have yet done so.
Could there be a concern among directors of other teacher education courses about seeking “recognition” from a group led by people who, under a different organizational umbrella, offer a competing course?
“CGMS is totally separate,” Seldin said. “IMC is a non-profit that supports schools, families, conferences. It provides information. It is a place where all are welcome. We open our arms to anyone interested in Montessori. We raise the bar for everyone.”
IMC recently began accrediting schools. Seldin said it has accredited five schools, with another ten in process.
The new IMC TEP accreditation program will be doing much the same work as MACTE. According to an IMC program guidelines draft:
“IMC standards for Montessori Teacher Education Programs meet, and exceed, the standards established by the Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education (MACTE), and therefore all IMC programs are encouraged, but not required, to pursue MACTE accreditation. … Montessori Teacher Education Programs seeking IMC recognition are encouraged to seek MACTE accreditation. This process is separate from that of seeking IMC recognition, although many elements may overlap, making it practical to complete the two processes simultaneously, with minimal duplication of effort.”
Collaboration: Finances Threaten Elementary Course
Efforts were underway in mid-September to rescue the university connection for a potentially path-breaking online Montessori elementary teacher education program.
Mid-America Montessori Teacher Training, based in Omaha, and the University of Nebraska-Kearney have long had a credit-granting relationship for residential courses. In 2004, Mid-America, led by LaVonne Plambeck and Barb Jens, began to roll out an online elementary Montessori teacher education curriculum through UN-K and its software, the Blackboard Learning System.
The arrangement seemed promising—a distance learning Montessori teacher preparation course with substantial credit toward a masters degree at an accredited university. It had won support of the Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education, which granted Mid-America pilot status as a distance learning model.
In September the university notified Mid-America that it would not continue the online arrangement because of low enrollment.
Although neither UN-K nor Mid-America released the actual number of enrollees, it appears the total was five or fewer.
Plambeck said that administrators at UN-K agreed to meet with Mid-America officials and she said she was optimistic that they would be able to find “an alternative route” to keep the relationship alive.
Joan Lewis, associate professor in UN-K’s Teacher Education Dept. and liaison with the program, suggested that paying tuition to both the teacher education center and UN-K may have priced the program out of the range of potential students.
“We worked well together,” Lewis said on the online course development. “It breaks my heart to have to end this arrangement, but the tuition does not cover our cost of classes.”
UN-K had provided limited advertising and marketing support for a course that could potentially draw national and international enrollment. It had not even assigned official class numbers to the offerings, instead it granted credits through “topics” course numbers.
Jens in an e-mail suggested a cautious approach to building the course may have contributed to the low enrollment. “The Mid-America staff truly feels we need to study online training carefully, so we are still offering the online components also on campus. We are essentially running two simultaneous courses. We want to compare the results of our students from both forums to check for quality. If we find our online students are not as well prepared as campus students, we have made them aware that we will not certify them without retaking the campus course.”
Another issue that may present challenges to other distance learning courses comes from employers. “Some of our students who wanted to take the online classes were told by their employers or prospective employers that they wouldn’t pay for the online classes,” Jens wrote.
The online course appeared to be going well.
Jens stated that Mid-America had offered its Philosophy/Child Development course both online and on campus for two years and she had prepared two other courses, Elementary I Biology and Elementary I-II Integrated Arts, for this fall.
“I was hoping to use the UN-K Blackboard system to run our online pilot,” she wrote, “When Joan told us that it would be too costly, I asked if I could run them both from the Mid-America websystem and still be counted towards our Masters program. At that time, she said we could.”
Jens and Plambeck are not ready to give up, reflecting, in part, a financial investment that Plambeck puts at $50,000. But they have also found real benefit in the online approach.
“I enjoy teaching [the philosophy course] online more,” Jens wrote. “The students seem less stressed with the required reading, and the participation in group discussions on Blackboard were especially meaningful in our last course.”
University-Initiated: Chaminade Courses Winning Praise
Chaminade University of Honolulu began offering online courses in 1991 when military students being shipped out to the first Iraq War asked an English teacher to let them finish their class by e-mail. It now offers more than 120 online classes every 10-week term with an enrollment of about 9,000 students a year.
Chaminade has offered Montessori teacher training for more than 25 years. It began a pilot project in Spring 2006, offering the Montessori philosophy and child development classes in a combination online and observation format.
Some reflections from Michael Fassiotto, Assistant to the Provost:
So far, it has worked ideally.
The faculty involved in these pilot classes likes them because students are involved in their own learning in a more profound way than is usual with “on-ground” classes and, because of the writing involved, faculty have a clearer idea almost at once about students’ understanding of the material. Moreover, there are no “quiet” students in an online class—if you don’t participate, you aren’t there.
They have also discovered that they are getting more thoughtful responses from the students than is usual in a face-to-face class. We attribute this to the fact that they have to think through their response before writing. Students also support each other’s opinions and immediately ask for clarification when they don’t understand, or offer counter arguments when they see them. As one student wrote, “The responses from my classmates to my reflections really warmed and encouraged me to keep doing my work.” In this sense the faculty members becomes facilitator rather than lecturers—just as the ideal teacher is in a Montessori classroom.
Faculty also find that there is more geographical diversity in their online classes. In one of our recent Montessori classes, for example, we had students from Hawaii, the west coast of the U.S. mainland, the Midwest, East coast and Micronesia. Geography alone brings a richness to the discussion that is hard to find in the face-to-face classroom where attendance is limited by geographical constraints.
For students, one obvious benefit is the convenience. Being able to go to class anytime/anywhere allows students to always be at their best. As one student wrote, “I have found that even with my very long days and very few moments for rest, I have always been inspired to do the work.” Students also feel positive about their learning. One of the students in the program, a Montessori school director who does teacher education in her own geographical area said, “This has been a high quality experience.”
For those students who have not taken an online class before, the biggest surprise is how close the students become. “It was thrilling every week to hear from you all,” or “I look forward to meeting up with you again in other online classes” are typical comments.
Chaminade hasn’t placed its entire Montessori program online. We still haven’t figured out how to handle demonstrating and observing practice with didactic materials at a distance. For now, we prefer to bring students together on campus for several one or two week institutes for that type of training. We do know, however, that distance education for the many aspects of Montessori training has been very successful for us and has surpassed our expectations in terms of providing a true Montessori teaching and learning experience at the level of teacher education.
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