Lake Wales, Florida – Warner University’s undergraduate elementary teacher preparation program has been named among the top in the country by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), a nonpartisan, not-for-profit research and policy organization, for strong training in classroom management strategies.
This month NCTQ released its 2020 Teacher Prep Review: Clinical Practice and Classroom Management, which finds encouraging progress in teacher preparation programs’ adoption of evidence-based classroom management strategies that are universally effective, regardless of student age or the subject being taught. For the first time since NCTQ began publishing ratings in the 2013 Teacher Prep Review, half of the nearly 1,000 traditional elementary teacher preparation programs evaluated earn an A or B grade, up nearly 30% from seven years ago.
Warner University’s undergraduate program is among only 14% of elementary programs that earn an A, and serves as a model of excellence for others. These top-performing programs are recognized for requiring their aspiring elementary teachers to demonstrate during student teaching, residency, or equivalent clinical practice their ability to implement all five classroom strategies, which are:
- Establishing rules and routines that set expectations for behavior;
- Maximizing learning time by managing time, class materials, and the physical setup of the classroom, and by promoting student engagement;
- Reinforcing positive behavior by using specific, meaningful praise and other forms of positive reinforcement;
- Redirecting off-task behavior through unobtrusive means that do not interrupt instruction and that prevent and manage such behavior, and;
- Addressing serious misbehavior with consistent, respectful, and appropriate consequences.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has, at least for this year, reshaped much of what happens in schools, including classroom management training for aspiring teachers. Several essential classroom management strategies can’t simply be converted to a remote teaching environment, and many states and teacher preparation programs have moved their clinical practice experiences online or abbreviated them limiting opportunities to practice. However, the basic principles of quality classroom management still stand in spite of COVID and are still critical to the success of aspiring teachers in their future careers.