Partnering with Librarians to Meet NCATE Standards in Teacher Education

Introduction Education professionals are subject to a wide variety of standards, developed by national, regional, state, and institutional agencies and associations. Beyond general education standards, there are specialized standards for personnel who teach a specific subject, teach at a specific level, teach students with special needs, and provide student services. There are even specific standards for the use of technology in education. However, teacher education programs are primarily guided, by the professional standards of the national accrediting body for teacher preparation, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Securing and maintaining such accreditation with periodic institutional reports and site visits can be grueling and time consuming, but education faculty and administrators are not alone in ensuring that NCATE standards are met. To achieve the standards of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and other professional associations, librarians strive to impart target behaviors and information literacy competencies in their students. These behaviors and competencies include the ability to "recognize when information is needed and . and to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information" and they complement the skills, knowledge and dispositions that NCATE mandates. Partnerships between teacher education faculty and education librarians improve the likelihood that both NCATE and ACRL competencies will be integrated with and reinforced by content instruction and performance. Such partnerships can contribute to several specific NCATE Standards, including: Standard 1: Teacher Candidate Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions; Standard 3: Field Experiences and Clinical Practice; Standard 5: Faculty Qualifications, Performance, and Development; and Standard 6: Unit Governance and Resources. Standard One: Candidate Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions NCATE Standard One, which addresses a teacher candidate's knowledge, skills, and dispositions, requires that candidates "know and demonstrate the content, pedagogical and professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn. " (NCATE, 2002, p. 10) Target behaviors that support this standard include: * demonstrated ability to use tools and processes of inquiry; * critical analysis; * reflective practice; * collection of data; and * integration of technology and information literacy in instruction to support student learning. These behaviors parallel information literacy standards developed by ACRL. Although professional vocabulary differs, as can be seen in the appendix, anticipated outcomes of the two standards are congruent. Information literacy, or the ability to "recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information," is a set of skills essential to achieving the first NCATE standard. (ALA, 1989) Faculty members as well as professional associations and agencies have long recognized the importance of information literacy for university faculty and future K-12 teachers. Ten faculty members from the University of Arizona's College of Education informally answered the question: "What information literacy skills do your students need to prepare them to teach? " They identified the following skills: finding resources; organizing information; establishing priorities; maintaining research skills; keeping current; and evaluating the quality of the information. (Greenfield, 2004). Unfortunately, it is all too common to review class assignments where pre-service teachers have not been able to adequately demonstrate their ability to locate, critically evaluate, and appropriately cite information. These skills are the bedrock of information literacy, and are broader than the mechanical ability to search an online article database, index, or library catalog. …