French Section 4
Candidate Preparation (printable version)

Eastern Michigan University
French Major and Minor for Secondary Education FA

a.       Foreign Language Students’ Perceptions of the Teacher Preparation Program

Eastern Michigan University continues to be the nation's largest producer of professional education personnel (EMU College of Education web page). As shown below, Eastern Michigan University students seeking teacher certification in foreign languages believe that they are enrolled in a strong teacher preparation program and that their content-area and professional preparation courses offer them the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and experiences that are necessary to teach French, German, Japanese, and Spanish in contemporary, standards-based foreign language programs in a variety of school settings.

Eastern Michigan University students’ ratings of the foreign language methods course and the methods teacher’s instructional effectiveness for the period under consideration are also shown below.

Student teachers seeking certification in French are placed for student teaching, observed, and evaluated by the methods professor, a specialist in foreign language pedagogy from the Department of Foreign Languages and Bilingual Studies, rather than by a generalist supervisor assigned by the College of Education.  This specialist supervisor observes an average of eight class sessions per student teacher per semester, or approximately one class period during each two-week segment of the student teaching practicum. Students note that they receive professional and meaningful supervision that allows them to analyze, reflect on and improve their teaching.

·         Data on supervisor effectiveness were collected beginning in Winter 2002.

b.     Content Assessment State Subject-Area Certification Test Scores, 16 Administrations

The number of students taking and passing the Michigan Tests of Teacher Competency in French, German, and Spanish is shown below. High percentages of students in all languages routinely receive passing scores on this test.

Overall Passing Percentages. The overall passing percentage for Eastern Michigan University students exceeded the statewide passing percentage on the Michigan Tests of Teacher Competency:   100% in French for all testing dates during the period under consideration.

Scaled Scores. Eastern Michigan University students’ scaled scores exceeded the statewide average scaled score on 15 of 17 testing dates (88% of the time) in French during the period under consideration.

c. Pedagogy (1998 Michigan Entry-level Standards)

In addition to a number of smaller assignments and required one-on-one office-hour meetings with the professor, students in FLAN 411: Theory and Practice of Modern Language Instruction complete the following major assignments:

—    plan, prepare and teach 13 (weekly) micro-teaching demonstrations

—    coach their peers and reflect in writing on their weekly demonstrations

—    plan and prepare five consecutive days of lessons plans

—    teach and reflect on one of  the lessons from their 5-day plans

—    plan and prepare a learning scenario (five days of plans, a culminating assessment project, and assessment rubrics),

—    teach and reflect on one lesson from the learning scenario

—    present and defend to peers, faculty and in-service teachers their culminating assessment project and rubrics

—    prepare and peer-edit several versions of the philosophy of teaching. 

In all assignments, students are expected to address the national standards for foreign language learning, show broad-based general knowledge of and connections to other content areas, use technology, and offer age-appropriate activities and adaptations to meet the needs and learning styles of all learners. Major course assignments and assessments are aligned with the Entry-level Standards for Michigan Teachers as follows.

d.1. Cooperating Teacher Perceptions of Teacher Preparation

Cooperating teachers rate their student teacher’s mastery of content knowledge and mastery of the subject matter on Item 1 of the midterm and final evaluation using the following scale:

Cooperating teachers’ ratings for the period under consideration are shown below. Cooperating teachers routinely rate Eastern Michigan University students’ content knowledge as highly  satisfactory  to excellent  and cooperating teachers’ average ratings of EMU students’ content knowledge for all languages are in the excellent  category.

Cooperating teachers address the extent to which Eastern Michigan University students demonstrate the instructional, managerial, and decision-making skills consistent with those required of a beginning teacher on Item 46 of the midterm and final evaluation using the following scale:

Cooperating teachers’ ratings for the period under consideration are shown below. Cooperating teachers routinely rate Eastern Michigan University students’ preparation and potential as a teacher as excellent and average ratings for all languages are in the excellent   category.

d.2. University Supervisor Perceptions of Teacher Preparation

Because student teachers seeking certification in French are placed for student teaching, observed, and evaluated by the methods professor, a specialist in foreign language pedagogy from the Department of Foreign Languages and Bilingual Studies, rather than by a generalist supervisor assigned by the College of Education, the university supervisor’s perceptions of the foreign language methods program and of student teacher competence are not independent evaluations and are not reported here.

e. Content-Area Faculty Perceptions of Teacher Preparation

Faculty in the Department of Foreign Languages and Bilingual Studies at Eastern Michigan University are strong supporters of the rigorous nature of the foreign language methods class.  They actively promote our teacher certification program in their classes and as they advise students and they believe that the sequence of professional education courses at our university prepares our students well for careers as foreign language teachers. 

f. Evidence of Impact of Program Graduates on K-12 Learning

Student teachers in foreign languages are participating during Fall 2002 in a pilot study based on the College of Education’s Teacher Quality grant. Because these students are still preparing pre-assessment instruments and gathering pre-assessment data on three to five objectives from their units, evidence of their impact on K-12 learning is not currently available.

Eastern Michigan University has a strong and well-established Teacher Certification program in all disciplines and our records show that more than 250 beginning teachers of French, German, Japanese and Spanish have received their teaching certificates at EMU in the last 15 years. Our graduates are well respected, are much sought by school districts throughout Michigan and are often hired immediately after the end of their student teaching practicum.  All students who have sought a teaching position have been hired within 12 months of receiving their certification. In certain school districts, a significant percentage of the foreign language teachers have graduated from our program (i.e. Franklin High School in Livonia, Slauson and Scarlett Middle Schools in Ann Arbor, Tecumseh High School in Tecumseh, where all or nearly all of the foreign language teachers have received their teacher certification through EMU).

While we have not collected data on the teaching effectiveness of our graduates once they are hired, we do measure their impact on students by considering 1) the vitality of the language programs in which they teach and 2) the increases in student enrollment in those programs due in part to our graduates’ commitment to student learning. It is clear that our graduates sustain and build strong foreign language programs in the schools and districts in which they are hired.