LESSON 3:  The EDUCATEAlabama CONTINUA

While you will regularly be referring to and working with the Collaboration, Leadership, and Individualization charts in the EDUCATEAlabama process, you will probably not refer often to the lengthy list of standards, indicators, and definition items that you studied in Lesson 2. They will always be there, embedded in the data collection instruments and analysis of your practices.  However, the document that you and your evaluator will use regularly is the EDUCATEAlabama Continua. The EDUCATEAlabama Continua contain all of the standards, indicators, and definition items set out in 39 separate continuums, one continuum for each indicator.  The Continua become the means for analyzing the data/information your evaluator and you have collected for each indicator, the means for preparing the Collaborative Summary Report (CSR) at the end of a full evaluation year, and the means for developing the required Professional Learning Plan (PLP).  You will be introduced to these forms and processes in later lessons in this module.

Access now the EDUCATEAlabama Continua by clicking on the following link and review them carefully: EDUCATEAlabama Continua.  Notice where and how the standards, indicators, and definition items provide the framework for each continuum and how definition items are organized to define levels of practice (Emerging, Applying, Integrating, Innovating).

Origins of the EDUCATEAlabama Continua

The EDUCATEAlabama Continua were developed using the teaching standards (AQTS) that you have studied and the “Alabama Continuum for Teacher Development”, a set of continuums developed from the standards for use in the Alabama Teacher Mentoring Program and other professional development initiatives.  The EDUCATEAlabama Continua which you have just reviewed and will be using in the EDUCATEAlabama teacher evaluation program parallel the Teacher Development Continuums in every way but one.  The Teacher Development Continuum uses five levels:  Pre-Service/Beginning, Emerging, Applying, Integrating, Innovating.  The EDUCATEAlabama Continuum uses four levels (Emerging through Innovating).  The first level of the Teacher Development Continuum was not incorporated into the EDUCATEAlabama Continua because it focuses in large part on knowledge rather than practice (appropriate for teacher preparation programs, but very difficult to measure in the classroom setting where application of knowledge is the expectation), and it emphasizes knowledge and practices that a beginning teacher should be able to exhibit at the beginning of his/her first employment in a classroom.  By the end of the first year in the classroom a beginning teacher should be at the Emerging level in most indicators and standards.  Practices identified in the Teacher Development Continuum at the B/PS level (the first level) that were appropriate for inclusion in the EDUCATEAlabama Continua have been incorporated into the Emerging levels of the various continuums. 

 Remember the capital letters (E, A, etc.) accompanying the definition items in the AQTS:  EDUCATEAlabama version?  These letters are references to the placement of the definition items in the continuums constituting the “Alabama Continuum for Teacher Development” and also the EDUCATEAlabama Continua.  There has been intentional effort given to paralleling these two continua, so that data from teacher evaluations can be easily moved into teacher development initiatives (teacher mentoring, other) and easily interpreted by teachers and administrators working together to make the Alabama teaching force the best in the country.  Remember that the focus of the new EDUCATEAlabama teacher evaluation system is formative evaluation; i.e., evaluation which produces data/information that is used to guide teacher professional learning and growth.