Preparing the Teacher Workforce through Microcredentials

One programming note: I will be publishing just one more general update before the end of the year—on Friday, December 26th—which will be free for all to read. I hope many of you are able to unplug for the most part and spend some time with loved ones over the next several days. I’ll be back in your inbox in the new year on Monday, January 5th with an article for paid subscribers. We’ll then get back to our regular publishing schedule. Thanks for all this year—and happy holidays. For now, enjoy this conversation that my colleague, Danny Curtis, hosted. — Michael B. Horn

Danny Curtis sat down with Tommy Hodges, dean at the University of South Carolina’s College of Education, to discuss the innovative CarolinaCrED teacher education program. Tommy explained how the program leverages a competency-based, micro-credential approach to better recognize the skills that aspiring educators bring from diverse backgrounds, while personalizing their training to fill specific skill gaps. The conversation explores the collaborative design with school districts, the data showing strong retention and instructional quality among program graduates, and the unique advantages and challenges of developing such a program within a large university.

Danny Curtis

Welcome to the Future of Education. I’m Danny Curtis and you’re joining the show where we are committed to creating a world in which individuals can build their passion, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that today we are so excited to be joined by Tommy Hodges, who is dean at the University of South Carolina’s College of Education and recently the interim Dean at the College of Arts and Sciences. And I’m so excited to have him on to learn more about the innovative commodity based teacher education program that he helped to create at U of SC called CarolinaCrED. Tommy, thanks so much for joining us.

Tommy Hodges

Danny, thanks for having me. It’s an honor.

Competency-Based Teacher Education

Danny Curtis

Awesome. Well, let’s jump right in. So I’d love to start just by hearing in your own words what Carolina CrED is and how it’s different from other teacher certification programs in the state.

Tommy Hodges

Yeah. So Carolina CrED is a broad umbrella with a number of outreach programs. So we’ve encapsulated a number of different entities that are grounded first in community based needs. So it includes the Carolina Teacher Induction Program, which provides induction supports. It includes an alternative preparation program which is really where much of the focus today, I can talk in some detail around the microcredential work that we’ve done there. That is a career changer program that’s predominantly focused on rural regions across the state, but it also has personalized and tailored degree programs that are offered through it. So we see a number of our different outreach efforts in the College of Education having their intellectual home inside Carolina CrED.

And then one of those is the MCrED or the Microcredential Enterprise. So that is something that’s now supporting upwards of nearly 300 aspiring educators across the state. To date, the Carolina Teacher Induction Program has supported nearly 1,000 teachers. And then countless individuals have participated in those contractual degree programs too. So really has these multiple arms of it, one of which being really grounded in the microcredential enterprise and then others of them also picking up pieces of that.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. And I want to stay with the model here. Could you talk through a bit, the role that competency-based assessment and education plays within the Carolina CrED model?

Tommy Hodges

Yeah. So I would like to believe that teacher education has always somewhat been competency based, certainly through accreditation. We’re deeply interested in the outcomes that we have for our teacher candidates and their ability to engage in high quality instruction with kids and children in the community. But what I would say we’ve lacked is a recognition of the skills and competencies that individuals already walk through the door with. So we design degree programs as if everyone needs the same kind of thing at the same pace, at the same dosage. And where the competency based learning for us has been a key driver, again through the alternative preparation, where it has its origins, is that we’re able to identify an individual who maybe was a paraprofessional inside the school, or an individual who maybe was a wildlife biologist, a park ranger doing educational programming. Individuals from a multitude of different fields and disciplines, they bring skills with them to the table, that one we don’t need to replicate, but more importantly, we need to harness and build off of to help build out and round out their skill set.

And so when we design the microcredentials associated with our alternative preparation, it’s done so in a way that we identify the skills that an individual already walks through the door with, and then we can in some ways prescribe to them the kinds of things that they need to help build skill gaps around in order to be competent educators. They do that. Some of it’s independently, some of it’s with practicing teachers, and some of it’s with the institution, but all of it creates a hyper personalized experience for the learner.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, that’s a really helpful overview and really excited to dig into a number of different pieces in there. But before we do, I want to go deeper on some backstory. So taking us back to the before times, what were you seeing in the state that gave rise to this idea and motivated action on it? And I’m also thinking if this were easy, we would see a lot more programs like this in other states. What were those barriers or those changes that needed to be made that you were able to overcome in the creation of this program?

Tommy Hodges

Yeah, part of it originated in policy. So prior to 2019, there was no mechanism for an institution of higher education to be able to deliver an alternative preparation program or any preparation pathway recommend for certification an individual that was not a degree completer, meaning they had to complete a bachelor’s degree, they had to complete a master’s degree, Unlike other states where they may have like a postbacc certificate that has a certain number of hours. And so we had one hand tied behind our backs up until 2019. And there was a policy change. So we were thinking deeply about what we wanted that to look like. And we had a partner at the time, it was the Center for Teaching Quality. It’s now known as Mira Education, a national nonprofit who had already gained a good bit of ground in competency based learning for the in service space. And through our partnership with them, they pushed us to consider what might it look like if you foregrounded microcredentials rather than traditional three credit-hour courses and a 36-hour master’s degree.

Alternative Teacher Certification

Tommy Hodges

Fortunately, our state department of education was willing to think creatively with us as well. And so we put forward a plan and gained approval for an alternative preparation program for individuals who held a bachelor’s degree almost exclusively outside of education to be able to gain teacher certification at a timeline that was up to them, that it was paced according to their need and according to the kinds of skills that they came in the door with. And then that was approved in February of 2020, which is a very interesting time to try and launch something in the months that followed. So a lot of our beginning thinkings were done in rooms, kind of like we’re in right now, in some sort of a virtual environment with one another, but trying to think through what we wanted this thing to look and feel like. But what we knew from the very beginning was that it was an antiquated model to think that again, the three credit hour course and 36 hour master’s degree was going to be tenable both from a cost efficiency for either districts or individuals, or perhaps more importantly, philosophically about the kinds of skills that individuals entered with. So that’s where we began. What we didn’t really anticipate was the momentum that that would gain inside of districts to engage in learning for their in service teachers. So once they saw the modularization of the program for pre-service teachers who wanted to gain teacher certification, they loved it for their practicing teachers just as well.

So they were able to develop thematic learning experiences. We were able to tailor the microcredentials according to their needs. And then we engaged with some nonprofits in the state that also wanted to engage in microcredential learning. So then it became about supporting organizations in their professional learning in ways that the traditional academic offerings in an institution just don’t afford.

Danny Curtis

Yeah, I want to stay with this professional learning piece. Yeah, obviously these microcredentials afford a new way of certifying new learning and upskilling. I’d be curious to hear how are districts engaging with your library of microcredentials to facilitate that type of professional development?

Collaborative microcredential Development

Tommy Hodges

Well, one of the things that we committed to early on is that we were not going to have to come visit our website, type in a credit card number and buy a microcredential and have it scored. That our engagements were going to be at the organizational level because we’re committed to systemic change, not one off kinds of pieces. And so our engagements with, particularly at the school district level, we’re doing a deep dive into essentially a needs assessment around where do they want to take their school, what are opportunity gaps, what are ways in which they want to see their professional staff in the school grow? And then how might we take our existing menu of microcredentials or in some cases help build out new microcredentials that supports the kinds of professional learning that go on inside the schools? Those microcredentials were developed hand in hand with those district partners. In fact, at times we would rely on district expertise to help us develop them and in fact score them as well. So it’s not an enterprise in which the college is simply saying here’s a solution for you. It is a truly interwoven collaboration with those districts and defining what’s needed, defining what would count and be valid for them, and then working with at the state level, ensuring that there’s recognition, the competencies that teachers are developing along the way.

Danny Curtis

So now that we are a few years in, I’m curious to hear what are you learning and what are you seeing in terms of the impact of this preparation program?

Tommy Hodges

One of the pieces that we can look pretty directly at is the staying power of educators who go through this pathway. One of the concerns with many of the alternative preparation pathways that exist right now is that they tend to have individuals who come in for one or two, maybe three years and then they’re back out again, and then you’re having to replace them with yet another novice individual. And we know that the long term health and success of schools and the kids that they serve is built upon having a stable workforce that’s there over an extended period of time. And so again, we’re five years in. But what we see is when we compare the retention of educators who come through the alternative preparation pathways that are more conventional programs, they are essentially the same. We know that there’s staying power with the alternative preparation. We know that there’s quality there because we have the data on their teacher performance as well. And we’re able to make those comparisons in addition to their ability to be retained.

So both in terms of instructional, the quality of instruction that’s being delivered as assessed by school principals, we know that it’s on par with our traditional programs as well as their longevity in the field.

Danny Curtis

With any competency based program, obviously a big part of the challenge is in the certification of learning. It is so crucial and so difficult to identify and validate learning that is happening across very different contexts with very different learning products and evaluate that against a common learning standard. So I’d love to just kind of double click on that process you all are using and hear more about how you’re validating learning within the program.

Tommy Hodges

Yeah, so certainly we are doing validity and reliability checks on the assessments that are included there, as well as the rubrics that are included. Multiple individuals score each piece of assessment that comes in to make sure that there’s some consistency in that. But we’re also a part of the microcredential partnership of the states. It’s a connection of states that are invested in this competency based work and seeking to make sure that we’re not engaging in sort of a wild west enterprise where everybody has their own sort of version and there’s not some level of consistency. Certainly we want to retain autonomy. Part of that autonomy allows you to innovate rapidly. But there ought to be an overarching framework for what constitutes sort of a bite-sized piece of learning. How it’s measured and how it’s accumulated and valued.

Personalized Coaching Drives Success

Tommy Hodges

You’d want some degree of consistency across the enterprise. And so we worked with again that microcredential partnership with the states, with four or five other states in addition to our own to help really think through that and create some standardization. So I think that’s helped. At the end of the day though, I think the difference maker in all of this is the extent to which there’s deep personalized coaching. So it’s not just the standalone competency pieces. Is there an individual who’s shepherding that process in an intellectually honest way? Not someone who’s got a full time job? And oh, also in addition, I’ll moonlight as a coach or a mentor, but truly making sure that individuals have dedicated FTE time that they’re providing modeling, coaching, feedback and direction to those novice individuals. At the end of the day, to me, that matters as much as, if not more than, the accumulation of that knowledge.

Is it being directed in such a way that supports that individual? And the only way I have seen in multiple iterations, whether it be traditional teacher preparation or more alternative that I’ve seen that work abundantly well is through robust coaching.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. The theme that I’m hearing throughout is this really deep partnership between schools and the university from identifying the credentials that would be of value in terms of the microcredentialing and upskilling to the shared process of assessment. It sounds like you all have really forged this together with districts as well as your other partnerships.

Tommy Hodges

Yeah, it’s truly been a joint venture. And again, it’s not the ivory tower. Swoop in and say, here’s what you need to be doing. We’re the university and we’re here to help. It’s really doing a genuine partnership with those districts to make sure that we’re delivering in real time the things that they’ve identified as a need.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. And that leads into one of the other differentiating factors of this program is that you all are doing this out of a large university system, which is different from many other alternative certification programs. And so I’m wondering, what are those different considerations that you need to make within your context that others and other large university systems might be able to learn from?

Rethinking Higher Education’s Responsiveness

Tommy Hodges

Well, I can say at the very beginning, it took a commitment on the part of central leadership of the institution to say, yes, you can do things differently and you can think about this differently, and we’ll support that within our ecosystems. Because quite frankly, higher education as an enterprise is not exactly the most nimble of organizational structures. So I have my concerns with the industry as a whole and the extent to which it has changed the way that it thinks about the ways it brings its knowledge to bear in the service of communities. I think that part of the challenges that higher ed faces today with its value proposition, with some of the threads of anti intellectualism that we see are, are fair critiques, although I think they’re misplaced. They’re fair in the sense that we haven’t exactly been very responsive to the needs of communities and thinking about how we diversify the ways in which our knowledge is put forward to the general public. Our products again are three hour courses and they’re 120 hour bachelor’s degrees and 36 hour master’s degrees. And what if an individual doesn’t want or need that, but they want to engage with the university in a substantive way to help build out skills to either upskill or career pivot, whatever that might be, and how can the institution serve those individuals well? And I think higher ed has a ways to go and being responsive to that because of some of the bureaucracies that exist. But we were given a great deal of space to think and think differently.

So we were able to prop up an ecosystem that allowed us to think nimbly and responsively and then to support individuals as they engaged in that work in a way that was different than many conventional sorts of programs. So central commitment being one of them and then two, I think we harness the power of a team of people who were hungry for doing something different as well. And so I think we had a, we’ve given the space and a coalition of people that really wanted to see it get done and we were able to do that.

Danny Curtis

I’m curious to learn more about what does that space look like in this context. What are the areas in which you were able to gain some autonomy and maybe be more nimble outside of the larger university system?

Tommy Hodges

Yes. So everything from platform LMS to the CRM for gathering individuals and the ways in which we collected interested individuals and marketed to them around possibilities, did matchmaking with districts. So all the platform work, we were able to work in distinct platforms that gave us a level of flexibility that the conventional post secondary platforms couldn’t. And so oftentimes our platforms are ones that are used outside of traditional academia and those have been very fruitful for us, but done so in a way that matches our institutional branding and look and feel. And then we were able to develop a team of individuals to help guide that work that sits a little bit outside our traditional academic departments. And that’s where that Carolina CrED ecosystem comes from. But we also have interface with faculty too, who either help lend their own expertise to that enterprise, help lead it in some ways, or conduct research with the data. So there’s a lot of different intersection points that faculty can have in there too.

Integrating Standalone Systems Efficiently

Tommy Hodges

The danger that you run into, and I said there’s always these tensions, the danger that you can run into when you create something that’s kind of standalone like that is that it continues to stand alone. And then it does. Its knowledge and its experience doesn’t bleed into other parts of your enterprise. It doesn’t learn from others and others don’t learn from it. And so I can say that part of. And it was easier to kind of keep it separate in this first few years because you’re trying to upstart something new and it needs its space. But as it’s began to mature now, we’re beginning to think about how do we better integrate this into our sort of quote unquote traditional way of doing things at the institution and how can we create a more modular environment for every student that interfaces or every individual, maybe we don’t even categorize them as a student here, but every individual that interfaces with the institution. And so I think there’s a willingness to think about that now too.

But certainly in the early days, I would say it was startup-ish and had its independence and had its own sort of ecosystem and support from central administration to do that. And then at the same time, I think now we’re kind of looking for that bleed.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. So it sounds like this integration and continued evolution is part of what you’re seeing down the road. What else is in this vision for how this program or others like it continue to evolve?

Tommy Hodges

Yeah. So I think some of the questions. And so I’ll put on my arts and sciences hat for a second and my leadership in the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences here at USC and say one of the concerns right now is the liberal arts and the humanities. And there’s some real concern with regards to the value that individuals are seeing in society right now around the liberal arts degree. I think we’re looking at higher education as preparation for workforce in many ways, which can be a good look, but I think it’s a narrow look at what post secondary attainment can afford an individual. I look at it more as preparation for life and civic engagement. And part of that life and civic engagement is employment. So it’s important, but it’s also important to recognize our rich histories, our art, the accumulation of human knowledge across a range of disciplines, and to be able to imagine employment in fields that don’t even exist today.

Liberal Arts: Bridging Skills & Purpose

Tommy Hodges

And what better place to do that than through a liberal arts degree? But again, some individuals are looking at it like this major has a one to one correspondence to this job, which has this income, which relegates post secondary attainment to a very transactional sort of relationship with an individual, rather than this constant sense of becoming an understanding about who we are and who we are in relation to our histories, our cultures and humanity at large. And so I think that for me, the next iteration of this work will be to help individuals see how that genuine core liberal arts degree does in fact help prepare one for the workforce. And so I think if we begin to look at some of the competency based pieces that employers are looking for, and then we marry that with those traditional liberal arts degrees. Now we’re coupling together two aspects of the work. One sort of civic and societal readiness and contribution with workforce and skill based readiness as well. If we can accomplish both of those together through that layering approach at the undergraduate level, then I think we’re really onto something. And so that’s really where I see us headed next in terms of the microcredentials working with industry partners on those.

So those aren’t, again, those aren’t an internal endeavor much like the ones for educator preparation, but we’re really thinking deeply about how do we engage some of our large employers who can give us some keen insights into what they’re seeing with individuals who are coming out and then ensuring that we’re gap filling there and for students to be able to illustrate saliently when they’re in job interviews how those experiences that they had while they were at the university help contribute to their readiness.

Danny Curtis

Yeah. So interesting to hear you talk through this, know, tension between job readiness and, and more liberal arts oriented education that has always been present in postsecondary education, but is really magnified by AI and, and other technologies that are accelerating changes in the workforce.

Tommy Hodges

And I would say AI is the perfect example of, you know, key triggers that we don’t predict particularly well that a good liberal arts education is nimble and responsive too, and actually probably prepares one even better than some of the more professionally directed degree programs that we might have on campus.

Danny Curtis

Well, I look forward to watching as you and your team down in South Carolina try and strike that balance and continue to evolve these innovative programs and really appreciate you joining us today.

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