What’s New
Recent BranchED and MSI Community Contributions
Together We Are Strengthening and Growing MSI Educator Preparation
Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) are at the forefront of developing inclusive instructional materials and curricula, and they are leading efforts to prioritize truly inclusive instruction.
As the 2019-20 academic year comes to a close, it is increasingly apparent just how critical our work is. The BranchED team is proud of the innovations and ingenuity of the MSI community, and we prize the ways that we are working together to care for one another, innovating together, and improving together.
We Celebrate
Shared Learning
Transformation Center Cohort One completed the second year of its three-year effort to build a knowledge and evidence base for institutions across the country. These schools of education came together to create a unique community of practice in which university faculty and their PK-12 partners accessed resources and professional development, shared data, and learned from each other to move toward sustainability and innovation. The goal was to adapt and redesign their programs to produce greater numbers of diverse, high-quality teachers.
Improving Climate at Graduate Schools
BranchED’s first Dean-in-Residence, Dr. JoAnn Canales, provided a great deal of knowledge and input in ways to increase engagement with Hispanic Serving Institutions and tribal colleges. We are particularly grateful for her work on a diagnostic tool that aims to assess and improve the climate of graduate programs for students of color.
The work to be done is not new, but neither are the prowess and resolve that BranchED brings to scaling positive solutions. We look forward to continued growth with you in the year ahead!
Equitable and Inclusive Instructional Resources
The notable lack of diversity in textbooks and other curricular materials is long-standing, but the absence of diverse people and perspectives in digital instructional materials is even more pronounced.
As MSI faculty began to move their courses online, BranchED was there to support efforts to maintain a high quality and practice-based approach to course design. Our For MSIs by MSIs Content Development Project is creating Open Educational Resources (OER) for use in MSI EPP courses across the country. Six teams of faculty, PK-12 teachers, and candidates develop teacher preparation curricular materials that are culturally and linguistically relevant and that will be made available at no cost to other faculty. The train-the-trainer model aims to inspire peer-to-peer learning and collaboration, thereby expanding the pool of diverse content developers in the OER space.