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CCTC Accreditation 2022

Standard 1

Institutional Infrastructure to Support Educator Preparation

Each Commission-approved institution has the infrastructure in place to operate effective educator preparation programs. Within this overall infrastructure:

(1.1) The institution and education unit create and articulate a research-based vision of teaching and learning that fosters coherence among, and is clearly represented in all educator preparation programs. This vision is consistent with preparing educators for California public schools and the effective implementation of California’s adopted standards and curricular frameworks.

Fresno State's Educator Preparation Programs, housed within the Kremen School of Education and Human Development, utilize research-based approaches to prepare Preliminary and Advanced Candidates who facilitate the education of students throughout our region. Fresno State is situated in the heart of the Central Valley, a region which includes both rural and urban contexts in which over 100 different languages are spoken. In order to meet the needs of PreK-12 students in our region, we have adopted the theme "Leadership for Diverse Communities," which emphasizes developing educators capable of supporting students from all backgrounds in just and equitable ways. In order to accomplish this goal, our model of educator preparation relies on the following frameworks to inform our work.

First and foremost, our programs seek to model an asset-based approach (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) to prepare our future educators, recognizing the wealth of resources all students bring with them to the classroom. We utilize culturally sustaining pedagogy (Hammond, 2015; Ladson-Billings, 2009; Paris & Alim, 2014) in order to build on the cultural resources of our candidates. Our goal is to model using asset-based approaches while educating our candidates about how to use these pedagogies within their own contexts.

In order to guarantee that all of our candidates have access to and can participate in meaningful and challenging learning opportunities, we also utilize Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2021). We recognize that our students need opportunities to demonstrate their developing knowledge and understanding in ways that are appropriate and meaningful to them—and that their students need opportunities to do the same.

Our program also recognizes that education does not happen in a vacuum and that, to truly understand the link between the theories they are learning in their coursework and the application of those theories in practice, candidates benefit from opportunities to apply their new learning in authentic contexts. For this reason, our programs rely heavily on field-based experiences, where candidates are supported by both mentors in the field and university-based coaches. This emphasis on field experience has also led us to develop residency programs in our Basic Credential programs. Our Teacher Residency programs include 1) field-based experiences that emphasize competency-based assessments aligned to district and/or state measures, 2) theory-to-practice connections in coursework with opportunities for simulations and rehearsals of skills, and 3) authentic and substantive collaborations built on mutual trust with local schools and school districts (National Center for Teacher Residencies, 2015). Our Advanced Credential programs also emphasize field experience and hands-on work developed and carried out through collaborative partnerships with educators in P12 settings.

At the heart of everything we do is a culture of inquiry (Darling-Hammond, Hammerness, Grossman, Rust, & Shulman, 2005), in which we encourage candidates to collect data on their practice, analyze that data in meaningful ways, and use the findings to inform the work they do. Ultimately, our goal is to prepare educators who are reflective practitioners, committed to improving their practice in order to improve the educational opportunities for all students in our region.

  • CAST. (February, 2021). The UDL Guidelines. https://udlguidelines.cast.org/
  • Darling-Hammond, L., Hammerness, K., Grossman, P., Rust, F., & Shulman, L. (2005). The design of teacher education programs. In Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford, J. (Eds.). Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 390-441). Jossey-Bass.
  • Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Corwin.
  • Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children. Jossey-Bass.
  • Moll, L.C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect home and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132-141.
  • National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR). (2015). Clinically oriented teacher preparation. Washington DC: NCTR. Retrieved from https://nctresidencies.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/NCTR-COTP-Final-Single-Pgs-1.pdf
  • Paris, D, & Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A Loving Critique Forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85-100.

Kremen School of Education’s Mission and Vision Statements 

The Kremen School of Education and Human Development's mission is the recruitment and development of ethically informed leaders for classroom teaching, education administration, counseling, and higher education. This AAQEP-accredited unit fosters the candidate dispositions of collaboration, valuing diversity, critical thinking, ethical judgments, reflection, and life-long learning. Our mission is realized through a framework of teaching, scholarship, and services that addresses regional, state, national, and international perspectives.

The Kremen School of Education and Human Development prepares highly competent educators and human development specialists, while providing professional support and leadership to the community, promoting applied research, and providing experiences and opportunities that will enable employed professionals to remain current in their fields.

Students attend classes, study, and work in a state-of-the-art Education Building, which is a five-story facility that includes clinical areas and computer and micro-teaching laboratories.

Students also take classes and experience fieldwork in professional settings such as school districts and Fresno Family Counseling Center.

The Kremen School fosters the realization of human potential by preparing those who work in the field of education and human development to function more effectively and productively in a mutable and increasingly diverse society.

The Kremen School theme, "Leadership for Diverse Communities," places considerable emphasis on an educator who can function effectively as a leader in a culturally and linguistically diverse society.

Vision

Guided by our vision for an inclusive and equitable future, the Kremen School of Education and Human Development uses innovative models to prepare high quality teachers, counselors, and administrators who act as agents of change in our community. 

The proposed PK3 ECE Specialist Instruction Credential program will promote the unit’s vision In a number of ways. To begin, the program views the creation of the PK3 Early Childhood Education Specialist Instruction Credential as an agent of change because it is preparing early childhood specialists who have knowledge of developmentally appropriate practices to work in public schools. Historically, there has not been a means of preparing educators with this specialized knowledge for work in this space. Additionally, we see this program as innovative because it was developed in collaboration with regional Early Childhood Education experts. 

The program embeds an emphasis on social justice, with coursework integrating a focus on culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogy, to prepare completers with the knowledge and expertise to become agents of change in their communities. (Response to First Review)

(1.3) The education unit ensures that faculty and instructional personnel regularly and systematically collaborate with colleagues in P-12 settings, college and university units and members of the broader educational community to improve educator preparation.

Kremen collaborates with faculty and staff, both within the School and across the university. Moreover, we maintain rich relationships with colleagues in P-12 settings and the broader educational community. Documents such as the Academic Policy Manual, the Collective Bargaining Agreement and our MOUs illustrate that these relationships are inherent to our structure. Moreover, the University has established Retention, Tenure and Promotion Policies, an Academic Senate, and a School Constitution. These documents lay out the expectations to achieve tenure; faculty associated with educator preparation programs are expected to be involved in outreach to the educational community.

All Tenure-Track faculty at Fresno State are required to submit a probationary plan that outlines what they are expected to do in order to earn tenure. The probationary plan includes the expectation that faculty will collaborate with members of the broader community. For faculty in education, this means engaging with P12 partners, in addition to college and university faculty, in order to improve educator preparation. Here is an example of a probationary plan for a faculty member in the Early Childhood Education program (Scholarship of Integration section).

The probationary document is purposefully generic in terms of how faculty are expected to engage with the broader community because it is intended to be utilized by faculty across the university. However, when faculty in the Kremen School of Education and Human Development meet with their mentor and prepare their probationary plans, they are informed that the expectation is that they will engage in P12 activities in local public schools. When the new faculty member’s department personnel committee and department chair review the probationary plan for approval, they look to see that the new faculty member has listed engagement with P12 partners.

The purpose of the probationary plan is to detail what faculty members must do to earn tenure. As a result, faculty members must document their activities on an annual basis. This documentation gets reviewed for alignment with the probationary plan by the faculty member’s department personnel committee, department chair, school personnel committee, and the dean. If the faculty member is not meeting this expectation, it is noted in the feedback they receive. (Response to Second Review)

The PK3 ECE Specialist Instruction credential program will also draw on the knowledge and expertise of part-time faculty, hired as instructors of courses and coaches for clinical experience through the Literacy, Early, Bilingual, and Special Education department. As shown in the links to the job applications below, the requirements for both positions include relevant experience in P-12. 

(Response to First Review)

The proposed PK-3 ECE Specialist Instruction Credential program also plans to incorporate public school (PK-3rd grade) field experts as guest speakers into all PK-3 Credential Program courses. This initiative addresses the need for PK-3 candidates to understand the alignment of curriculum and assessments across preK and early elementary grades. It also ensures that university instructors collaborate with colleagues in PK-12 settings. These field experts will work closely with faculty and instructional personnel to understand the content of each course and provide relevant presentations based on their expertise and experiences several times per semester. (Response to Second Review)

P-12 Collaborations:

Fresno State has rich collaborations with school districts and P-12 schools. We regularly collaborate with the educational community through our residency partnerships and stakeholder meetings. In addition, the Bonner Center recognizes exemplary schools in the areas of civic and character education.

  • Residency Partnerships
  • Induction Boards
    • Tulare City: Debbie Parker, Board Contact
    • Hanford: Debra Colvard, Board Contact
    • Visalia Unified: Shelly Groom, Board Contact 
    • Central Unified: Janeen Worland, Board Contact 
    • Sanger: Karen Costa-Smith, Board Contact
    • Clovis Unified: Kristie Wiens, Board Contact 
    • Kings County: LaVonne Chastain, Board Contact 
    • Fresno County Office of Education: Manjit Singh, Board Contact 
    • Fresno Unified: Randy Brown, Board Contact 
    • Selma, Clay Joint Elementary, Golden Plains Unified, Kerman Unified, Kingsburg Elementary Charter, and Riverdale: Tim Smith, Board Contact 
    • Madera Consortium (nine school districts): Steve Thornton, Board Contact

Prior to and throughout the development of the PK-3 Early Childhood Education Specialist credential, Fresno State faculty worked in close collaboration with partners in Early Childhood at the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools and other Early Childhood stakeholders from throughout the community, as demonstrated here.

(1.6) Recruitment and faculty development efforts support hiring and retention of faculty who represent and support diversity and excellence.

Fresno State as an institution has continually been recognized for its work to promote diversity (recent article highlighting efforts) among students, staff, and faculty. Related to this, in 2023, the university launched a Division of Equity and Engagement, led by the university’s first Diversity Officer, a cabinet level position. 

The Kremen School of Education and Human Development, including the Early Childhood Education Program, like Fresno State as a whole, is committed to hiring individuals who represent the diversity of the students we teach. 

The proposed PK3 Early Childhood Education Specialist Credential Program will be housed in the Early Childhood Education program. In the 2022-2023 academic year, the program hired two new faculty (position description; website listing no longer available). As part of the hiring process, the search committee included specific questions (highlighted here) to ensure the candidates’ commitment to diversity and excellence. (Response to First Review)

For each faculty search at Fresno State, Faculty Affairs posts the job on the Chronicle of Higher Education and on HigherEd Jobs. Faculty search committees are also required to document their recruitment efforts in order to demonstrate attempts to recruit a wide variety of candidates. The two documents linked below demonstrate the range of ways faculty worked to recruit potential candidates for two recent searches:

(Response to Second Review)

Diversity and Retention Initiatives

(1.7) The institution employs, assigns and retains only qualified persons to teach courses, provide professional development, and supervise field-based and clinical experiences.  Qualifications of faculty> and other instructional personnel must include, but are not limited to:  a) current knowledge of the content; b) knowledge of the current context of public schooling including the California adopted P-12 content standards, frameworks, and accountability systems; c) knowledge of diversity in society, including diverse abilities, culture, language, ethnicity, and gender orientation; and d) demonstration of effective professional practices in teaching and learning, scholarship, and service.

Across all Educator Preparation Programs at Fresno State, we place an emphasis on hiring faculty and instructional personnel who have deep theoretical and practical knowledge relevant to the courses they are hired to teach. 

As demonstrated in the recent job postings provided below, all faculty who teach in the preliminary credential programs must have at least a Masters degree in a relevant field, though a doctorate is preferred.

Additionally, faculty must have recent experience working within TK-12 classrooms. 

Finally, in line with university requirements, faculty must demonstrate experience working in contexts that are culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse. 

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