Education Curricula Requirements

An important remaining issue in the proposed rules concerns the limitations on education curricula. We wish to collect data from each institution re: your secondary and elementary programs. Currently, the proposed rules require that secondary majors earn a major determined by the department (DOE) to substantially apply to a content area...". Secondary candidates would complete only a minor in education, consisting of 18 credit hours plus student teaching. Advisory Board members have been advised that in fact secondary education or teaching majors are required to complete more credit hours in the content areas than students in the arts and sciences. IACTE wants to share data from ALL of our members to reinforce this fact.

With respect to elementary programs, the proposed rules include:

• A minor in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, exceptional needs, early childhood development of the arts; and
• A major in education that includes the following:
  • A minimum of 70 semester hours of general education and subject matter concentration (content areas listed in rules)
  • Professional education and pedagogy including (see list in the proposed rules)
  • A minimum of 9 weeks of full-time student teaching
• NOTE: While this section of the proposed rules does not include a limitation on the number of professional education hours (30 excluding student teaching), the section describing the approval of programs preparing educators does [515 IAC 3-1-1, pg 14, second draft]

In addition to this option, there are two additional routes for elementary teacher preparation:

1. individuals could complete a BA/BS degree and an education minor OR a transition to teaching program OR
2. individuals could complete a BA/BS degree and certification from an online teacher preparation program approved by the board (Advisory Board).

The debate re: online preparation is for another day. For now, we want to share with the Advisory Board members the current distribution of credit hours in our elementary programs.

We need your information as soon as possible. For your institution, please complete the tables below. In each column below, please enter the credit hours representative of the secondary and elementary programs at your institution. We are compiling these data for all members, so please limit your response to the information requested, and attempt to minimize the "exceptions" and "asterisks." We must share these data with the Advisory Board prior to its September 3rd meeting.

Please fill out the tables (attached) for your institution entering the respective credit hours requested, and return the e-mail to my attention (jshedd@indiana.edu). A copy of the complete data tables will be shared with the membership.

Thanks to each of you for all of your work to strengthen teacher education in the state of Indiana.