Personalized Learning and Open Education Resources in Multilingual Learner Teacher Preparation

Abstract

Preparation to serve multilingual learners is often required for P-12 teacher certification. Teachers come to this preparation with varied experiences and urgent needs to better serve their students. When teacher preparation courses use a one-size-fits-all approach to satisfy certification requirements, teachers may not find learning meaningful to their current context. Further, without common mechanisms for sharing resources produced through teacher preparation, each novice teacher starts assignments from the beginning rather than learning from, and building upon, previous assignments of peers. Reusable teacher preparation assignments through open education pedagogy (OEP) may address the challenges of providing collaborative, relevant, and optimally challenging state-mandated teacher preparation. However, personalized learning may not be aligned with university course evaluations. Thus, faculty members may be concerned about the impact of personalization on student course evaluations. This exploratory study examined personalization and OEP in a required, graduate-level teacher preparation course by analyzing assignment completion data to explore teacher personalized learning paths and comparing standard university course evaluation items from four course runs pre- and post-personalization (N=230). Descriptive analyses illustrate negative changes in teacher evaluation of course organization, feedback timeliness, and time spent outside of class. Teacher satisfaction increased in the areas of diversity, use of technology, access, and online discussions. Results from examining personalized paths and course satisfaction provide recommendations for designing personalized teacher preparation.