Three UT Arlington professors were earlier this week awarded a $10,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Dr. James Warren (English), Dr. Holly Hungerford-Kresser (Education) and Dr. Kim Ruebel (Education) received the grant as part of the Texas College and Career Readiness Initiative.
The grant will be used to revise current course syllabi in the Department of Education’s English/language arts methods courses and the Department of English’s theory and practice course for pre-service English teachers. The work will connect the CCRI to the TEKS test and to national standards developed by the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) and the International Reading Association (IRA).
Dr. Warren said as courses are reconstructed in the English and education departments, he and his colleagues will be collecting qualitative data related to the alignment and streamlining of standards, as well as pre-service teachers’ responses to these standards.
“Our ultimate goal, beyond ensuring that we send teachers into the field prepared to get their students college ready, is to reduce teacher attrition,” Warren said. “Thus, we plan to build a teacher induction program in which pre-service teachers are provided with university support throughout their first two years in the profession.”
