The Practice Based Teacher Education Engagement Ladder: A Developmental Model of Adoption, Adaptation, and Redesign

In a design-based implementation study, we supported 11 teacher educators from diverse institutions across the country in implementing new approaches to practice-based teacher education. We observed that teacher educators proceeded through a developmental process in implementing new approaches, and we propose the Practice Based Teacher Education (PBTE) Engagement Ladder as a model of this process. Teacher educators proceed through stages of Adoption, Adaptation, and Redesign, as they shift from “off-the-shelf” implementations of PBTE approaches in individual lessons and units, towards more ambitious modifications of courses and eventually, program and curricula. This developmental process of teacher educator learning and change builds on prior research about teacher adoption of technology-enhanced pedagogies. We illustrate this developmental process through a series of case studies, and we conclude with a set of design hypotheses for promoting the adoption of PBTE approaches across the diverse landscape of teacher education.