The University’s College of Education
and College of Arts and Sciences have teamed up for a groundbreaking project intended to help train teachers and enrich lesson plans
in Oregon’s rural school districts. One of the first programs of its kind in the nation, the Quality Content Teaching Program, or QCTeach, will employ a lesson study model used in Japanese schools to review and revise the teaching style and content in ways that foster a better response from students.
According to a University press release,
the three-year program will focus on 38 school districts in Coos, Curry, Douglas and Lane counties. Six of the districts are classified as high-need, meaning that at least 20 percent of the students come from families with incomes below the poverty line. About 240 teachers are expected to participate.
“We’re going to do an adapted version, an Oregonian version, of this Japanese lesson study,” said Susan Hardwick, a geography professor and the CAS co-director of the project.
“We’re going to use video and
online support groups to extend it
to middle and secondary teachers,” she added. “I think it’s going to be
really exciting.”
QCTeach is based on the research of Marilyn Olson, coordinator of
middle and secondary teacher education in the COE. Olson worked on a pilot program in the summer of 2003 and will be co-directing this program with Hardwick.
“(The program is) for teachers who don’t ordinarily get financial, emotional or intellectual support from universities like the U of O,” said Hardwick. “We feel like all teachers are under so much pressure right now.”
The project directors hope to help schools with limited resources
meet the demands of the No Child Left Behind Act. Hardwick expects the program will gain national recognition and expand after the initial three-year period.
“The legislation in Washington, the No Child Left Behind push, is really forcing teachers to become better equipped to handle the content that they teach,” she said. “We wanted to write a grant that would support them, pay their tuition, pay their travel and give them the support they need to enhance their
content knowledge.”
The project proposal drew the attention of U.S. Department of Education officials, who awarded $412,693 to the effort in the form of a FIPSE, or Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, grant. The grant is one of three awarded to different projects at the University in 2004 and contributes to QCTeach’s total budget of $655,549.
The state’s education department gave a separate grant of $69,984.
The CAS will fund about 37 percent of the project, according to the press release.
“We have content experts in different departments helping us with this,” Hardwick said. “(They’re)
professors who you see lecturing in the big courses or working with the graduate students. Now five of them are going to help us work with teachers.
“Those five faculty are part of a larger initiative that we created a couple years ago called ECAT, the Education Careers Advising Team,” Hardwick added. “These are faculty who, for free, meet with students regularly who want to be teachers. They’re advisors and supporters of future teachers.”
Olson said recruitment of teachers will take place in the next two weeks.
“What we hope to do is to have the opportunity to study the results,” Olson said. She said she wants to determine “how will this help the kids?”
“(Teachers) don’t normally have the time to exchange ideas,” Lizy Madathil, a content specialist in mathematics, said. “This gives them
a chance.”
The deans of the CAS and the COE responded in a press release.
“We want to improve access to the latest and best information in key subject areas — math, science, the social sciences, language arts and English as a second language — without additional cost to schools,” CAS Dean Joe Stone said.
“Teachers put out hour after hour and really don’t have the time or the assistance to study why some things work and others don’t.
Certainly not at the level that we want to examine,” COE Dean Marty Kaufman said. “We’re trying to unlock the dynamic between teaching and learning so that teachers can reach more students.”
A lesson study such as the one this program aims to accomplish has never been used before, Hardwick said.
“We have a whole different
model that’s evolving for the project,” Hardwick said. “Internationally, lesson studies have been used
for teacher development, but not in the unique way that Marilyn piloted and we’re going to build on in
this project.”
In addition, Hardwick said, this is the first time the COE and the CAS have had a big grant together.
Hardwick hopes to extend the benefits of the teaching project to current CAS students.
“(Students) don’t really get the support when they’re getting their major in arts and sciences; the teaching comes the fifth year, after they graduate,” she said. “We’re trying to create programs that will support future teachers — keep them encouraged that they want to teach, motivate them and give them really solid content training in their majors and in their field.”

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