About INSPIRE

Innovative New Spaces for Practice and Rehearsal in Education (INSPIRE), organized by the MIT Teaching Systems Lab (TSL) in collaboration with the Woodrow Wilson Academy of Teaching and Learning, is a collaborative research program for teacher educators at universities and professional development organizations throughout the United States. The program is designed for people who will be teaching during the Fall 2018 semester and are interested developing novel strategies for practice-based teacher education. Throughout the 6-month program, participants will join one in-person workshop at MIT and monthly virtual meetings in which they’ll partner with researchers from TSL and around the country to co-design, implement, and evaluate practice spaces in teacher education learning experiences.

Perks

• Training to help you test our tools with your students and share feedback with our team
• Opportunity to co-develop new practice spaces and projects
• New friends and colleagues at the MIT Teaching Systems Lab and beyond
• At least one funded trip to MIT for a 2-day workshop
• Potential to co-author publications with colleagues at MIT and beyond
• Fellows who attend all meetings and complete a final reflection report will receive a $2,000 stipend.

Goals

• Forming a community of teacher educators interested in innovation in practice-based teacher education and practice spaces.
• Co-design new teaching approaches for using existing TSL practice spaces
• Co-design new and modified practice spaces for testing and evaluation
• Collect and analyze evidence of how practice spaces shape teacher learning
• Co-write papers describing new practice space designs and impact of new teacher education approaches

Participant Qualifications

• Should have a minimum of 3 years experience in teacher education and/or professional development
• Should be teaching for a minimum of 10 days during the Fall 2018 semester, with a minimum of 10 students (either in a post-secondary institution or in-service setting)
• Must be able to attend the program introduction workshop at MIT in Cambridge, MA on August 4-5
• Must be able to attend five 2-hour virtual meetings with the program team (July, Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec). Dates for these meeting will be collaboratively chosen by participants.
• Should have an interest in testing existing TSL practice spaces, modifying those spaces, and co-designing new approaches to practice spaces and practice-based teacher education.
• Should have an interest in authoring and co-authoring publications for other teacher educators about practice-based teacher education and practice spaces.