Alternative Certification: A Review of Theory and Research

INTRODUCTION

In response to increasing attention to the issues of teacher quality and quantity, alternative approaches to teacher certification have become widespread. Alternative certification (AC) allows individuals who typically—but not always—possess an undergraduate degree in a field other than education to participate in a shortened training and/or on-the-job learning experience that leads to full certification. As part of NCREL's continuing mission to provide our region with timely and useful information on pressing educational issues, we offer this paper on alternative certification literature in order to identify the salient characteristics of effective alternative certification programs.

Alternative certification has both supporters and critics. Supporters argue that the United States' need for teachers in the coming years exceeds the capacity of traditional teacher education programs. The often-cited need for 2.2 million teachers over the next ten years has spurred educators to seek alternative routes to fill teaching vacancies, which has led supporters of AC programs to suggest that we need to supplement the pool of potential new teachers with an approach that brings in people from other fields. Some supporters also contend that, overall, colleges of education have failed to provide the United States with a sufficient number of teachers who are well prepared and able to educate all of our students. As a result, supporters argue that alternative approaches to traditional teacher preparation are acceptable since these programs allow new teachers to learn in the "real world." Further, AC supporters contend that these programs could do no worse than traditional but inadequate teacher education programs.

Opponents of AC programs disagree with all of these points. They argue that concerns about massive teacher shortages in the near future are somewhat misplaced. Where shortages do exist, they appear to be specific to particular regions and subjects (overall there is actually a good supply of teachers across the country, as will be discussed below). Opponents of AC programs also argue that, while many traditional teacher education programs could stand to be strengthened, there has been (and continues to be) movement by many schools of education toward more rigorous, standards-based approaches to teacher education. From this perspective, the answer to the problem of inadequate teacher preparation is not to circumvent college-based programs but to continue to strengthen these programs through first, adherence to strict standards (e.g., those of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education) and second, demonstration of teaching skills prior to the start of a teacher's career. Skeptics of AC programs point out that in no other profession with the potential for inadequately prepared practitioners to do harm (e.g., medicine, law, and psychology) are the requirements for extensive college-based instruction, supervised internship, and testing viewed as optional.

The next section of this paper reviews the background and history of alternative certification programs, and outlines the structures and components of many of these approaches to teacher certification. Following this, a review of the research on the effectiveness of AC programs is presented and discussed. The paper concludes with recommendations about the structure and content that should be included in quality alternative certification programs.