Webpage:

Utah Policy Summary

Utah Strategic Plan

Additional Resources:

Business Case

Clinical Practice Placement Guide Checklist created for use by LEAs and IHEs

Personalized, Competency-Based Learning

Improving Mentor Capacity and Student Teacher Effectiveness:

Brigham Young University, Utah Tech University, Utah Valley University, University of Utah, and Southern Utah University are collaborating on a system to provide high-quality student teaching experiences for students in both Special Education and Elementary Education. The efforts have resulted in the development of a Student Teaching Placement Guide to help ensure that students are placed with highly qualified mentors. In addition, the placement guide helps match student teachers to mentors according to current strengths and areas for growth using Utah’s selected five High Leverage Practices (HLPs).

The Multi-University team has also developed a set of Canvas modules for Cooperating Teachers. The modules are designed to help strengthen critical mentoring skills and knowledge on the HLPs. Initial feedback after 2 pilot studies indicates teachers felt the modules significantly improved their ability to mentor and coach their student teachers. Significant differences in teacher efficacy were also observed in both student teachers and mentor teachers when participating in focused mentoring.  These pilots have shown promise in developing cooperating teacher mentoring capacity. Ongoing research will look at retention of teachers mentored using the modules in the hopes of contributing to a new teacher retention trend.