The Ackerley Partner School Network works to advance teacher education across the University of Washington College of Education’s teacher preparation programs, with our local partners, and in the broader field.
The Ackerley network’s efforts, grounded in a commitment to advance equity within Washington’s schools, aim to:
- Facilitate cross-College teacher education program learning experiences focused on improving the work of pre-service teacher education.
- Build collective, local capacity for advancing teacher education, specifically in the classrooms, departments, schools, districts and community-based organizations that partner with the College.
- Advance a system of supports for teacher education, including mentor teachers, principals, school-based coaches and others who help educate novice teachers.
Our partners are not only individual schools, but also individuals, departments, districts and community-based organizations who partner with the UW’s five teacher preparation programs.
Our Work
The Ackerley network is uniquely situated to help tackle persistent issues of teacher education. Recent efforts include:
- Piloting a series of Mentorship Design Labs, which bring together UW teacher educators and mentor teachers to develop routines and learning experiences that support the development of mentorship practices to, in turn, support novice teacher learning. Supporting mentors is a step towards building out a system of professional education that attends to the professional learning needs of both novice teachers and the teacher educators who support them.
- Leveraging the UW-created online community Teacher Education by Design to make mentorship materials and representations (e.g., protocols for high-leverage mentor activities; video-recordings of expert mentor practice). These resources have been developed and refined in the context of the Mentorship Design Labs and are being made available to the UW’s teacher preparation programs and to the broader field.
The Ackerley network also is partnering with leading teacher education scholars across the nation to exchange ideas and build a research agenda around the work of specifying mentoring practices, and approaches to supporting mentors in developing such practices.
Contact Us
If you're interested in learning more about the Ackerley Partner School Network, please contact Kara Jackson, associate professor of education and network director, at 206-221-4794 or karajack@uw.edu.
