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What Do We Mean By “High-Quality” Technical Assistance?

 Many organizations offer technical assistance (TA) to teacher preparation programs seeking to improve their programming. But until recently, there was no common way to assess the impact of that technical assistance or even define what high-quality technical assistance looks like. How can TA providers better understand the impact their technical assistance actually has on teacher preparation and continuously improve their support?

In the third brief of the Teacher Preparation Transformation Centers Learning Series, a working group of three teacher preparation experts—Sarah Beal of US PREP, Liam Honigsberg of TeacherSquared and Sudipti Kumar of the National Center for Teacher Residencies—attempted to answer this question. Together, they developed a framework with outcomes and indicators that describes what high quality technical assistance looks like in the context of teacher preparation and defines what evidence to collect so it can be used to continuously improve and differentiate support.

The brief also describes how work group members collaborated to create the framework, and offers these ideas for how and why it can be used to strengthen technical assistance for teacher preparation programs:

  • Focus on impact
  • Orient partnerships towards change
  • ​Get clear on evidence
  • Foster collaboration
We invite you to share the brief widely. Check out our online library for additional resources related to teacher preparation, including the first two briefs in this learning series. If you have questions, feedback or would like additional information, please contact us at ltowne@education-first.com.

Meet the experts who authored this post

Lisa Towne
Lisa Towne
Collaborator
Chad Rubalcaba
Chad Rubalcaba
Principal and Senior Director of Consulting Practice
kate-sullivan-frades
Kate Sullivan Frades
Senior Consultant

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