Pitt School of Education Invited to Participate in AAU-Sponsored Invitational Forum on Teacher Preparation Sept. 30-Oct. 2 in Cambridge, Mass. Forum offered in cooperation with the National Science Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

September 27, 2001

PITTSBURGH—The University of Pittsburgh's School of Education has been invited by The Association of American Universities (AAU) to participate in the first-ever AAU forum on teacher preparation Sept. 30-Oct. 2. The forum has been organized with the cooperation of the National Science Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is taking place at the Academy's headquarters, 136 Irving St., in Cambridge, Mass.

The team from Pitt—including School of Education Dean and Professor Alan M. Lesgold, Associate Professors of Education Ellen Ansell and Martin P. Cohen, and Assistant Professor of Education Margaret Smith—is one of only 20 faculty-administrator teams from AAU institutions invited to give presentations at the forum, whose goal is not only to discuss teacher education needs and share best practices in teacher education, but also to create a support network for teacher education at AAU-member institutions. The AAU is an organization of

63 leading public and private research universities in the United States and Canada.

The Pitt team will deliver a panel presentation on the School of Education's Mathematics Education Program. Pitt offers fifth-year, post-baccalaureate initial mathematics teacher preparation programs at the elementary (K-6) and secondary (7-12) levels with two options: an eight-month certification-only program, and a 13-month program that leads to the Master of Arts in Teaching degree. A challenge for many such programs is the perceived gap between theory and practice. Pitt's program has begun to meet this challenge through practice-based instruction at both the elementary and secondary levels, and the presentation will explain how the Pitt program is meeting with success.

The other AAU institutions represented at the forum are Boston College, the Catholic University of America, Harvard University, Indiana University, the University of Iowa, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, the Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Maryland, the University of Missouri-Columbia, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the \University of Wisconsin-Madison. Officials from the National Research Council's Center for Education and the Smithsonian Institution's National Science Research Center will also deliver addresses at the forum.

###

9/27/01/mc