Webinars

Traditional college admissions measures do not always provide a full picture of what aspiring students know and are able to do, leading some higher education institutions to transition to more holistic approaches. On June 23, Reimagining College Access hosted a webinar to highlight examples from two New England colleges, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Wheaton College, which have broadened their approaches to admissions decisions by incorporating performance assessments into their applications.

A growing number of colleges and universities are expanding the ways in which they evaluate student admissions applications to gain insight into students’ deeper learning skills, such as collaboration, problem-solving, and communication. On May 27, the Reimagining College Access initiative hosted a webinar to look at the outcomes of a pilot program at City University of New York that uses performance assessments to admit qualified applicants with scores below the threshold on college entry exams.

Teacher and leader preparation programs continue to adapt how they prepare their candidates during the COVID-19 shutdown and in anticipation of a very different future for teaching and learning. As a follow-up to the highly popular April 23 webinar, this sequel dug deeper into the critical topics impacting teacher and leader preparation programs across the nation and address many of the questions raised by participants in the initial webinar.

This webinar featured CCSSO's Carissa Moffat Miller and LPI's Linda Darling-Hammond who, with state education leaders, discussed both how lessons from the science of learning and development can inform restart and recovery plans to support student well-being and learning and how state chiefs are already taking a whole child approach to pandemic response.

Nearly 1 in 5 principals leave their schools each year, which can have a domino effect that disrupts student learning and contributes to teacher dissatisfaction and turnover. In this webinar, experts discussed Supporting a Strong, Stable Principal Workforce: What Matters and What Can Be Done, a new report from a research initiative between the National Association of Secondary School Principals and LPI.

As school districts and universities across the nation turn to distance learning, how are educator preparation programs responding? This webinar featured preparation program leaders from the Educator Preparation Laboratory network who addressed such topics as licensing and credentialing, social-emotional learning and trauma-informed practices, and meeting the needs of teacher and school leader candidates through virtual learning.

Today’s schools must provide powerful learning environments for students that pair challenging academic content with engaging, experiential, and relevant learning experiences—and must do so in ways that reach diverse learners and promote equity. The Educator Preparation Laboratory (EdPrepLab) hosted a webinar to examine the policies and structures needed across pre-k–12 and teacher and leader preparation to foster these deeper learning opportunities for all students across all schools. 

How can educator preparation programs equip teachers and school leaders to provide each and every student with a high-quality education and inclusive opportunities to learn and grow in the classroom? This webinar featured experts discussing ways to integrate social and emotional learning (SEL) and cultural competence into educator preparation.

Deeper learning approaches help students develop skills that are necessary for success in college, career, and citizenship and have been in use for decades, but effective ways to sustain and scale them up remain elusive. Watch this LPI and the Alliance for Excellent Education webinar on the challenges and opportunities educators and district leaders face in expanding deeper learning.

How can social and emotional learning and cultural competence be integrated into educator preparation programs? Expert researchers and policymakers discussed this question in this webinar, with the goal of equipping teachers to consider the needs of the whole child with equity in mind.