Alternative and Authentic: A Close Look at a Successful, Nontraditional Teacher Certification Program

Introduction And Background

Part of the motivation to write this chapter includes the fact that alternative certification programs have been in existence for several years across the United States, and this author feels it should be included in an encyclopedia of teacher education and professional development. In part due to address teacher shortages, state boards beginning in the 1980s agreed to allow new pathways to certification that differed from the traditional route, called “alternative” pathways to teacher certification. The National Association for Alternative Certification (NAAC) describes alternative routes to certification as “any other than traditional undergraduate degree-granting programs.” Retrieved from http://www.nycteachingfellows.org/purpose/mission.asp

Additional reasons for developing alternative certification programs include: “the shift of subject matter to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; recognized differentiated needs of students of academic, linguistic, economic and cultural diversity; and specified geographically determined areas of need” (Kaplan, 2012, p. 37). These reasons contributed to SUNY Empire State College’s (ESC) incentive to develop an alternative certification program.

As the title suggests, Walsh, et al (2007) argue in their work Alternative Certification Isn’t Alternative that most programs that were created in the last few decades do not fill the model of what it truly means to be alternative. They lay out criteria that should be present in alternative certification programs and analyze many extant programs concluding (in their estimation) that they are not, in fact, alternative. In this chapter, the author looks at the criteria and demonstrate how one particular program meets and sustains expectations of alternative certification.