Professional Education Services
The Clinical Model at Eastern Kentucky University is designed to meet the needs of learners in today's schools and provide teacher candidates with the content, pedagogy, and assessment skills needed to assure they are meeting the needs of all learners. Eastern Kentucky University's Professional Education Program provide a framework that supports our candidates' development of content knowledge, practice and professional behaviors. This is accomplished through high quality instruction, engaging course-learning tasks and clinical learning experiences requiring candidates to think critically and creatively, communicate effectively and act fairly. Our candidates will be prepared to effect change in the culture of learning in their classrooms, in our region and beyond.
The Eastern Kentucky University clinical model integrates content course work with critical clinical experiences providing candidates with broad professional experiences. The combination of content knowledge and clinical experiences embedded in the education program are aligned to the EKU Conceptual Framework, In TASC and CAEP accreditation standards and prepare our education candidates to be leaders in the field. EKU candidates will learn to diagnose, assess, prescribe, implement and monitor the learning of all students in their classrooms.
Clinically based professional education programs create varied and extensive opportunities for candidates to connect what they learn while being guided by skilled clinical educators. Performance-based assessments at key transitions in the program are designed to demonstrate candidates' development of the knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions associated with a positive impact on the learning and development of all P-12 students (CAEP, 2014).
Eastern Kentucky University has moved to a full clinical preparation program. The clinical field experience program at EKU is aligned with professional education (co-requisite) courses, which constitute the professional core for all teaching majors at EKU (i.e. IECE, elementary, middle, secondary, P-12). The chart called "Clinical Overview Chart" illustrates the Clinical Model, professional core courses (hub courses), clinical hours and professional experiences at each level. There are six clinical courses noted by course prefix CED. CED 450, Practice Teaching (formerly methods) and CED 499 (student teaching) form a year-long residency. Evaluation of candidates is based on students' performance data; formative and summative assessments; data from structured observations of candidates' classroom skills by supervising teachers and clinical educators and professional dispositions. Teacher candidates will have a broad range of experiences, both laboratory and clinical to draw from as they develop their own expertise. Each clinical experience will culminate with candidate evaluation using a performance rubric aligned with the Kentucky Teacher Standards and the Teacher Professional Growth and Evaluation System (TPGES). As the candidate progresses through the program, the teacher performance expectations increase.
