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Vanguard Practices in CTE: A Podcast with Oscar Aliaga

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An important function of the NRCCTE is to help improve practice. Although the ideal is to base practice on scientifically based research, the reality is that little scientifically based research is available regarding educational practices. However, many other methods, activities, curricula, and even programs have lesser levels of evidence suggestive of their value. Still other practices have been created by practitioners in their own classrooms or schools and shared with others informally or through exchanges at professional meetings. Others employ novel approaches to CTE that may be untested but nonetheless show promise. Although their level of evidence varies, these educational practices attract attention because they are considered innovative. Vanguard practices, a type of innovative educational practice, may be thought of as unique teaching methodologies that have demonstrated success in high-performing schools and have been deemed capable of producing change with longer systemic impacts. To be deemed effective, such practices much be tested in research settings and generate published evidence in the scholarly literature. When actualized in daily use, changes attributed to vanguard practices can be shared, transferred, modeled, or replicated somewhere else.

Through its Vanguard Practices project, the NRCCTE is examining practices worthy of more proactive examination. The project is a field-based study that seeks to identify teaching methodologies that have a demonstrable impact on school and student outcomes.

Oscar Aliaga (pictured above) spoke to Catherine Imperatore of ACTE about the project and its goals.

CI: And what would you say is the relevance of this to the CTE field?

OA: The relevance of these practices is that they are associated with career and technical education. We initiated a selection of the schools that were nominated or we found in which the schools were doing a special type of CTE activity or they have some structure in the program that has resulted in a student having a higher graduation rate than the comparable schools or the school district or even the state.

Now these practices are associated with the career and technical education programs; however-and that’s part of the project-we don’t know if the graduation rate has increased only because of the CTE in place or if it has increased because of CTE along with some other school practices. We are trying to determine that in the process, so that’s part of the idea. We want to first of all identify what the vanguard practice is and second we want to see if that is the practice that is leading towards these incredible outcomes.

Read a transcript of their conversation (PDF document).

The NRCCTE’s multimedia content- including podcasts, webcasts, full-length reports, Research Snapshots, and presentations- is always available from the NRCCTE website, www.nrccte.org. If you have a comment or question about our products or projects, please drop us a line at nrccte@louisville.edu. We welcome your feedback.


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