ATE and NAPDS

Since 2015, National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) and the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) have been collaborating, first through an informal joint collaboration committee and ultimately through the creation of an inter-organizational joint task force, which began in 2017. The Joint Task Force is composed of leaders from both organizations and is jointly led by co-conveners, Dr. Barbara Purdum-Cassidy (Baylor University, ATE) and Dr. Rebecca West Burns, (University of South Florida, NAPDS). The ATE/NAPDS Joint Task Force was given two charges: (1) the exploration of back-to-back annual conferences, and (2) the development of state/regional ATE/NAPDS Clinical Fellows Symposiums to benefit members. 

The Joint Task Force accomplished both charges in 2019. The first back-to-back conference was held in February 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. The two organizations will continue to hold back-to-back conferences through 2022 and perhaps beyond. The Joint Task Force continually analyzes data and revisits how the collaboration is benefiting the organizations and the shared commitment to high quality teacher education and school-university partnerships.

That same year, NAPDS and ATE co-led a successful National Clinical Practice Fellows Symposium in February 2019 held in between the NAPDS annual conference and the ATE annual conference. The co-chairs for the 2019 event were Kathryn Will-Dubyak (ATE) and Robin Johnson (NAPDS). Clinical Practice Fellows are a community of educators interested in clinical practice and school-university partnerships. The National Clinical Fellows Symposium began as an ATE initiative but became a collaborative venture with NAPDS in 2019. The first State Clinical Fellows Symposium was held in California in October 2019. 

National Clinical Practice Fellows Symposium Chairs

• 2021 Shelly Curcio (University of South Carolina)
• 2020 Angela Hooser (Middle Tennessee State University) & Shannon Harmon (Middle 
  Tennessee State University)
• 2019 Kathryn Will-Dubyak (University of Maine at Farmington) & Robin Johnson 
  (Texas A&M, Corpus Christi)
• 2018 Jennifer Jacobs (University of South Florida) & Rebecca West Burns (University 
  of South Florida)
• 2017 Nancy Dana (University of Florida)
• 2016 Kristien Zenkov (George Mason University) & Audra Parker (George Mason 
  University)
• 2015 Nancy Dana (University of Florida), Diane Yendol-Hoppey (University of North Florida), & Angela Hooser (University of Florida)

The Joint Task Force decided that their collaboration was not finished, even though they had met their initial charges. In 2020, the NAPDS/ATE Joint Task Force decided to (re)charge with the following intents: 

ATE and NAPDS are both strong, independent organizations that share a commitment to improving the teaching and learning experiences for PK-12 students through high quality teacher preparation and school-university partnership. By harnessing the collective power of collaboration, both organizations can capitalize on their individual and shared strengths for more impactful individual and collective work. 

The ATE/NAPDS Joint Task Force is driven by three targets:  

• To leverage each individual organization’s resources and expertise to accomplish our common purpose of promoting and advocating for the professions of teaching and teacher education,
• To offer new perspectives and ideas to one another that enhance member benefits, improve our individual and collective work, and enrich everyone’s understanding of teaching and teacher education, and
• To collaboratively develop, implement, and sustain initiatives to actualize transformative teacher education programs across the nation and worldwide