Dissertation Dashboard

I use structural topic models to analyze how the focus of teacher preparation programs changes over time.  Preliminary analyses show the vocabularies used to describe courses offered by schools of education might have been more aligned with priorities outlined in the No Child Left Behind  Act at the start of the 2000s (i.e. emphasis on the traditional and SPED curriculum and data collection) and shifted over the course of the following fifteen years toward an emphasis on STEM, scientific logic, critical thinking and early childhood.  The case of teacher preparation programs might provide an example of how organizations cope with institutional complexity and competing institutional logics over time.