Top education leaders on the critical issues facing schools of education

In this interview, deans from some of our region's most prominent schools of education—Carole Basile, dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University University; Kimberly A. White-Smith EdD ’04, dean of the School of Leadership and Education Sciences at the University of San Diego; Frances Contreras, dean of the School of Education at UC Irvine; and Tina Christie the Wasserman Dean of the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA—discuss pressing issues facing the field, programs that have flourished under their leadership and how schools of education can better prepare to meet an uncertain future.

How would you describe the current state of graduate schools of education? Are we addressing the critical issues facing our field?

Carole Basile: If we define the field as the health and efficacy of the institutions in which humans formally learn, I think most of what happens in colleges of education is playing out in only small patches of the field. Maybe that patch is educator preparation. Maybe it’s equity, inclusion or multilingual education. Maybe it’s special education or the economics of education policy. Maybe it’s AI and learning technology. But not enough of what happens in our colleges of education—our degree programs and our research—addresses the full field in which all of these patches exist. Our PK–12 school systems treat all learners as identical and therefore assume that they all need the same kind of educator. Note: even the language we use to describe “special” or “gifted” education assumes a departure from a norm. But there is no such thing as an average learner. Average is a statistical abstraction and a hallucination. Variation is the norm in human life. Until our programs and research agendas are designed to inform and build systems that honor variance—among both learners and educators—we won’t be addressing the critical needs facing our field.

Kimberly White-Smith EdD ’04: We are at a critical juncture right now. There are a lot of competing demands—teacher shortages, demands for more inclusive education and, in some states, demands for the removal of inclusive elements and diversity from the curriculum. But one thing remains true: All of our students deserve highly qualified teachers.

Students deserve teachers equipped to manage the extra stressors we’re seeing in schools.

When you look at the data, you see that teachers who go through formal teacher preparation programs tend to last longer in schools. They perform better, have higher student academic outcomes and find their work more enjoyable and meaningful compared with those who go through quick turnstile programs or are placed in classrooms without support, mentoring or training. Those teachers tend to burn out quickly.

The work we do serves students better. The challenge is figuring out how to make it more accessible to people who want to teach in their local communities. Increasing funding to support residency programs is a huge step in the right direction. It allows people to receive the training they need while still earning a salary. This goes a long way, especially in diversifying the teaching workforce.

We’re also the place where the research happens. We shed light on areas where our practices need improvement. For instance, we’ve recently added trauma-informed care in our credentialing process and curriculum. Schools of education have the potential, through research, to change the traditional approach to teacher preparation.

Frances Contreras: We have a tremendous opportunity to communicate and convey the critical importance of higher education—not only its relevance in a democratic, thriving society but also its relevance in preparing the next generation of those who will educate our children.

Graduate schools of education are in a dynamic place. We’re attempting to inform the need for civil discourse in society against the backdrop of artificial intelligence and multiple technologies that are fueling this data-centered generation where news and information are available in real time. So, how might schools of education lend their expertise to ensure that accurate information and data infrastructures around education exist? By collecting and sharing accurate, relevant data on students and student outcomes, there’s a tremendous opportunity for graduate schools of education to help shape what the field of higher education will look like in the next 10–20 years.

Tina Christie: For persistent problems in education, I do believe we’re addressing vexing issues. But for issues that emerge from crisis, we are not very good at pausing and responding to those issues in a way that feels immediately relevant to policy and practice communities.

For example, schools of education have helped to move the needle on educational inequality e take up these difficult systemic issues of education, and I have to admit it is sometimes hard to see progress —on societal inequities and injustice—because it takes decades to address and shift these core problems. But, in some areas, over time, we can say, “We’ve actually done some good!”

I do question whether we are doing a good job of ensuring that those who walk through our doors—those who teach teachers, those who go through our undergraduate and graduate programs—really understand what it means to engage in civil discourse and reasoning and to teach these critical skills to our young people. I believe we are living the impact of our gradual moving away from teaching civic discourse and reasoning, starting at the youngest of ages. I believe that we need to go back and ask ourselves: What is the purpose of education? If every school of education in the United States seriously addressed this question, we would all be engaged in a very important conversation. Perhaps it would be a turning point for our collective impact.

Schools of education—and, in some cases, universities themselves—were created to train teachers. Recently, we’ve seen monumental changes and advancements in the field, from generative AI and social-emotional learning to the science of reading and integrating DEI into the classroom and curriculum. How is your institution adapting to the challenge of preparing future teachers?

CB: Schools of education—normal schools—were created to prepare teachers to teach the “norms” of society.  Today, we need to think about variance—variance among learners and variety in the kinds of lives and activities that learners will experience throughout their lives. Education preparation needs to move beyond lock-step credentialism and embrace a world that requires broader, more diversified education workforce. That workforce will require both specialists and generalists. It will require teams of distributed expertise—including expertise in areas we have not always thought about in education. This includes redefining the roles and responsibilities of educators, providing learners with teams of  distributed expertise. At ASU, we are creating a new blueprint for teacher preparation. At its heart is the ability to be flexible, nimble and accessible so our students can choose paths that fit both their interests and the needs of the students they will serve.  And, crucially, we are working on the demand side of the labor pipeline, not just the supply side: We’re partnering with schools on strategic staffing models that utilize teams of educators rather than the one-teacher, one-classroom model. Educator preparation and strategic school staffing inform each other. We are positioning educator preparation as part of a larger educator workforce design challenge.

"Education preparation needs to move beyond lock-step credentialism and embrace a world that requires broader, more diversified education workforce."

—Carole Basile

KWS: This is something I’ve been working on for most of my career. I’m a former foster youth. I was emancipated and have been living on my own since I was 16. I have a foster brother who was mislabeled as uneducable when we were young. My foster mother modeled for me what it meant to be an advocate. She pulled us out of the public school system, put her pennies together and put us in a private school. My brother graduated with average grades from a Catholic high school. That set the standard for what I strive for in my own career and in my choices regarding how I do the work of teacher prep, teacher education and working with communities to advocate for themselves.

California did not recognize dyslexia until 2018, when legislation was passed. One of the things that I began to do, after arriving at USD, was to work with my literacy faculty. I wanted to introduce them to dyslexia training in the form of phonemic awareness. It is aligned with standards from the science of reading, but it considers students’ culture and looks holistically while still drilling down on the more prescriptive and important aspects of decoding phonemic awareness and all the things that we know help students learn to read. Even before the legislation was passed, Professor Suzanne Stolz began to train San Diego teachers on how to work with students with disabilities and hone the skills they need to support students with dyslexia.

Niki Elliott at our Center for Embodied Equity and Neurodiversity researches how we use neuroscience and neurobiology to help uncover how to work with neurodivergent students in a variety of ways. At the center, we consider how we can train teachers to move past the behaviors that they see in their students and uncover the distinct learning patterns that need to be supported.

USD now has programs in family therapy, counseling education and leadership. We’re not a fly-by-night program that was invented to spit out a bunch of teachers. We exist for the community. USD sees itself as an anchor and a binational institution that also serves our neighbors in Tijuana and Baja, who come across the border every day to come to school.

FC: Teacher education programs are often siloed, and one of my priorities has been to integrate the importance of our teacher education programs into the fabric of what we do. Our school first started as a program to serve teachers and educators. We have a thriving MAT program that prepares the next generation of teachers and leaders in K-12. We also are home to a thriving CalTeach program that prepares the next generation of undergraduates interested in becoming teachers in a STEM field. Finally, we are home to two bilingual certificate programs. The first prepares teachers to earn their  bilingual certificates in Spanish to teach in dual-immersion programs. And this year, with the School of Humanities, we’re launching a certificate program in Asian American languages. There’s a strong effort to prepare the next generation of teachers and educators for a multilingual, multicultural society in a culturally responsive way.

The other part of adapting to changes is to reimagine what education can and should represent to our students, educators, and broader community. In the past four years, the discourse has largely been on the use of AI and cheating and integrity. We want to move far beyond this conversation to think about its use in providing access to information to assist teachers, school stakeholders and educators in higher ed. That’s the value that higher education and schools of education can add.

The UCI School of Education has an annual event, the Teaching for Justice Conference, with an emphasis on Asian American teachers and justice. When we sponsor these events, the community takes ownership and partners with the school to say, “This is important to us.” We want to be in the space of responding to the needs of teachers. We’re trying to become a research institution that can serve as an academic home to all teachers in Orange County, regardless of where teachers received their teaching certificate and degree.

TC: UCLA was first a state normal school. The first degrees awarded at UCLA were in education. We are UCLA’s origin story. And so we’ve always thought about what it means, as an institution, to prepare teachers for what is next for our young people in our schools.

Our universities offer an abundance of expertise from which we can draw upon in our teaching of educators, educational researchers, and policy experts. One way to address complex issues is to pull in the expertise on our campuses in these areas to help us design a curriculum to best prepare our students. AI is a perfect example. We can facilitate and accelerate dialogue with those who are advancing AI in computer science and engineering in thinking through its implications for education. Let’s create opportunities for educators in our schools to sit down and explore, “What does AI mean for me as a middle school teacher, teaching literature and English?” If we want to have a conversation as to where AI is headed and then understand how it might impact education, then we need to have experts in conversation with educators. Then we can address the questiona, “How we do we best build our expertise in this area? How does it relate to other issues we are committed to?” We have to be much more flexible and responsive in addressing the problems of the moment.

Some critics have questioned the value of schools of education since many are not particularly helpful to K–12 schools. Could you describe a successful partnership or program between your institution and a K–12 school?

CB: Too often, and not without reason, colleges of education are seen as obstructionist, elitist or both. As institutions dedicated to research, our distinctive strengths don’t always match the urgency with which school partners need to meet practical problems. I have a colleague who cautions me against opining on grand unified field theories of workforce design when speaking with a superintendent who needs to hire three principals and put a full-time teacher in room 37 by Tuesday. Our core activities and incentive structures need to be better aligned with the needs of the K–12 schools with which we partner.

Our teacher preparation program has moved substantially over the past five years, and at the same time our work on strategic staffing is gaining interest—and practical adoption—at a national scale. We are working with 150 schools in 13 states to implement team-based staffing models and have forged strong partnerships with national and state government agencies, as well as with nongovernmental organizations.

KWS: We have a program that was inspired by the work I did while I was a doctoral student at USC Rossier with the Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI) and Kim Thomas-Barrios. I loved the model, and it’s always been something that I wanted to revisit.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a funder here in San Diego who expressed to me a dilemma: The Black students in San Diego were the only subgroup who were not making any incremental gains academically. No one could provide a solution or even an example of how the problem could be addressed. So, I connected with Kim, and she gave me some ideas. Then, I worked with faculty here to develop the Black InGenius Initiative (BiGI).

Working with the initial framework that the NAI created, recruiting rising sixth graders—because we know from the data that’s when the drop-off happens—and working with students throughout the summer, we then bring them back to campus monthly and continue to work with them until they are in 12th grade. We look for the students who are most in need of having some sort of transformational work. These are kids who have very limited resources, and some, quite frankly, are struggling.

We work with close to 10 local school districts. An unintended consequence of this partnership is the feedback between the school environment and our School of Leadership and Education Sciences. They see us as a partner. So, if we have a student who is struggling in school and they are a part of BiGI, the school will call us before suspending them. We have counselors and people in place—including the director himself—who roll down to the school and are like, “Hey, man, what’s going on? What are you vaping in the bathroom?” And then the kid will start talking, and you’ll find out there’s this whole other thing that’s happening in their lives that they have no control over, and it’s impacting how they feel. We also have future teachers, the school of engineering and a wide variety of USD students who act as mentors. These USD students can relate to the varying experiences that the kids are going through.

“I see schools of education as the keepers of hope and equity.”

—Kimberly White-Smith EdD ’04

FC: We recently announced our first university-assisted partnership school. For UC Irvine, this is historic because it’s our first university-assisted partnership school. The partnership is with a K–5 dual-immersion school, James Monroe Elementary School, in Santa Ana Unified School District. The project is led by our Orange County Educational Advancement Network (OCEAN).  This partnership exemplifies our priorities and strengths that we espouse as a school, with an amazing group of faculty who are committed to co-designing spaces that work for students, educators and the community. Our faculty expertise in stem education, early learning, technology and education, language sciences, and cognitive development are a strong foundation for this partnership effort.

We chose to start with transitional kindergarten (TK) through fifth grade because we have a number of faculty experts in the space of early learning, and then we looked to our partners to learn what could make the greatest impact in this district. Our bilingual certificate programs allow us to place dual-immersion teachers from day one, providing valuable support. While we’d love to eventually expand to a TK-12 model and follow students through middle and high school, those discussions are still in the early stages. 

SAUSD plans to build a new structure on the grounds of Monroe Elementary, with groundbreaking expected in 2025 or 2026. This project offers the rare opportunity to design and construct a school from the ground up, allowing us to partner in creating learning spaces—including playgrounds and other facilities in a community that serves first-generation, low-income students. This school is an opportunity to serve as a model of what education can and should be doing to lend expertise and serve as real partnership to a public school district serving a diverse student population. .

TC: For schools of education to have impact, a couple of things should happen. One, we must be deeply engaged with schools so that we have a realistic understanding of what it means to address our problems of learning, development, well-being and schooling. Take, for example, LAUSD’s recent cell phone ban. I don’t think the policy is bad. Indeed, we provided some data that helped inform the policy—but the problem is not with the hardware. The issues that we are most concerned with are not related to having the phone physically in our hands. That is not to say that when we talk with teachers, she isn’t going to tell you, “My life is so much better without phones in the classroom.” That’s good. But we still have to move deeper into what it is about kids in virtual spaces that helps to facilitate learning, and what is it about kids in virtual spaces that either interrupt, hinder and make learning more challenging.

Those are the deep conversations we need to have with and in schools. This requires us to be there, in conversation and in humble and thoughtful observation. We all know that putting phones in students' lockers is not going to increase the psychological well-being of our young people or address the mental health issues that result from children unhealthily engaging in social media.

We have to enter into our relationships with schools for the long term. The nature of the relationships will change over time, but we must resist the external critique around the substance of our relationships and stay deeply committed to them. There needs to be a well-articulated strategy guiding our research-practice partnerships, theories of change, and theories of action that are co-constructed with each school, which needs to be revisited and adjusted overtime and infused with new energy and new thinking as our learning evolves. This is the case with our two LAUSD UCLA Community Schools—our UCLA Community School in Koreatown and Mann UCLA Community School in South L.A.

When you first enter into a partnership with a school, that relationship may begin centering on technical assistance. For example, recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers committed to the school's mission, its students and the communities in which the school resides. If the relationship is meaningful and supportive over time, technical assistance will evolve into strategy and engagement around issues that are of importance to both the school and the university. Of course, we must enter into the relationship with humility and authentic belief that everyone at the school site brings an expertise that you, as a university, just don’t bring. It must be bidirectional, and while this is easy to speak, it is a challenge for universities to live.

We also have a laboratory school. The UCLA Lab School was founded in 1882 and predated the establishment of UCLA. There’s something very different about a research-practice partnership and a laboratory school. These are two very different models for engaging with a school as a site of learning. RPPs are school sites that enter into partnerships with universities, and these partnerships include conducting research. Partnerships are negotiated and renegotiated and can be dissolved, and the school will continue serving its community. Schools can enter into RPPs with different university partners.

On the other hand, a lab school's primary mission is to serve as a site of learning. The school is built around and designed to serve this purpose. It is indeed a laboratory of the university. There are not many true laboratory schools in existence today.  

Professor Fred Erickson, who served as the director of research at our Lab School many years ago, at this point, described three types of research we do at our Lab School. One approach is when researchers go in, use the school site to collect data, and then leave, and the school gets nothing immediately usable or tangible in return. There is teacher-driven research and inquiry, as well as university faculty-engaged collaborative research. The types of studies being conducted at any one time are also being negotiated at the school. The school’s educators and administrators well and for whom. This is the sensibility and shared understanding of everyone who works at the school. 

One of the challenges graduate students at schools of education face is financing their education. This is a critical concern given that the field they are entering isn’t particularly lucrative. What do you we should do to reduce the cost of becoming a teacher?

CB: Part of this is the problem of affording higher education with which we are all quite familiar.

There is another part of the affordability equation beyond pricing and scholarships. We need to recognize two things that are true about teacher candidates: First, they are just as much learners as the P–12 students they are teaching; Second, the work they are doing in schools is…work. Because they are learning, we shouldn’t require professional experiences that ask them to do everything we ask experienced teachers to do. Because they are working, we should pay them. 

We should make all clinical experiences that are part of teacher-prep programs paid. This means working with schools and districts in deep partnerships. Paid internships. Paid professional experiences, including for para-educators who want to earn certification.

This can also have the added advantage of building new on-ramps into our programs. We have something called ASU Teaching Fellows, which is a way for people currently working as paraeducators to keep working in their jobs while taking online courses with us.

However, in addressing the problem of paying teacher candidates, it’s easy to create another problem by asking teacher candidates to perform the roles of experienced teachers. They are not experienced teachers. It’s not reasonable to expect to retain people that are hired to perform tasks they are not prepared to do.

For their sake—and for the sake of the P–12 students they serve—teacher candidates should be given clearly defined responsibilities that allow them to learn in stages, gain competencies and experience a range of educational roles. We are moving our students toward job-embedded clinical experiences. The hard part is making sure that the jobs in which they are embedded are right-sized and designed for where they are in their preparatory education.  

KWS: I see schools of ed as incubators for innovation, and we look to our funding community to help us pay for innovation. Our residency program is partially funded by the state, partially by donors and partially by us being creative with making it more affordable and accessible. We’re finding ways to work directly with school districts. A lot of districts have internal personnel who have worked there for many years, who come from the community, who might be multilingual but just have never had the opportunity to pursue a formal education past high school.

We are looking at new ways to develop a four-year credential undergraduate program and get folks out there fully prepared, whether they are traditional undergrads or folks who are returning to school after having had a career. Leaning into our identity as incubators for innovation is key to solving the accessibility with regards to cost to becoming a teacher.

FC: Our faculty are deeply committed to funding their graduate students—those students who will go on to research and be the faculty in higher education. We essentially guarantee funding for those students.

As for our practitioner programs, it has been my priority to increase the number of fellowships, scholarships and partnerships that we have with school districts, because our teachers should walk away debt-free. We should be fully subsidizing teacher education. If we say we value education and we know that teachers are not going to have huge salaries, given the cost of living in a state like California, then we need to do our best to do right by them from day one.

As leaders of schools of education, we have a responsibility to push back on rising tuition costs, and support teacher candidates.  When you’re told to raise tuition, you have to be courageous to say no.

The challenges that our teachers are facing in schools are unprecedented around civil discourse and navigating the political climate. We place a great onus on our teachers to provide numerous services beyond what they teach in the classroom. We have sought out donors who are solely interested in funding teacher education. Some incredible donors have stepped up to answer that call.

"As leaders of schools of education, we have a responsibility to push back on rising tuition costs, and support teacher candidates.  When you’re told to raise tuition, you have to be courageous to say no."

—Frances Contreras

TC: There are three professions—teaching, nursing and social work—in which students should not incur debt. It’s a policy issue. California is dabbling in this, but I wish we would hear a candidate on the campaign trail say, “You want to be a teacher, nurse, or social worker? Go for it. We need you. 

Pursue your education, and you won’t incur any debt.” We would attract a much greater number of people to the profession, and I think it would help retention too.

A policy like this would demonstrate, “We value you and the role that you play in making our society strong, healthy, democratic, and equitable.” You don’t have a democracy without access to a free, high-quality public education, and you systematically dismantle that critical institution if you starve it of a high-quality workforce. Our kids spend more time in a classroom with their teachers than they do with us at home. Don’t we want the best people caring for and educating our kids? Let’s talk about how to invest in ways that recognize teachers’ expertise and all they bring to society, one child at a time.

 

We talk a lot about putting educational research into practice. In your experience, what are the most important elements to keep in mind when designing an initiative that successfully bridges the gap between research and practice? Are there any initiatives at your intuition that you’re particularly proud of?

CB: I would say we also should talk about putting educational practice into research. When we are at our best, we talk about how our college brings people and ideas together to actually increase the capabilities of individual educators and improve the performance of education systems. Now there are many ways of doing this. But it starts with recognizing that deep partnerships with schools can provide meaningful data sets for researchers and help them shape their questions and plot their routes of inquiry. 

Here are three broad lanes where this is happening at ASU. First, we are starting to bring much more of what is known about the science of learning into how we think about the craft and profession of teaching and how we prepare people to enter that profession. Second, we have a transdisciplinary research collaborative examining the issue of refugee education, which is informed by what is happening in schools we work with and, hopefully, will generate new practices. Third, we have a robust research agenda attached to the work we are doing with schools around the country to implement team-based staffing models; that work is yielding insights into how these new models affect education satisfaction, teacher retention, and specific learning outcomes. These findings will, in turn, drive changes to implementation models and tools.

KWS: In California, we have a master blueprint for higher ed. We have our UCs, which were designed to be our research institutions, and our CSUs, which were designed to be professional schools. For career development, we have our two-year community colleges. And then we have our privates, some of which specialize in research. There’s a wide variety of different types of schools and colleges of education—ones that are hyper-focused on research, ones that are hyper-focused on practice and all the ones in between. That’s a beautiful thing. It offers us a lot of opportunity to collaborate and learn from one another.

I’m really proud of BiGI. Working as a graduate student with Kim Thomas-Barrios to collect data and look at the successful elements of an initiative is what inspired me to develop BiGI. We also have the Jacobs Institute for Innovation in Education. They do a lot of research on STEAM initiatives, like different ways to teach mathematics. For example, in one project they looked at how you can use origami to teach mathematics to elementary-age kids. Then, using what they learned from those research experiences, they trained teachers, principals and school leaders.

FC: Yes, one of the most important elements of our overall approach to research in the UCI School of Education is to ensure that we’re authentically engaged, that we actively partner with districts and organizations to develop solutions and co-design innovation.  The relationships we’re building are foundational to long-term impact.

At any given time, we are the learner and the experts. This is a different framework for higher education and for research-intensive institutions where there’s an element of expertise and implementing research studies. Schools of education want to also influence practice. We want to impact the field. We’re about transforming institutions to ensure generational mobility. Because our mission is also unique, the approach must be different where we engage both community and school stakeholders. And we’re thinking with the lens of how this might impact our students. This is the unique opportunity we have.

Another project I’m involved with is the California Statewide Family Engagement Center (SFEC) Project. In this statewide partnership, we’re developing the first comprehensive family engagement framework for California. It’s a $5 million effort both from the California Department of Education and the Federal Department of Education. This effort speaks to our priorities as a school: How are we thinking about the impact that we might have on local models that might serve as replicable models for the entire state of California?

If we’re thinking about transforming education and ensuring that our democracy is thriving, we have to care about the role that our policies and practices play on the ground. That means how our parents are engaging with schools, and how our parents are engaging with transitional kindergarten. Are we a welcoming place where lifelong learning is conveyed to be a priority? We have to practice what we say our mission is and work to engage families as partners.

TC: It’s where you start. Whose questions are you answering, and whose questions are driving the research? Are the questions under consideration being driven by practitioners or policymakers, or are they the researchers’ questions? You can incorporate each group’s questions into any one study, but it should be clear whose questions are driving the work. When it’s clear whose questions we’re answering, we can determine how the information yielded from these studies can be best utilized and the potential impact of the research process and its outcomes.  

At UCLA, we have the Center for Community Schooling. This center focuses not just on the work we do with our community schools but also we study the impact of the community schooling movement and producing scholarship that speaks to both the practice and policies that inform and guide community schools across the state and nation. We’re also working with a small subset of community colleges in the L.A. area in establishing sustained research-practice partnerships. We call this work “Learning Together.” It’s a conversation between the educational leaders and instructors at the community colleges and our faculty and graduate students focused on: What are the critical questions for community colleges and their students? Some of the questions are instructional and tied to policies such as AB 705. Some are about how to best support students in their success. Community colleges have been grappling with persistent problems for decades, and they are being taken very seriously in our work. What does it mean for us, UCLA, to be deeply engaged with community colleges and to sustain these partnerships over time? We’re studying the process here too. As schools of education, we should always study our process.

What are some of most significant changes or developments schools of education will face in the next decade, and how can our schools evolve to better meet this shifting landscape?

CB: Schools of education are more than just teacher preparation and research. We need to diversify the kinds of people we bring to our institutions. I believe tenure-track faculty roles will significantly change over time because the kind of research and teaching we need must be different — it needs to be future-forward and much more integrated and systems-focused. We will need strong clinical faculty and instructional designers who can create learning experiences (not 3-credit-hour courses). And we need people who bring different experiences and can function as knowledge entrepreneurs who are always thinking about what’s next to help universities connect the worlds of thought and action and partner more effectively with P–12 schools for the benefit of educators and learners. These include people who understand how technology, specifically AI, can power learning teams, systems and possibilities.  

KWS: We’re already seeing that right now. The idea of a standalone teacher-prep school or college is gone because we have to be interdisciplinary. When I became a classroom teacher, we did not have the internet. I was teaching kindergarten, and I remember telling my principal that I was teaching them to be mentally flexible. We don’t know what we’re preparing them for in the future, so we have to teach them to be mentally flexible.

With the changing landscape and the integration of generative AI, we have to be open to evolving into different creatures. I’m super proud of our School of Leadership and Education Sciences because I think having mental health as part of our portfolio—being able to really simulate what it looks like to have an IEP process with counseling students with special education students alongside general education students—is going to be crucial to prepare professionals of all kinds to serve in our communities.

FC: I’m part of the California Chicano/Latino Advisory Council to the UC president. We are exploring what it means to be a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) system. Central to these discussions is understanding how to truly serve our students—and that’s not mutually exclusive to an HSI identity. But we have to center what it means to be responsive to particular communities, to make sure that the concept and construct of serving our students is at the heart of our efforts, and that we provide added value not only to their lives but also to the communities we’re helping shape.

Many of our institutions have first-generation students. What are we doing to ensure they have access to peer networks to study? To networks beyond the halls of higher education, so that they are employable? That’s part of the challenges we will face not only as schools of education but as institutions of higher education. Enrollments are also predicted to decline. What are those remaining schools of education doing to thrive? It’s a question of relevance: How are we contributing to an asset-based framework among our students? How are we authentically engaging with school districts, school leaders, teachers and stakeholders to ensure that we provide value? What we are doing in higher education is preparing students to adapt to new and emerging fields that are yet to be defined.

In higher education, we aim to engage learners as critical thinkers who can adapt, use multiple technologies and interface with data like never before. Everyone should have an understanding of coding, data science and data infrastructures. It’s our responsibility to determine the building blocks and foundational constructs that students will need to operate in this society as it’s rapidly changing.

TC:  Some obvious issues are in front of us right now. We have to figure out what it means to integrate artificial intelligence into our classrooms, not just for our K–12 schools but also for institutions of higher education. We need to get a real sense of our path in this quickly developing area and begin to grapple with these issues and their implications for education.

In the next 10 years, we need to figure out how to recalibrate our systems and classrooms to address the whole child with all that she brings when she walks into the classroom. Our schools are rooms with tables and chairs, but what makes our schools amazing is who’s in those rooms. The answer cannot be to ask our teachers to also be social workers, nurses and computer scientists. However, we need to know more about the expertise needed in our classrooms to ensure that the whole child is well and thriving. That’s going to take some rethinking of that industrial-age classroom. Returning to some of our foundational philosophy, the question: What is the purpose of education? That will take up much of what we need to do over the next 10 years.

As institutions of higher education, we also must ask: What is the purpose of higher education? And, how expensive is too expensive to earn a degree? We’ll also have to grapple with workforce development—who is primarily responsible for developing and delivering professional education? We, as schools of education, have to reevaluate our professional workforce development programs. Are we preparing educators well to support the whole child?  We also have to have difficult conversations about the professoriate writ large. I expect that we will be asked to show that we have diversity in thought in our ranks.

Our university faculties are, by and large, more diverse than they were 20 years ago. This is a good thing for everyone. We are all better for it. But UCLA is still struggling to reach HSI status. How might we get there, especially now in this anti-EDI moment?   

"You don’t have a democracy without access to a free, highquality public education, and you systematically dismantle that critical institution if you starve it from a high-quality workforce."

—Tina Christie

What would a world without schools of education look like?

CB: Right now, I’m not sure the world would miss us. We already face stiff competition from non-university providers of teacher preparation. Think tanks and other researchers in other university-based colleges will conduct research. We are not the only champions of equity. Unless we move beyond credentialism—whether that’s licensure for teachers or publication laurels and citation tonnage for scholars—we won’t be missed at all. Optimistically, we could absolutely play a vital and critical role but we will need to shift our ways of approaching the world to get there.  

KWS: I see schools of education as the keepers of hope and equity. In a world without schools that attend to education and the health of our communities, I see communities where the equity gap would widen. We have the opportunity and the wherewithal to impact every aspect of our community, culture and businesses. A world without us is a world where innovation ceases.

FC:  I’m concerned about the discourse around the relevance of higher education, particularly from groups of individuals who we know are sending their children to college. Schools of education play such a critical role in helping to shape not only the next generation of teachers but also the next generation of thought leaders who are examining a dynamic educational landscape.

We play a vital role in helping to provide this level of discourse and expertise to shape not only communities but also economies. It would be a dangerous conversation if we were to divest in schools of education that help to shape, advance and innovate across the P-20 education continuum, while also working to ensuresocial mobility for the next generation. That’s fundamental to who we are, especially in a country  that takes pride in the ideal that where you start does not necessarily predetermine where you end up in life. That’s the promise of higher education, and schools of education are at the foundation of ensuring that promise is fulfilled.

TC: This would pose a very serious threat to our democracy—our democratic processes, principles and values. It would not be good for anyone.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.