Reviewing and Refining: A Professional Education Unit's Journey Toward Accreditation

Abstract

This manuscript seeks to share the continuous improvement endeavors by the College of Education faculty and administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte from initial preparation and planning through their successful national and state accreditation achieved in November 2005. Beginning with the unit's revision of their conceptual framework and alignment of their professional educator preparation programs to the revised National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education standards, the authors hope to provide concrete illustrations of how very basic elements of collaboration, shared decision making, open communication, and purposeful engagement among all constituents led to successful achievement of national and state accreditation, and may be accomplished by other universities and colleges as they pursue this milestone achievement toward excellence in teacher education.