Center for Teacher Quality and Educational Leadership

Who We Are

The Center for Teacher Quality and Educational Leadership (CTQEL) is an outreach initiative of the Program for Research and Evaluation in Public Schools (PREPS), Darden College of Education, Old Dominion University (ODU). The Center is sponsored by the Virginia General Assembly and will be located at ODU's Peninsula Higher Education Center. The Center is a field of networked relationships, collaborative higher educations-K12 projects, programs, and emerging research related to "authentic" or transformative public education.

Our Mission

The Center will assist at-risk schools and school districts to create evidence-based cultures that meet the educational needs of all children and their general well-being supported by coherent district organizations. At different times the Center serves as an incubator, catalyst, mirror, and training ground for this field.

What We Do

CTQEL will offer both individual teacher and administrator training and school leadership team training. Individuals (administrators, teachers, school board members) may select from a rich array of educational leadership and instructional professional development interventions that can be delivered in an institute or in a field-based modality. School districts may select schools to participate in an intensive multi-year evidence-based culture development program at four levels: 1) point of engagement: 2) research driven implementation; 3) evaluation; and 4) modeling.

CTQEL Model

In the point of engagement phase, school leaders will learn how to prepare for change to include selecting a team, preparing the team, and developing the construct for change by gaining an understanding of the problems of practice involved in the day-to-day work in schools and ask the value added question: "Could, how, where might introducing some new tools and practices actually advance the transformation to an evidence-based culture?"  In the research driven implementation phase, schools that have successfully completed the planning phase will join a cohort of schools engaged in action research working side-by-side with ODU faculty to test their school intervention. Faculty researchers' will share research practice and their results in areas ranging from student assessment for learning to leading in a culture of change. In the third phase, schools will evaluate their model and disseminate it in journals as well as informally across their district. Finally, in the modeling phase, schools will serve as mentors in a lateral development with sister schools engaged in phases I and II.