LASPAU, in collaboration with the Dominican Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology and the INICIA Foundation, signed an agreement to improve the quality of teacher education in the Dominican Republic. Currently, LASPAU's IDIA Initiative is working with the country's two largest academic institutions of education, the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) and the Instituto Superior de Formación Docente Salomé Ureña (ISFODOSU), thereby directly reaching over 300 professors.
The program began in June of 2011 with a 5-day seminar held at Harvard University, with the participation of 50 professors from UASD and ISFODOSU.The seminar gave the participants the opportunity to reflect on their own teaching, incorporate new student-centered teaching methods into their courses and to design course syllabuses with new learning objectives focused on student learning outcomes. The 50 participants, all of whom work in teacher education programs, had the opportunity to create a plan for implementing improvements in teaching that will have a direct impact on the quality of education for K-12 teachers in the Dominican Republic.
The second component of this initiative, which began this month in the Dominican Republic, is a practical 3-day workshop covering topics such as course design, innovative teaching methods, and student learning assessment. The core group of 50 professors that attended the five-day workshop in June will support the development of the additional 250 professors participating in the program.
