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page 7b
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by Adella Wacker
Ther hasn't been a semester when
NUSTEP didn't change.
That's the Nebraska Univeristy
Secondary Teacher Education Program.
NUSTEP is in its ninth semester of
putting secondary education students
into classrooms two afternoons a week
before they begin student teaching.
In the semesters to come, NUSTEP is
sure to change more, according to
director Ed Kelley, assistant professor of
secondary education and administration.
From his office, Kelley also oversees
NOVA (Nebraska Opportunity for
Volunteers in Action).
When people talk about NUSTEP, it's
often described as "performance-based
education."
For UNL secondary education
students, that seems to mean not only
learning by doing, but learning to do it in
the best way. For example, a student
must perform in each area at least well
enough to get a C-plus grade.
According to Kelley, the program has
increasingly made use of videotaped
practice sessions so that NUSTEP
students can watch themselves teach.
The NUSTEP staff in secondary
education and educational psychology
sees these videotaped "microteaching
experiences" as a support of NUSTEP's
basic idea.
The planning of NUSTEP, which
began in the 1968-69 school year, took
three regular education classes and put
them into a mix of printed materials,
assistance and teaching from individual
staff proctors and practice teaching.
The three classes were in education
psychology, subject methods and
teaching methods.
But not everybody went for NUSTEP.
Seven subject areas of teacher
preparation are taught by NUSTEP and
no other way: business teacher education,
English, modern foreign languages, music
(vocal and instrumental), science, social
studies and speech.
Students preparing to teach other
areas, mathematics for example, are
touyht in the traditional class sequence.
The change Kc-lley said he foresees will
take oway this solic5 division of claw-is
:nlo uiK or the other tooching mfiiho K.
This not to say that thft benefit to
tlv s.'wdnnts who ro an to ruiar tuJmt
teaching after NUSTEP haven't been
measured and found significant.
There are an average of 200 NUSTEP
students per semester: this semester there
are 1963.
There is of course, the one out of eight
students who opt out of a teaching career
after their NUSTEP experience.
Kelley said the college sees this as an
entirely positive benefit to the students.
If they weren't going to like teaching,
NUSTEP allows students to find out
before committing themselves to a
semester of daily student teaching.
NUSTEP is for the students who
didn't learn best by the
study-the-book-and-lecture method, he
said.
NUSTEP allows students to put
teaching concepts and methods into a
plan of class presentation, he said.
The NUSTEP student learns more
ways of attack and, according to
department studeis, tends to become a
more confident teacher, who has a more
positive attitude toward his teacher
training, Kelley added.
However, said Kelley, making
NUSTEP mandatory for students in those
seven subject areas may be just as
dogmatic as confining them all to
traditional classes.
There are students who learn better
through the book reading and thinking
required by traditional education classes,
said Kelley. There are also those, he said,
who learn best with no structure, no
printed materials, or proctor conferences
or grade contracting. He pointed to
NOVA volunteers as examples.
The best program might be a
combination of the three, he said.
And letting UNL students choose
which way they want to practice teach
may be the next step in NUSTEP.
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