CATALYST

Center for Advocacy in Teacher Leadership for Youth and Schools with Technology (CATALYST)

Vision: K-12 teachers, especially those employed in rural areas, experience unique challenges in their professional contexts. Such challenges include but are not limited to developing and sustaining student- and community-focused programs, creating, implementing, and evaluating their own curriculum, utilizing emerging technologies, and acquiring new pedagogical practices, all with less access to professional development (PD) experiences as compared to their sub/urban colleagues. Further, research suggests that rural schools experience greater difficulties in recruiting and retaining teachers. 

CATALYST centers upon the improvement of teachers’ working conditions such as offering specific and situated teacher leadership development and the technological acumen to be successful and supported in rural K-12 schools and districts. Given the dearth of research on rural teacher experiences, research and evaluation from the center convey rural teachers’ experiences and champions the importance of their ongoing professional development. Overall, CATALYST is dedicated in serving teachers and schools in rural areas by providing services in fostering the continuous improvement of teaching and learning as well as disseminating research and evaluation-based information to community stakeholders. 

Scope: The scope of CATALYST encompasses all academic K-12 disciplines and focuses more broadly on the present and future needs of rural teachers with an explicit emphasis on revenue generating and sustaining grants, evaluation, and professional development in three foci of 1) rural teacher leadership, 2) emerging technology use by teachers, and 3) best practices in rurally focused curriculum and instruction. These foci will be accomplished by marshaling all departments in the College of Education (COE) and integrating with the extant initiatives related to rural education at TTU.

Affiliates

• CIRCLE
• West Texas Rural Education Partnership
• Thrive! Rural America