Tandem Certification of Indiana Teachers (TACIT)

Project Director: Faridah Pawan

Tandem Certification of Indiana Teachers (TACIT) is a five-year National Professional Development Program (NPDP) grant funded by the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) through the U.S. Department of Education. The primary goal of the TACIT grant is to provide funded support for licensed, in-service English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) / English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) and content area teachers to become certified as ESL teachers through a combination of on-line coursework and on-site professional development. Indiana currently has over 43,000 Language Minority Students (LMS) with approximately 400 teachers certified as ESL teachers. The need in the state for a certification program such as TACIT is thus both essential and timely. A second goal of the grant is to support professional collaboration between content teachers and ESL teachers so that together they can effectively serve the needs of their English Language Learner (ELL) students in all content areas. To that end the program is designed in a cohort-style to allow teachers an opportunity for maximum collaboration with their colleagues. Participants complete the following professional development activities, which lead to licensing in ESL in the state of Indiana: three Language Education courses delivered through distance education; a semester-long teaching practicum supervised by project staff; a capstone and standards-based portfolio; development of a training DVD; workshops during the academic year; and summer retreats on the IUB campus.

During the program's first year, TACIT exceeded its initial participant recruitment goal by nearly 20% and established a new ESL certification track which was approved at the departmental, university, and state levels. Six participants were certified in ESL via this new TACIT track within the first 8 months of the program. Staff conducted 15 site visits and made four conference presentations.

TACIT continues a professional development partnership between the School of Education at Indiana University Bloomington and more than 20 Indiana public school corporations which have been identified as having significant populations of ELL students. The TACIT staff works with ESL/ENL coordinators and administrators throughout the state to identify participants. Altogether during the five years of the grant, more than 75 teachers and staff members from school districts across Indiana will receive scholarships for professional development training via distance education, leading to ESL certification, through this program. Research will focus on TACIT's professional development and student outcomes.