As the need surges for teachers with multilingual instructional skills, the University of California, Los Angeles’ ExcEL Leadership Academy developed a microcredentialing program to help educators equip themselves with the necessary tools to serve multilingual learners.
With funding from federal National Professional Development Program grants and UCLA’s Center X, ExcEL created 12 microcredentials in multilingual instruction. The academy has also worked with cohorts of educators throughout New England piloting the asynchronous learning modules during the program’s rollout.
Microcredentials are a competency-based training approach that helps professionals gain and demonstrate new skills through asynchronous online learning. Adapting this model in education came out of the idea that teachers were not learning enough from one-time presentations dubbed as professional development, said Jason Cervone, the project director handling federal grants for ExcEL’s program.
As an alternative, microcredentials allow teachers to meaningfully gain skills on their own time, Cervone said.
However, participating in microcredential coursework does require much more time than sitting through a typical presentation. Districts partnering with the ExcEL program encourage teachers to earn all 12 microcredentials within two years, but that timeline is flexible and ultimately depends on teachers’ pacing and schedule, said Laureen Avery, Northeast region director for ExcEL.
More recently, ExcEL launched a tuition-based program that would cost a teacher $6,000 total to earn all 12 microcredentials, Avery said. Avenues to help pay for the program include local, state and federal funds like Title III.
“Teachers can pay for it themselves, but there are so many districts right now making the opportunities available,” Avery said.
Currently, the Rhode Island Department of Education is the only state agency to officially approve ExcEL’s microcredentialing program as a pathway for teachers to earn a state certification in English to Speakers of Other Languages, which permits them to teach in ESOL classrooms.
A study released Thursday by the Aurora Institute, an education research and policy advocacy organization, analyzed how Rhode Island’s Central Falls School District is beginning to offer ESOL certification pathways to educators through the ExcEL program. With half of the district’s student population identified as multilingual learners, the district and its teachers union agreed in 2022 to require all teachers to earn an ESOL certification.
Though not required, several administrators at Central Falls School District also enrolled in the microcredential program. “It’s a really interesting case of administrators making the very conscious effort to support and reflect the work that their teachers are doing, and be really thoughtful about understanding how to best serve their MLL [multilingual learner] students at all levels of the system,” said Jennifer Kabaker, development director at Aurora Institute.
Schools may be better equipped to address teacher shortages in ESOL and other critical subjects if more states adopt a similar pathway for additional certifications like Rhode Island did with ExcEL’s microcredentialing program, Kabaker said.
For states working on similar certification programs, the Aurora Institute report suggests such initiatives are competency-based, meaning they do not require a certain number of credit hours or seat time. Rather, the program should focus on demonstrating job-embedded results.
At the district level, administrative teams should model ongoing learning and an understanding of the requirements they are asking of teachers. Schools should also partner with other districts and organizations doing similar work, the report said.
