Secondary Teacher Preparation in Social
Studies: Alaska

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy

Goal

The state should ensure that social studies teachers know all the subject matter they are licensed to teach.

Does not meet goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Secondary Teacher Preparation in Social Studies: Alaska results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/AK-Secondary-Teacher-Preparation-in-Social-Studies-6

Analysis of Alaska's policies

Secondary teachers in Alaska have the option of an endorsement in general social studies. The state does not require content tests for initial licensure; such tests are only mandated once candidates apply for the professional license, usually after three years. At that point, Alaska requires secondary social studies teachers to pass the Praxis II "Social Studies" content test. Teachers with this license are not limited to teaching general social studies but rather can teach any of the topical areas.

Middle school social studies teachers in Alaska are not required to obtain a specific middle school endorsement, and the state does not require content tests for initial licensure. Alaska also allows middle school social studies teachers to teach on a generalist K-8 license (see Goal 1-E).

Citation

Recommendations for Alaska

Require secondary social studies teachers to pass tests of content knowledge for each social studies discipline they intend to teach, as a condition of initial licensure.
Allowing general social studies certification—and requiring only a general content test after up to three years in the classroom—does not ensure that these secondary teachers possess adequate subject-specific content knowledge. Alaska's required assessment combines all subject areas (e.g., history, geography, economics) and does not report separate scores for each subject area. Therefore, candidates could answer many—perhaps all—history questions, for example, incorrectly, yet still be licensed to teach history to high school students.

Require middle school social studies teachers to pass a test of content knowledge that ensures sufficient knowledge of social studies, as a condition of initial licensure.

State response to our analysis

Alaska recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.

Research rationale

Carlisle, J. F., Correnti, R., Phelps, G., & Zeng, J., "Exploration of the contribution of teachers' knowledge about reading to their students' improvement in reading." Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 22, 459-486 (2009) includes evidence specifically related to the importance of secondary social studies knowledge.
 
In addition, research studies have demonstrated the positive impact of teacher content knowledge on student achievement.  For example, see D. Goldhaber, "Everyone's Doing It, But What Does Teacher Testing Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness?" Journal of Human Resources, vol. XLII no.4 (2007).  Evidence can also be found in White, Presely, DeAngelis "Leveling up: Narrowing the teacher academic capital gap in Illinois," Illinois Education Research Council (2008); D. Goldhaber and D. Brewer, "Does teacher certification matter? High School Certification Status and Student Achievement." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. 22: 129-145. (2000); and D. Goldhaber and D. Brewer, "Why Don't Schools and Teachers Seem to Matter? Assessing the impact of Unobservables on Educational Productivity." Journal of Human Resources (1998). See also Harris, D., and Sass, T., "Teacher Training, Teacher Quality and Student Achievement." Teacher Quality Research (2007).