Meeting Urban and Rural District Needs for Educators: California State University, Bakersfield's Teacher Residencies

Abstract

With a decade of experience in creating and running teacher residencies--numbering seven as of 2024--California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) and its partners have developed strong residency structures that allow for the variations that different communities need. This report explores how successful residencies do their work and presents case studies conducted in 2023 of two CSUB residencies--the Kern Urban Teacher Residency (Kern Urban) and the Teacher Residency for Rural Education (TRRE). Kern Urban, established in 2016, is CSUB's longest-running residency program and partners with a single urban school district, Bakersfield City School District (BCSD). TRRE, in contrast, hosted its first cohort in 2020 and prepares residents to teach in a specifically rural context. For this residency, CSUB partnered with the Tulare County Office of Education (TCOE), which facilitated placements in three rural districts during the 2022-23 academic year. The goal of these individual case write-ups is to document each program's practices in greater detail by providing an in-depth look at: (1) program design and implementation of academic and clinical components; (2) recruitment and admissions procedures; (3) supports available to residents during and beyond the program year; (4) partnership structure and roles; (5) program outcomes; (6) financial models; and (7) continuous improvement processes. This report shares the insights obtained from close examination of how each residency shapes its program structure to suit the needs of its LEA partner(s). Through these detailed case write-ups, the authors aim to provide information and describe program practices that can inform the design and continuous improvement of residency programs across the country. For each program, data was drawn from program documents as well as interviews and focus groups with a wide range of constituents. Transcriptions were coded iteratively, with attention to categories derived from prior research and to themes that emerged from the case study data. The report concludes by recapitulating the residencies' shared practices and the significance of differing programmatic strategies.