Programme theory, programme documents and state standards in evaluating teacher education

Across the USA as well as worldwide, numerous universities offer teacher preparation programmes and award such degrees. However, there are no consistent valid or reliable indicators for determining the coherence and quality of these programmes. An effective way of starting to evaluate these programmes is by looking at their standards and their documents. The combination of both could be considered the basis on which all major decisions about the programme are based. Using the example of a Midwestern university in the USA, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a method of examining the coherence between the various sets of standards that university programmes have to adhere to (e.g. whether the teacher education standards of the university correspond to the standards for the state that the university is in, as well as to the programme documents). This article ends with some suggestions that could lead to a higher level of coherence within such programmes.