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Lessons · Teaching · subject-matter competence, by examination or by programme

Subject-matter competence: the examination or the programme

California asks you to show that you know the subject you intend to teach, and accepts more than one kind of evidence: the subject-matter examinations for your field, completion of an approved subject-matter preparation programme, or qualifying coursework the Commission publishes.

Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.

What it is for

A mathematics graduate assumed she would have to sit the subject examinations anyway, and started studying in June. Her degree programme was an approved subject-matter preparation programme, and a letter from her department would have settled it. She spent a summer proving something she had already proved four years earlier.

How to think about it

Ask your own degree department one question first: was this an approved subject-matter preparation programme for this credential field. If it was, ask for the letter. If it was not, or if your degree is in something else, then the examinations are the route, and you pick the ones whose title matches your intended credential field exactly.

Worked example

Ask the degree department whether the degree was an approved route
One email, and it can remove a whole summer of study.
If it was: a letter from the department, and nothing to sit
The evidence is the letter, and the programme files it.
If it was not: the subject examinations matched to the credential field
The field name on the test and on the credential are the same words.
Either way the evidence is filed before the preparation programme's deadline
Deadlines here belong to the programme, not to the Commission.

Your turn

Name what California calls the thing you are demonstrating about your subject.

Whichever route you take, the thing you are showing is subject-matter

The trap

Choosing a subject route before choosing the credential. The evidence has to match a named field, and a candidate who sits a broad set of examinations and then decides what to teach can find that none of them line up with the field they picked.

Practise subject-matter competence, by examination or by programme on HoneA question on it now, a real problem where there is one, and it is remembered for review. Free, no email needed.