Changing the way teachers teach and students learn is the aim of a far-reaching project spearheaded by Mississippi State and Alcorn State universities.

Four community colleges and 24 public school districts in Mississippi also will participate in the effort to reform teacher education with the aid of a five-year, $8.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

The ACHIEVE Mississippi Partnership will train 1,800 college students preparing to become elementary and secondary school teachers in problem-based and studio-based learning techniques that rely heavily on technology. The new teachers will continue to get instruction and support from the project for three years after entering the classroom.

Other partners in the project, along with the school districts, include the Public Education Forum of Mississippi, the Oktibbeha County Business and Industry Roundtable, and Port Gibson Bank.

More than 300 university and community college faculty and more than 600 veteran public school teachers also will be taught to use the technology-oriented, hands-on methods. They will apply the techniques in their own teaching, as well as helping train new teachers.

MSU's College of Veterinary Medicine will provide training in the problem-based method used to teach veterinarians and the university's School of Architecture will show teachers how it uses studio-based instruction to prepare architects.

The colleges of Arts and Sciences at MSU and Alcorn will use the same techniques in some courses taken by prospective teachers. Both techniques emphasize "learning by doing."

The project will provide $1.7 million to participating public school districts to help them upgrade their instructional technology.

"Success of the partnership will be judged on how much it increases student achievement in grades K-12 based on national standards," said MSU Dean of Education Bill Graves. "It is expected to lead to higher student test scores in math, science, and reading."

Project plans call for earlier, more intensive practice teaching experiences for teachers-in-training, beginning in the first year of college. Freshmen will be encouraged to work with participating school districts, for example, as tutors in the Mississippi Reads project.

Second-year and third-year students will get progressively more hands-on classroom experience, and fourth-year students will spend eight weeks as classroom observers and 16 weeks as student teachers.

New teachers who have been trained through the ACHIEVE Mississippi program will be recruited to begin preparing for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification through the World Class Teaching Program at MSU or one of the other certification training programs in the state.

Another goal of the project is to better prepare teachers to understand issues related to diversity and recruit more African-Americans to the teaching profession. Alcorn State University will take the lead in those aspects of the project.

Mary Howe, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction in the MSU College of Education, is project director for the ACHIEVE Mississippi Partnership. Melvin Davis is project coordinator for Alcorn State University.