Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Pedagogy - School System, Educational and School Politics, University of Arkansas, course: Ph.D, language: English, abstract: This brief is going to discuss the importance of licensing teachers, the policy background and what alternative teaching certification is. This brief will then discuss the rationale of using alternative teaching certification. The objective of this brief is to continue to support that traditional programs as it is good strategy in preparing trained teachers and in meanwhile encouraging alternative programs to develop. This brief also gives empirical evidence on that we need both traditional programs and alternative programs. At the end, this brief will provide some suggestions for policy makers.