Beyond Traditional Structures of Student Teaching.

Abstract

In this set of papers, we have an analysis and discussion of many issues concerning student teacher learning during the practicum. These papers represent a variety of contexts: preservice programs at New York University (NYU), Mills College, and Roosevelt University (all relatively small programs), and the University of Haifa. The papers also represent a variety of methodologies that have been used to address the question of what makes a good placement setting: surveys of student teachers, cooperating teachers, and university supervisors; interviews with mentors and preservice and inservice teachers; and analyses of student teacher journals. On the one hand, I agree with much of what is asserted in the papers: (1) Student teaching is a critical aspect of preservice teacher education and cooperating teachers are key participants in determining the quality of learning for student teachers. (2) Being a good cooperating teacher is important but is not synonymous with being a good teacher. Being a good cooperating teacher is more than providing access to a classroom or modeling a particular version I of good practice. It involves active mentoring. (3) Ken Zeichner is a Learning to be a good mentor is a complex and professor with the demanding process. (4) The quality of human rela College of Education at tionships is important to the making of a good the University of student teaching placement. Specifically, the impor Wisconsin-Madison, tance of a safe and supportive environment where Madison, Wisconsin. student teachers feel able to take risks and explore

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 222 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.