Recently, teacher education has confronted pressures to intensify both quantity and quality of "clinical experiences," resulting in both increased breadth and depth of partnerships supporting both K-12 and higher education. However, potential ethical issues have not been explored. This article reports results of a nationwide study…

Teacher educators worry about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted what and how teacher candidates are able to learn in P-12 field experiences; yet it is possible to view this period as one of opportunity rather than limitation. This commentary argues for a conception of field experience as practice rather than context. When applied across…

Preservice teachers are placed in educational environments to learn about teaching literacy and about literacy's role in the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Of particular significance is how preservice teachers perceive and understand the varied components of language arts (i.e., reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and visually…

Practice-based teacher education is poised to improve teacher education by focusing on interns' enactment of complex teaching practices and helping them develop these professional skills. However, much of this work has yet to study the trajectory of learning between university training and field experiences. This article explores seven history and…

During field experiences, preservice teachers are typically required to observe mentor teachers in schools, but what exactly are they seeing? This research examined the patterns and variations that existed with regard to preservice teachers' classroom observations during recent field experiences. Data were collected from 24 preservice teachers…

Elementary education faculty at this university embedded a Teacher Work Sample (TWS) performance-based assessment into the student teaching experience to assess candidates' ability to impact student learning as required by recent accreditation reforms. The authors conducted an internal evaluation of the TWS for the purposes of strengthening not…

The present study examined the concerns of teacher candidates in an early field experience. Thirty-five teacher candidates completed the Teacher Concerns Checklist (TCC, Fuller & Borich, 2000) at the beginning, middle and end of their early field experiences. Results showed that teacher candidates ranked impact as the highest concern, self as…

Twenty-three white, female sophomores in teacher education programs participated in a remedial summer session for low-income, minority children. Compared results of student's initial expectations before the field experience with their final evaluations of what they actually saw. Found that students generally use direct experiences to selectively…

The proportion of time that teacher candidates in field-experience programs spent on eight types of classroom tasks was examined for two field-experience programs that differed in constancy of placement. In both programs, teacher candidates spent most of their time on clerical tasks and little time on whole-class teaching (their most valued task).…

Nine middle school teachers developed objectives and activities for a pilot early field experience to introduce freshman teacher candidates to the complexity and student diversity of urban education. Compared to 30 freshmen placed in a traditional (tutoring) field experience, project freshmen demonstrated greater personal teaching efficacy,…