With increased emphasis on student achievement in schools, teacher education programs are challenged to meet the demand for highly effective teachers. Ensuring that pre-service teachers feel confident in their ability to teach, prompted one Midwestern University to implement an extended student teaching placement. The idea behind this endeavor was…

Student teaching has long been considered a cornerstone of teacher preparation. One dimension thought to affect student teacher learning is the kinds of schools in which these experiences occur. Drawing on extensive survey and administrative data on all teachers, students, and schools in a large, urban district, this study investigates whether…

Because a majority of teachers come from public universities, universities play an important role in examining and strengthening their teacher preparation programs to ensure they are graduating quality teachers. Student teaching is typically the culminating experience of the teacher preparation program and is considered to be the most crucial and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate middle level preservice teacher self-efficacy beliefs in general, as well as in the domain of reading. The participants were 8 middle school preservice teachers enrolled in a state-mandated reading methods course and student teaching over the course of a year. As part of the yearlong internship, the…

This study explored the perceptions of preservice teacher candidates who participated in a pilot partnership between a public teacher education preparation program and Junior Achievement (JA). The partnership was grounded in the premise that providing early field experiences to preservice teacher candidates was a necessary requirement of quality…

For universities located in rural areas, field placement supervisors often find it difficult to locate placements for student teachers who are specialized in areas (e.g., special education, P.E.) with a limited number of cooperating teachers in each school. In those cases, placements for student teachers may require the cooperation of schools…