This literature review, aligned to National Council on Teacher Quality's (NCTQ) Clinical Practice Framework, explores various components of clinical practice and how they affect a range of outcomes, including aspiring teachers' feelings of preparedness, their entry into teaching, their retention in the classroom, and perhaps most importantly, their effectiveness once they are running a classroom of their own. This review primarily relies on published, peer-reviewed research and working papers, but includes some work by prominent organizations and task forces in the field to supplement areas where research is scarce and to provide more insight into the views of the field.