Moving University Teacher Education Into Schools and Communities

• In Event: Reinventing (University) Teacher Education: Connections, Contexts, and Consequences

Abstract

Contexts: Objectives and Significance to the Field

This paper discusses work throughout the U.S. to reinvent university teacher education by creating new more democratic spaces in which teacher candidates in college and university sponsored programs learn to teach. Traditional university models of teacher education have been criticized as too distanced from the complexities of practice and not adequately preparing teachers for high need schools. It has become common in for the role of university Education schools in teacher education to be questioned (Hartocoulis, 2005).

Connections: Perspectives and Analyses

One reaction to this has been a national effort to marginalize the role of universities in initial teacher education and to spread “early entry” programs where most of the preparation for teaching occurs while candidates are employed as teachers of record (Baines, 2010). Teachers who are prepared in early entry programs work primarily in urban and remote rural schools attended by students living in poverty, which has reinforced the inequitable distribution of fully prepared and experienced teachers (Peske & Haycock, 2006).

Another response to the weaknesses in traditional university teacher education models is the development of new hybrid forms of university teacher education situated more in schools and communities where there is potential to access the expertise of master teachers and residents of the communities served by the schools (Zeichner & Payne, 2011). These new school and community-based forms of university teacher education seek to maintain a significant role for the university while better preparing teachers to to enact ambitious teaching practices in complex high need urban and rural schools that have had a difficult time attracting and retaining successful teachers.

This paper analyzes the emerging literature in the U.S. on efforts to move university-based teacher education more into schools and communities. It describes the variety of strategies that are being used to address the enduring problems of traditional university teacher education models and what has been learned about the complexities of this work and its impact on how teachers are prepared (e.g., have things really changed by moving teacher education into schools and communities?) and the quality of their teaching and student learning.

Consequences: Perspectives, Findings, and Implications

The paper draws on elements of activity theory, such as the concepts of horizontal expertise and “knotworking,” to analyze how knowledge and expertise are exchanged within school and community-based forms of university teacher education (Ellis, Edwards and Smagorinsky, 2010). This analysis of peer-reviewed published research on school- and community-based forms of teacher education reveals a great variety in how university teacher education has been situated in schools and communities, lack of discussion of how the knowledge and expertise of school, university and community participants have been utilized, and lack of evidence about the impact of these changes on teacher candidates, their pupils and the schools in which these new forms of university teacher education are situated. The paper concludes with suggestions about needed research on these emerging forms of university teacher education.

Author

• Kenneth Zeichner, University of Washington