Coherent Experiences: The New “Missing Paradigm” in Teacher Education

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: Relationships Between Preservice Teacher Preparation and Practice

Abstract

We assert that coherent experiences are the current “missing paradigm” in teacher education (Shulman, 1987). We will discuss the ways in which teacher education courses and field placements can often be characterized as incoherent. Building off of Dewey’s (1916/1985, 1938/1963) philosophies on educative experiences, we will describe our conceptualization of coherent experiences as experiences that build upon each other and towards a consistent end and are intentional, continuous, unified, and clear. We will describe our attempts to provide teacher candidates with coherent experiences and introduce our school-situated, cross-disciplinary (mathematics and ELA) approach to teacher preparation as a type of model that provides novices with discipline-specific knowledge as well as opportunities to approximate practices with high quality subject- and context-specific feedback.

Authors

• Tracy L. Weston, The University of Alabama

• Shannon Coman Henderson, The University of Alabama