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Teacher Preparation Program Essay

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In order for reflective communities of practice to work as a major component of teacher preparation programs, there must be well-crafted activities that serve to bridge the space between the theory and the praxis of teaching. Teacher candidates must be allowed to become culturally responsive and sustaining teachers in ways that are as authentic as possible, without the threat of putting vulnerable students in harm’s way. The work that some teacher preparation programs have been doing to approximate the work of teaching for teacher candidates is very ripe for exploration. Teaching approximations allow for teacher educators to create and/or replicate commonly occurring teaching scenarios for use with teacher candidates as they study, …show more content…

If used as assessments, teacher preparation programs may be able to do a better job of noting candidates who might be more effective with particular groups of people, and making career recommendations that truly result in cultural synchronicity, and the potential retention of teachers of color in the classroom. Systemic Use of Immersion Programs: Finally, teacher preparation programs must address field experiences. The idea of integrating coursework and field experiences is not new for teacher preparation programs. It has been happening for decades. However, the connections typically made between coursework and field experience are technical in nature. Teacher candidates learn methods for teaching subject area knowledge, or for managing classrooms, and are then sent to schools to practice those methods on real students. In these instances, schools are considered sites for practice, not sites for study. Schools are presented as natural and fixed. Teacher candidates learn how to function within schools as they currently are, and behave like the teachers who are already there. This approach does nothing more than perpetuate the status quo. What would be more effective is recasting schools not as entities in

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