Abstract
This article presents an overall exploratory comparison of two specific pre-service teacher preparation programmes at two research-intensive institutions of higher education in the USA and Romania. The main conclusions suggest that US and Romanian teacher candidates differ very little in their ratings of their respective programmes in terms of learning in the programme, preparation for general teaching and twenty-first century skills. The largest differences were recorded for the university supervisor and cooperating teacher constructs, which the US teacher candidates rated considerably higher than their Romanian peers, namely in the quality and extent of applied field and clinical experiences, which merit further exploration.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to express their gratitude to all the teacher candidates from NDSU and UBB who took part in this study. Without their time and contribution, this research would not have been possible. The authors also thank Dr Brent Hill for his generous assistance with the statistical analysis for this study. Finally, the authors acknowledge the journal’s anonymous reviewers and editorial board members for the revisions they recommended during the review process.