Teacher education in practice: reconciling practices and theories in the United States context

Abstract

This paper reports findings from an 18-month qualitative study that followed the experiences of nine teacher residents, their site professors, site coordinators, clinical teachers and principals in three professional learning schools. The study examined the tensions that emerged as teacher preparation theory intersected with the context-bound realities of daily life in schools and the political constraints that diminish possibilities for inclusive education. The paper addresses implications for teacher preparation programmes by reporting how teacher residents negotiated their understanding of and commitment for inclusive education through three themes: (a) critical reflection as an emergent practice, (b) whose learning, and (c) the trouble with behaviour. Interpreting these themes has implications for programmatic designs in teacher preparation.

Keywords:

• inclusive education
• teacher education
• culture practices
• teacher learning
• teacher practice
• teacher collaboration

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of the Office of Special Education Programmes grants H325T070009, H325D080027, and H325P060012. Funding agency endorsement of the ideas expressed in this manuscript should not be inferred. Support from members of the research team, particularly Federico Waitoller, is acknowledged.

Notes

1. Majority–minority refers to demographic contexts in which groups of individuals clustered by ethnicity, race, and/or language characteristics may comprise the majority of the population while in a broader geographic area, they may be in the minority. Since minority status in the United States can also be accompanied by institutional or explicit racism and bias, population areas in which minority groups achieve majority status can be sites where various kinds of social capital may be undergoing a renegotiation.

2. At the time that these data were collected, each state in the United States set a threshold for student performance by grade level for each school. Schools were expected to show growth across students, improving their aggregate student performance annually based on a single, standardized measure of success. Schools that failed to met their set point were put under surveillance with increasing intervention annually if performance did not improve.