479
Educação, Santa Maria, v. 35, n. 3, p. 479-501, set./dez. 2010
Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in
College and University-based teacher education
Rethinking the Connections Between Campus Courses and Field
Experiences in College and University-based Teacher Education
Ken Zeichner*
Abstract
In this paper, I discuss one of the central problems that has plagued college and
university-based pre-service teacher education for many years, the disconnect
between the campus and school-based components of programs. First, I will
draw on my own experiences as a teacher educator and administrator over the
last thirty plus years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the literature
to lay out various dimensions of this issue. Then, utililizing the concept of hybridity
and “third space,” I will discuss a variety of current work in programs across the
U.S. that offers much promise in deepening the quality of teacher learning in
college and university-based teacher education programs and the ability of teacher
education graduates to enact desired teaching practices in complex school
settings. This work in creating hybrid spaces in teacher education where
academic and practitioner knowledge and knowledge that exists in communities
come together in new less hierarchical ways in the service of teacher learning
represents a paradigm shift in the epistemology of teacher education programs.
I argue that this shift toward more democratic and inclusive ways of working with
schools and communities is necessary for colleges and universities to fulfill their
mission in the education of teachers.
Keywords: Education of teachers; Campus and school-based; Programs across.
Repensando as conexões entre a formação na universidade e as
experiências de campo na formação de professores em faculdades e
universidades
Resumo
Neste artigo, discuto um dos problemas centrais que tem afligido, já há alguns
anos, os cursos de formação inicial de professores nas faculdades e nas univer-
sidades, a desconexão entre os componentes curriculares acadêmicos e a par-
cela da formação docente que acontece nas escolas. Primeiro, extrairei de mi-
nha experiência como formador de professores e administrador durante mais de
trinta anos na Universidade de Wisconsin – Madison e da literatura, elementos
para discorrer sobre as várias dimensões dessa questão. Assim, usando o con-
ceito de hibridismo e “terceiro espaço”, discutirei vários trabalhos, em andamen-
to em programas formativos nos Estados Unidos, promissores quanto à qualifi-
* Boeing Professor of Teacher Education – University of Washington-Seattle.
480
Educação, Santa Maria, v. 35, n. 3, p. 479-501, set./dez. 2010
Ken Zeichner
cação da aprendizagem docente nos cursos de formação de professores das
universidades e das faculdades, assim como a habilidade dos graduados dos
cursos de formação de professores para realizar práticas de ensino desejadas
em espaços escolares complexos. Esse trabalho de criação de espaços híbri-
dos na formação de professores no qual o conhecimento empírico e acadêmico
e o conhecimento que existe nas comunidades estão juntos de modos menos
hierárquicos a serviço da aprendizagem docente representam uma mudança de
paradigma na epistemologia dos programas de formação de professores. Discu-
to que essa mudança rumo a modos mais democráticos e inclusivos de traba-
lhar com escolas e comunidades é necessária para as faculdades e as universi-
dades, a fim de que elas possam cumprir sua missão na formação de professo-
res.
Palavras-chave: Formação de professores; Universidade-escola; Programas
formativos.
Staffed with graduate students, temporary and part-time
faculty and with few resources to develop field
placements, U.S. teacher certification programs are the
Cinderellas of the American university. Ideas and money
are rarely spent on coordinating what is learned on
campus with what goes on in schools (Featherstone,
2007, p. 210).
Often, the clinical side of teacher education has been
fairly haphazard, depending on the idiosyncrasies of
loosely selected placements with little guidance about
what happens in them and little connection to university
work (Darling-Hammond, 2009, p. 11).
In this paper, I discuss one of the central problems that has plagued
college and university-based pre-service teacher education for many years, the
disconnect between the campus and school-based components of programs.
First, I will draw on my own experiences as a teacher educator and administrator
over the last thirty plus years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the
literature to lay out various dimensions of this issue. Then, utililizing the concept
of hybridity and “third space,” I will discuss a variety of current work in programs
across the U.S. that offers much promise in deepening the quality of teacher
learning in college and university-based teacher education programs and the
ability of teacher education graduates to enact desired teaching practices in
complex school settings. This work in creating hybrid spaces in teacher education
where academic and practitioner knowledge and knowledge that exists in
communities come together in new less hierarchical ways in the service of teacher
learning represents a paradigm shift in the epistemology of teacher education
programs. I argue that this shift toward more democratic and inclusive ways of
working with schools and communities is necessary for colleges and universities
to fulfill their mission in the education of teachers.
481
Educação, Santa Maria, v. 35, n. 3, p. 479-501, set./dez. 2010
Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in
College and University-based teacher education
In order to enable me to focus on campus-field connections in this
paper, I am using the term academic knowledge to represent the diverse forms of
knowledge and expertise that exists among college and university faculty and
staff. In doing so, I recognize that this is an oversimplification and that within
colleges and universities there are various cultures that are often in tension with
each other within and outside of the schools, colleges and departments of
education (Bullough et al. 1997; Goodlad, 1990; Labaree, 2004). My use of the
term academic knowledge includes both the knowledge acquired in arts and
science and education courses. An examination of the internal tensions within
teacher education institutions is beyond the scope of this paper.
For most of my career as a university-based teacher educator, I have
been responsible for organizing and supporting field-based experiences in schools
and communities for prospective teachers and in doing research on the proces-
ses of student teacher learning in pre-service teacher education programs. One
of the most difficult challenges for me over the years has been to mobilize
intellectual energy in my department around strengthening the connections
between what our student teachers do in their school and community placements
and the rest of their teacher education program. For the most part, the supervision
of student teacher work in schools and the teaching of campus courses have
been done at UW-Madison by doctoral students and this work serves as their
main source of financial support during their graduate studies (Zeichner, 2005).
While most of these graduate students are interested in doing an
outstanding job in teaching and/or supervising pre-service students, many of
them are not interested in teacher education as a field of study and do not
participate in any of the graduate courses that are available to them that address
the literature on teacher education and learning to teach. Although they may be
experts in the teaching or reading or mathematics and have a number of years of
successful P-12 teaching experience, they are often not aware of what is known
from research about how to support teacher learning and its transfer to the early
years of teaching in the context of a university-based teacher education program
(e.g., Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; Darling-Hammond, 2006; Smagorinsky,
Cook & Johnson, 2003) and they do not necessarily think of themselves as
teacher educators.
Even when graduate students have the knowledge and expertise related
to supporting student teacher learning and do a good job in their work, their time
in the program is limited and each fall a new cohort of graduate students enters
the department with little knowledge of the specifics of the work that has gone on
before and the process of inducting them into an ongoing process of program
renewal begins anew. Because graduate student supervisors often come to
Madison from around the world to complete their studies, they are often not
familiar with the local schools, and the manner in which their roles are often
structured has them working in several different schools at any moment and in
somewhat different schools each semester. Also, with the exception of the two
482
Educação, Santa Maria, v. 35, n. 3, p. 479-501, set./dez. 2010
Ken Zeichner
elementary education professional development school cohorts where students
stay with the same university supervisor and the same two schools over 4
semesters, each semester a supervisor is responsible for working with a different
group of practicum students or student teachers, a situation that makes it more
difficult to go into depth in the supervision process (Zeichner & Miller, 1997).
Even in UW-Madison programs and in other institutions where
permanent faculty and/or staff participate in a significant way in teaching campus
courses in teacher education programs and in supervising students in their field
placements the disconnection between campus and field-based teacher education
has been a perennial problem (Vick, 2006). It has been clearly documented for
many years (e.g., Clifford & Guthrie, 1988; Goodlad, 1990; Labaree, 2004), there
are few incentives for tenure-track faculty to invest time in coordinating campus
and field-based teacher education components and closely mentoring and
monitoring the work of field-based supervisors. Sometimes institutions have turned
to using a corps of clinical faculty (e.g., recently retired teachers) to do the work
of supervising students in their school placements, but often these very dedicated
and competent individuals lack the authority to participate in decisions about the
teacher education programs and are not in close touch with the campus-based
portions of the programs (Bullough et al. 1997; Bullough et al. 2004; Cornbleth &
Ellsworth, 1994; Zeichner, 2002).
Often the placement process in college and universities is “outsourced”
to a central administrative placement office rather than being based in
departments, and cooperating teacher availability and administrative considerations
rather than what is best for the learning of the novice teachers often determines
where prospective teachers are placed for their school experiences (Zeichner,
1996).
On the school side, the classroom teachers who are asked to mentor
teacher candidates who are placed in their classrooms for varying periods of
time during practicum, student teaching and internship experiences are asked
to do the work of teacher education in addition to fully carrying out the
responsibilities of classroom teaching and if they are compensated for this work
at all, they usually receive what would amount to a below minimum wage salary
if it were calculated per hour. Under the traditional view of field experience which
has been dominant for many years, these school-based teacher educators are
expected mainly to provide a place for student teachers to practice teaching and
they are usually not provided with the kind of preparation and support they would
need (Valencia et al, in press) to implement a more active and educative
conception of mentoring (Carroll, 2007; Margolis, 2007). As Gorodetsky, Barak,
& Harari (2007) point out, even in the current wave of school-university partnerships
in teacher education, colleges and universities continue to maintain hegemony
over the construction and dissemination of knowledge, and schools remain in
the position of “practice fields” (Barab & Duffy, 2000) where student teachers are
to try out the practices provided by the university.
483
Educação, Santa Maria, v. 35, n. 3, p. 479-501, set./dez. 2010
Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in
College and University-based teacher education
The Traditional Divide between Campus and Field-Based Teacher
Education
In the historically dominant “application of theory” model of pre-service
teacher education in the U.S. prospective teachers are supposed to learn theories
at the university and then go to schools to practice or apply what they learned on
campus (Korthagen & Kessels, 1999; Tom, 1997). Alternatively in some of the
early entry models of teacher preparation where there is very little pre-service
preparation before candidates assume full responsibility for a classroom, it is
assumed that most of what novice teachers need to learn about teaching can be
learned on the job in the midst of practice and that the role of the university in the
process can be minimized without serious loss (Grossman & Loeb, 2008).
Although there is a growing consensus that much of what teachers
need to learn must be learned in and from practice rather than in preparing for
practice (Ball & Cohen; Hamerness et al. 2005) there is much disagreement
about the conditions for teacher learning that must exist for this learning in and
from practice to be educative and enduring. For example, the point at which a
teacher should become the teacher of record is an issue about which there has
been much disagreement (Stoddart & Floden, 1996). Advocates of “early entry”
programs have argued that with careful selection and a minimum of pre-service
training, individuals can become teachers of record fairly quickly and learn what
they need to learn about teaching with the support of a good mentor (Grossman
& Loeb, 2008). Others advocate for a more gradual entry to teaching with the
assumption of full responsibility for a classroom coming after or in conjunction
with a substantive coursework component and an extended internship or residency
under the careful guidance of a mentor teacher who is responsible for the
classroom. The teacher residency models that are the focus of a $100 million
dollars of federal stimulus money in the first year of the Obama administration
are an example of programs that represent the later position (Berry, Montgomery,
& Snyder, 2008).
A perennial problem in traditional college and university sponsored
teacher education programs has been the lack of connection between campus-
based university-based teacher education courses and field experiences. Although
most university-based teacher education programs now include multiple field
experiences over the length of the program and often situate field experiences in
some type of school-university partnership (e.g., professional development
schools, partner schools), the disconnect between what students are taught in
campus courses and their opportunities for learning to enact these practices in
their school placements is often very great even within professional development
and partner schools (Bullough et al, 1997; Bullough, et al. 1999; Zeichner, 2007).
For example, it is very common for cooperating teachers with whom
students work during their field placements know very little about the specifics of
the methods and foundations courses that their student teachers have completed