The student teaching experience is a significant learning opportunity for preservice teachers (Clarke et al., 2013; Matsko et al., 2020). This field experience requires preservice teachers to work closely with a cooperating teacher (CT), who serves a fundamental role within teacher preparation programs, providing the classroom context and K-12…

Teacher candidates are called on to create effective lesson plans to implement during their student teaching semester, and certain components of lesson plans are recognized as particularly significant. Viewing lesson plans as the foundation for impactful instruction, it is necessary for teacher candidates to have skills in evaluating their plans…

The EdResearch for Action "Overview Series" summarizes the research on key topics to provide K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students. This overview brief discusses what research shows about how student teaching experiences can best prepare new teachers.…

This practice brief is written by two Black members of an IHE who instruct in a teacher preparation program. One author is an assistant professor in the department of education, and the other, is an adjunct faculty member and field supervisor for student teachers, longtime administrator, and adjunct faculty member at multiple IHEs. Additionally,…

Teaching is a challenging profession, let alone the additional hurdles placed on educators to overcome systemic barriers to close opportunity gaps and fill in missing education from the COVID-19 pandemic years. Teacher preparation programs are therefore tasked with upskilling future teachers with not only content knowledge and pedagogy, but also…

This article shares development of a mentor teacher training program to support teacher candidates in their student teaching internship. The mentor teacher training program includes three parts: (a) online training on internship processes and procedures, co-teaching, and a department developed Framework for Extended Oral and Written Feedback, (b)…

Teacher certification exams were put on hold as New York City became the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis in March of 2020. State officials closed testing centers and school buildings, and teacher candidates began to panic as administrators at their student teaching placements worked feverishly to adjust. This changed teacher candidates' ability…

Creating a strong clinical practice experience for every teacher at scale requires that three core actors--prep programs, school districts, and states--work together. This framework sets out the six focus areas of clinical practice backed by research and supported by the field as the most important to build a quality clinical practice experience.…

Clinical practice opportunities are critical elements of teacher preparation. However, the landscape is extensive, encompassing an ever-growing variety of preparation models, from centuries-old traditional student teaching to newly minted registered apprenticeships. The purpose of this paper is to create a clinical practice lexicon for the…

Two recent CALDER studies published in "Exceptional Children" provide new evidence about special education teacher preparation and its implications for students with disabilities. The first study (Theobald et al., 2021) shows that special educators who received dual endorsements in special education and another subject had lower rates of…

In light of national challenges brought on by COVID-19, on April 6, 2020 Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform (CEEDAR) hosted a virtual meeting of State Education Agency and Educator Preparation Program leaders from across the country focused on the following: (1) strategies that preparation program faculty…

This paper focuses on the national, institutional and pedagogical responses as a result of the closure of schools and universities in March 2020 in Portugal. It includes a brief description and analysis of the initiatives and responses to the crisis as well as the difficulties, the challenges and the opportunities. The paper concludes with the…

Teacher education in Ontario, Canada has had to respond to a myriad of challenges presented by the COVID-19 crisis, particularly after government authorities decided to close schools until students and faculty could return safely. In this paper, we examine some of the major challenges that are being faced by teacher educators as they prepare for…

Over the last two decades, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has emerged as a pedagogical framework for inclusive teaching and learning. UDL builds on learner variability as a starting point for instructional and curricular design, and aims to minimize barriers in the learning environment. In addition to its widespread use in K12 settings and…

Shouldn't teachers learn how children think during their training? In this essay, the author considers why they don't and what we might do about it. Many U.S. teachers report that their education is overly theoretical and not of great utility. It's clear that they are required to learn some basic principles of psychology as part of that education,…