1. Innovative School-University Partnerships: Insights and Understandings from a Year-Long Internship
- Author
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Putman, S. Michael, Polly, Drew, and Fitzgerald, Miranda
- Abstract
As educator preparation programs (EPPs) seek to enact programmatic innovations to effectively prepare candidates to enter the profession, they must create structures that empower teacher candidates (TCs) to apply their knowledge in increasingly complex situations within authentic contexts, i.e., the classroom (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015). These opportunities, or clinical experiences, represent an important vehicle for TCs to develop pedagogical skills as they observe and learn from clinical educators (CEs) while enacting the methods and strategies learned within university coursework (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015; Zeichner, 2021). When delivered within school-university partnerships, opportunities to define, implement, and refine clinical experiences for TCs are maximized, thus enabling EPPs to systematically examine key elements to increase TCs readiness to teach (Snow et al., 2016; Zeichner, 2021). This article describes the multi-year development and implementation of an intensive year-long clinical experience delivered within the context of a school-university partnership. Subsequently, key findings and lingering questions are presented to provide stakeholders, including other EPPs, with sources of information to consider within the development and delivery of clinical experiences.
- Published
- 2022