AACTE Awards Educators from University of Washington, Boise State University and Stanford University for Outstanding Journal of Teacher Education Article
Nancy Place, Sheila Valencia,
Susan Martin
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) will present one of two 2010 awards for Outstanding Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) Article to a collaborative team of authors from three universities for their article "Complex Interactions in Student Teaching: Lost Opportunities for Learning."
This award recognizes exemplary scholarship in the areas of teacher education or of teaching and learning with implications for teacher education. The award will be presented Saturday, February 20, during the Wilbur J. Cohen Lecture at AACTE’s 62nd Annual Meeting & Exhibits in Atlanta, GA.
The article, published in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal, was a collaborative effort by faculty at Stanford University, the University of Washington (Seattle and Bothell), and Boise State University. They are:
- Sheila Valencia, Professor, College of Education, University of Washington-Seattle;
- Susan Martin, Associate Professor, College of Education, Boise State University;
- Nancy Place, Associate Professor, Education Department, University of Washington-Bothell; and
- Pam Grossman, Professor, School of Education, Stanford University
The article examines the impact of university culture and context on student teaching. The authors explored how interactions in specific contexts shaped opportunities for student teachers to learn to teach language arts. The findings reveal that there were numerous instances of lost opportunities for student teachers to learn to teach, including sparse feedback on teaching subject matter and few links to methods courses, plus limited opportunities to develop identities as teachers. The authors noted that structures that frame student teaching and its participants have deep roots in the cultures of universities and schools, which must be considered if student teaching is to maximize its potential.
The AACTE reviewers who selected the winning articles said this article was insightful, "providing a disturbing analysis of what occurs [in student teaching] as well as missed opportunities regarding deep content work. . . . The findings were powerful and well substantiated."
"This carefully conducted study from the perspective of activity theory on how student teaching in different contexts shapes what student teachers learn and do not learn is a model for the kind of rigorous research that is needed in teacher education," remarked Ken Zeichner, Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. "The findings of this research reveal a number of serious lost opportunities for student teacher learning that occurred under a traditional model of student teaching and challenge us to think differently about how to design the student teaching component in teacher education programs in a way that makes student teacher learning a more central concern."
The other Outstanding JTE Article Award for 2010 honors an article about teachers’ professional development for mathematics education by Rebekah Elliott, Elham Kazemi, Kristin Lesseig, Judith Mumme, Cathy Carroll, and Megan Kelley-Petersen.
For more information about the JTE, visit http://jte.sagepub.com.