Clinical Experiences Handbook

Teacher education in the
College of Education and Human Development

Teacher education has been central to the mission of the College of Education and Human Development since its founding in 1905. That mission has expanded from simply training classroom teachers to preparing education and human development professionals to practice in a variety of settings including preK-12 classrooms, family and community services, and positions in government agencies and private industry. Today’s programs require a combination of strong content knowledge, coursework, and field experiences to ensure that new and experienced teachers have the skills and experiences they need to be successful. The mission of the college is evident in the conceptual themes that frame our programs: inquiry, research, and reflection; diversity; and life-long professional development.

Promoting inquiry, research, and reflection

The college’s innovative approach to the initial preparation of teachers has demonstrated success. Students enter the initial licensure programs with strong content knowledge as demonstrated by high grade point averages, experience in working with diverse populations of pupils, and extensive experience volunteering in schools. The master of education (M.Ed.)/initial licensure programs prepare students to enter their chosen field with both effective teaching tools and expertise in content areas. Students use the strategies of inquiry, research, and reflection in their own learning as well as in their teaching during clinical experiences. Our programs undergo rigorous review by the Minnesota Board of Teaching and the National Association for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).

Honoring the diversity of our communities and learners

As a professional school within a state land-grant institution, the college is committed to preparing educators who can both adapt to and lead change in urban, suburban, and rural educational settings. Today’s educators must be prepared to work in settings filled with students of diverse abilities, creeds, languages, nationalities, races, and economic backgrounds. Given its urban location in the Twin Cities, the college is particularly focused on the need to improve urban education. Collaborative partnerships with a range of agencies — community, law-enforcement, health, social work, businesses, and schools — provide an integrated approach to the challenges of urban education. To meet the needs of metropolitan districts, the college is strongly committed to preparing teachers who themselves represent the diverse backgrounds of their students. The college provides financial and instructional support to the Common Ground Consortium, the Multicultural Teacher Development Project, the Homegrown Teacher Partnership Project, and partnerships with schools through the Teachers of Color state grants.

Fostering a commitment to life-long learning and professional development

To ensure that our students succeed today and in the future, the college seeks to prepare its students with skills and strategies to meet the needs of students in a rapidly changing society and world. The college also seeks to prepare a wide range of professionals who will assume leadership positions at the local, state, national, and international levels.

Consistent with national recommendations to strengthen the academic background of beginning teachers, the college offers nearly all of its initial teacher licensure programs at the master’s degree level. Candidates enter the college with strong content knowledge acquired during the completion of their undergraduate degrees. The college remains strongly linked to the undergraduate programs at the University of Minnesota through its undergraduate foundations of education degree program as well as through other undergraduate programs in the college. Students who complete the licensure program often continue with coursework necessary to complete the M.Ed. degree.

The clinical teaching experience

Extensive field experiences are central to each program in the College of Education and Human Development. Throughout their licensure programs, student teachers work with cooperating teachers and University supervisors to develop pedagogical skills as well as the dispositions toward inquiry, research, and reflection that lead to life-long professional development. Clinical opportunities also provide the opportunity for student teachers to link research, theory, and practice in a “real-world” setting. In addition, they experience the intense social interaction with pupils and colleagues that is the essence of effective teaching.

The college proposes no single model for an ideal student teaching experience. Rather, it suggests that cooperating teachers consider alternative models consistent with the need to provide each student teacher with an effective student teaching experience. In some cases, this may involve team-teaching with the student teacher, while in other cases it may involve giving the student teacher sole responsibility for teaching a class. In other cases, student teachers may work with more than one cooperating teacher. The college expects that cooperating teachers initiate the student teacher into the larger world of the school’s policies and culture in such a way that the student teacher perceives herself or himself as a contributing member of the school’s faculty.

The college’s central theme for the clinical teaching experience is the fostering of teacher reflection and inquiry. By reflecting on their own teaching and posing questions about their experience, student teachers recognize specific aspects of their teaching requiring further development. And, as they revise their instruction and achieve success, student teachers begin to generate their own theories of successful instruction.

Cooperating teachers play an important role in fostering reflection. By providing ongoing feedback about a student teacher’s instruction and relationships with pupils, cooperating teachers encourage student teachers to reflect upon, evaluate, and improve their teaching. By fostering inquiry about the larger purposes for teaching and the nature of schooling, the cooperating teacher helps student teachers define their roles as professionals.

In this process, it is important that cooperating teachers recognize that learning to teach is a long-term developmental process. This suggests the need to help student teachers through various developmental phases of their student teaching. For example, their idealism may give way to a sense of dejection; their singular focus on curriculum may need to be broadened to include relationships with pupils, or their reliance on prior role models or their own experience as a student may need to be modified to account for new models or experience. Realizing that novice teachers may take years to master the intricacies of teaching suggests the need to temper one’s expectations regarding instant success in the classroom and to focus on grappling with more basic developmental challenges.

This process of development is part of the student teacher’s larger program within the college that is organized around ten Minnesota Standards of Effective Practice for Teachers. Each of the program’s foundations and methods courses address particular standards. Within these courses, student teachers are assessed according to particular tasks and criteria related to these standards. By drawing on the same standards, University supervisors can provide student teachers with feedback according to the same or similar criteria, enhancing the link between the college’s courses and clinical experiences.

August 2005