Student Teaching’s Contribution to Preservice Teacher Development: A Review of Research Focused on the Preparation of Teachers for Urban and High-Needs Contexts

Source: Review of Educational Research, 83(1), March 2013, p. 3-69.

In this article, the authors are interested to determine what and how student teaching experiences contribute to preservice teachers’ development as future teachers of students in urban and/or high-needs schools specifically.

The present article reviews empirical articles published over the past two decades.
In addition, the article also considers the implications of student teaching for the schools that play host to it and for the students who attend those schools.

The review is anchored by sociocultural perspectives on learning and learning to teach.
The review highlights a disproportionate emphasis on belief and attitude change, a relatively slim evidence base concerning the development of actual teaching practice, a tendency toward reductive views of culture and context, and a need for more longitudinal analyses that address the situated and mediated nature of preservice teachers’ learning in the field.