Teacher Education for Literacy Teaching: Research at the Personal, Institutional, and Collective Levels

Abstract

One of the complaints about teacher education is that research done on programs tends to be local and ends at the completion of the program. As Clift and Brady (2005) found in the American Educational Research Association (AERA) panel on research and teacher education, between 1995 and 2001 only 24 studies were conducted on preservice literacy courses. And only one “studies practice beyond student teaching: most studies were conducted over one semester, typically the student teaching semester.” Clift and Brady argued that “[t]he short-term nature of this research limits our ability to understand how teacher education methods courses and fieldwork lead to long-term professional growth” (2005, p. 317). The sole longitudinal study – that by Grossman et al. (2000) – concluded that it is necessary to connect the practices of beginning teachers with their teacher education program if we are to truly understand the practices of beginning teachers.