Promoting This We Believe and the AMLE Standards with Teacher Candidates

Abstract

In an introductory middle grades course, teacher candidates synthesize and apply the concepts from key middle level documents through their coursework. Along with a popular middle grades text (Brown & Knowles, 2014), teacher candidates read "This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents" (National Middle School Association, 2010) as well as the Association for Middle Level Education Middle Level Teacher Preparation Standards (AMLE Standards; AMLE, 2012). As the author has taught this course over several semesters, they have modified, updated, and otherwise adapted several aspects of the course in order to integrate these documents into the program more directly. These modifications and adaptations stem from their vision for teaching (cf. Duffy, 1998) as well as works including the Middle Level Educational Research Agenda (Mertens, Caskey, Bishop, Flowers, Strahan, Andrews, & Daniel, 2016) and a recent handbook on clinical partnerships at the middle level (Howell, Carpenter, & Jones, 2016). Here, the author shares how they have incorporated "This We Believe" and the AMLE Standards into this course to enhance teacher candidates' knowledge, skills, and dispositions for teaching at the middle level. First, the author describes the course and key concepts from the two documents that are integrated into the course. Next, the author shares examples of several course activities and assignments that incorporate the documents. Finally, the author reflects on the overall integration of key middle level documents in the course.