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[Internship Graduate]:
Encourage more students to complete internship because it builds greater
rapport with students, continuity in teaching the curriculum, and a better "feel" for how teaching
really goes.
[Single Semester Graduate]:
I believe it would be more beneficial for all students to be required
to do two full semesters in student teaching. This would better prepare the student teachers for
teaching. I believed that my student teaching was the more educational thing I did during
college. I truly wish I would have done an internship. I believe my first year would have gone
much better if I had.
Discussion
The educational route taken to enter the teaching profession makes a difference in
classroom effectiveness and career longevity (Darling-Hammond, 2006a). Intuition would lead
one to believe that more practice at a skill indeed results in greater skill attainment. Related to
this study, it would seem those who received more education-related coursework and more hours
of clinical practice, especially focused on populations of high need, would realize better career
outcomes. The programs of study this research examined showed great variance in the number
of education courses required and hours spent in the field working with students in general and
with students from diverse populations, particularly. It seems counterintuitive that there is little
difference between the outcomes of someone who spent over 200 hours in classrooms working
with greater numbers of students with high needs compared to another who spent only 43 hours
working with a more homogeneous group of students. For this case study, the graduates—even
those who left teaching and who never started—perceived their education as adequately
preparatory. (Note: Respondents indicating they never entered teaching after their degrees were
conferred completed survey questions about this decision. None of the respondents indicated
inadequate preparation for teaching; all provided other reasons for taking different career paths
after graduation. Some of the reasons given for not entering teaching included raising a family,
health problems, and no openings available.) What is it, then, that compelled the participants in
this study to maintain fairly similar feelings about their preservice experiences and their post-
graduation outcomes, even though their paths to the classroom differed?
Perhaps an answer is hidden within Cochran-Smith’s (2008) theory of social justice in
teacher education and other research focusing on the social and cultural contexts of schooling.
This theory, integrating theories for social justice, teaching practice, and teacher preparation,
promotes equity, recognition, and respect for all social, racial, and cultural groups. It views
teachers as “potential agents of social change…[who] can influence students’ learning and life
chances” (p. 16) and views teacher education as the source for future teachers “to learn about
subject matter, pedagogy, culture, language, the social and cultural contexts of schooling, and the
purposes of education” (p. 21). Closer examination of the demographics of the participants as
well as the students they teach, the teacher educators, and similarities instead of differences
among the programs of study, could provide more insight.
Research indicates some of the problems with early career attrition is the disconnect
between the backgrounds of students and their teachers (“A High Quality Teacher,” 2000). A
majority of the study sample were employed in high poverty rural schools and most indicated
working with students from diverse populations, yet research indicates that schools filled with
such diversity can be overwhelming to teachers who are working with students who differ in