Making it Real: A Practice-Based Early Childhood Teacher Education Program

In early childhood teacher education programs, the reality of educational systems must be understood and teacher candidates must be ready to deal with the current challenges schools face. The rationale and application of the principles of practice based teacher education are presented in this article. Practice-based teacher education programs offer experiences for candidates to begin to understand the complexities of teaching and integrate knowledge from learning and developmental theories into practice. Grossman et al. (Teach Teach Theor Pract 15(2):273-289,2009) identify three key concepts in how teaching candidates understand the complex practice of teaching: representations of practice, decomposition of practice, and approximations of practice. In this practice-based teacher education program, the epistemic practices are experienced in conjunction with one another, allowing candidates to explore and question a particular phenomenon about teaching or learning (focused inquiry), observe the teaching or learning about the phenomenon (directed observation), participate in planning and enacting teaching (guided practice), deconstruct experiences and create meaning (focused inquiry) followed by directed observation and/or opportunities to reenact (Hollins in J Teach Educ 62(4):395-407,2011). High leverage practices were focused on through the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS, Pianta et al. in Classroom assessment scoring system manual Pre-K. Brookes Publishing Co., Baltimore, 2008a). Benefits and drawbacks of a practice-based program are discussed.