The Creation and Evolution of an Elementary Field-Based Reading Course: A Professor's Perspective

A compelling reason for taking any teacher preparation course into the field is to expose students to real world situations where they can actually see content connect with pedagogy in a real sense rather than to vicariously imagine through reading textbooks, viewing videos, listening to lectures, or participating in class discussions. Truly the old adage, "Tell me, I forget; Show me, I remember; Involve me, I understand" applies directly to field-based teacher preparation. Learning theory supports the notion of field-based teacher preparation. Students retain only 5 percent of what they hear, 10 percent from what they read, 20 percent from multimedia, 30 percent from demonstrations, 50 percent from group discussions, and 75 percent from practice. But if students are allowed to teach what they are learning, retention increases to 90 percent. Certainly, in our pre-service teacher preparation program, we have always focused on providing the best learning environment and thus have come to envision the field experience as an integral part of a best environment. With the national call for educational renewal in creating new teacher training paradigms (Goodlad, 1994) and in the spirit of providing students with more hands-on teaching experiences, we commenced a challenging collaborative effort in the spring of 1992. Aided by a $30,000 state-funded planning grant for universities to become Centers for Professional Development and Technology, our faculty joined teachers and principals from two local schools (an elementary and a junior high school) in discussing, benchmarking (Tucker, 1996), and outlining what we felt pre-service teachers needed to know and do to be effective teachers. Through our examination of current research, we realized what we were doing was new, innovating, and exciting. As we moved through the process, questions were raised: Will our decisions take us in the right direction? Specifically, how do we best interact with the in-service teachers, the classrooms, and the children to the advantage of our preservice teachers? Will there be decisions we make that impact our students favorably at the expense of the classroom student? Will field-based teacher preparation actually produce better teachers? Is the risk going to be worth it? Though, at that time, outside funding was not available to implement a professional school initiative, we were eager to move forward with a small-scale pilot study in the elementary and secondary school that fall. For the elementary portion of the pilot, three elementary professors from science, social studies, and reading met throughout the summer school session trying to create a new pedagogical design for content delivery. Initially, the three professors felt confident that a nine-hour integrated science, social studies, and reading course team-taught in an elementary school would be an excellent route and most effective for content conveyance. Eager to try out this innovative approach, we held numerous planning meetings to work out course integration and requirement details. However, because of insufficient planning time, professor differences, and the difficulties encountered in trying to merge three courses into one, the design was temporarily abandoned. Because so much effort had already gone into creating a new preparation model, the collaborative decided to offer at least one course in the field that fall; the initial reading course was selected, and I accepted the challenge to teach the course. This course lent itself to field experiences as objectives included: learning about major reading approaches and philosophies; teaching vocabulary, comprehension, and word identification skills and strategies; and organizing and assessing instruction in elementary grade classrooms. A room was readied in the elementary school where the course was to be taught. Several mentor teachers (at least one mentor per grade level) were principal-selected and professor-trained to assist with teaching and provide field placements for a small twelve-student cohort. …