Teaching Student Teachers to Reflect

Conventional teacher education programs follow an apprenticeship model and, in so doing,aspire to provide student teachers with pedagogical skills and techniques derived from a preexisting body of knowledge. In this contribution to HER's special series, "Teachers, Teaching,and Teacher Education," Kenneth M. Zeichner and Daniel P. Liston argue that the conventional approach inhibits the self-directed growth of student teachers and thereby fails to promote their full professional development. Illustrating an alternative model, the authors describe and assess the elementary student teaching program at the University of Wisconsin,Madison — a program oriented toward the goals of reflective teaching, greater teacher autonomy,and increasing democratic participation in systems of educational governance.