Chapter 1: Introduction: Preparing Advocates

This book is the fourth volume in the six-part series Theory to Practice: Educational Psychology for Teachers and Teaching. The objective of most other volumes in this series is to help instructors apply and model fundamental principles of learning, assessment, motivation, and development in preparing their students for the diverse, multidimensional, uncertain, and socially embedded classrooms in which these future educators will teach. We believe this volume to be a strong complement to others in the series. Other volumes focus on providing the tools to teach long-standing domains within the field—learning (Volume 3), assessment (1), development (5), motivation (2)—by emphasizing the importance of modeling the practices they teach and how they reflect psychological principles. This volume aims to prepare readers to advocate for these principles in their programs, and to prepare preservice teachers to do likewise in the increasingly diverse K–12 classrooms they will soon guide. Even more, we hope this volume will help in structors in shaping pre-service teachers to be stronger advocates for their own students.