Case 1: Faculty Learning Communities as A Means of Improving Programs and Practice

The teacher education faculty at Sacred Heart University developed and sustained a professional learning experience in practice-based teacher education (PBTE) with the intention to reform university-based courses, while simultaneously pursuing program redesign and revisiting clinical practice partnerships. We share our experience as a PBTE-focused faculty learning community (FLC) developing unity as we learned about high leverage practices (HLPs) and the pedagogies of rehearsal.

A field-based component has long been recognized as critical to teacher education, providing opportunities for candidates to gain experience in clinical settings and apply theories and pedagogies to analysis and reflection of experiences. In our context, candidates have historically been required to spend time weekly observing and assisting across a variety of urban and suburban public schools in our area. More recently, however, best practices have shifted to include pedagogies of enactment, in which teacher educators provide opportunities for candidates to practice, reflect, and receive feedback related to particular teaching practices that have been shown to impact candidates’ access and achievement within the university classroom and readiness for the profession.