Providing Early Childhood Education Teacher Candidates Diverse Clinical Understandings Through Professional Development School Experiences

Abstract

Teacher education programs serving early childhood education teacher candidates have unique challenges and need to work to ensure that each future educator be exposed to a variety of settings and practices throughout their preparation in order to best prepare them to serve the needs of their future young students. A solid background in human development, a well-rounded complement of methods courses grounded in developmentally appropriate practice and experience in a diverse variety of Professional Development Schools (PDS) will go far in meeting this goal. In Pre-K through 3rd grade classrooms early childhood teacher educators can significantly shape these competencies through their choice of, support for, and use of PDSs.