Enhancing Early Childhood Education Teacher Candidates' Experiences

Teacher education programs face many challenges preparing teacher candidates for the early childhood education classroom. Initiating undergraduate research programs in conjunction with early childhood teacher education can provide a greatly enhanced experience for teacher candidates and bear great benefits to the departments sponsoring this. Undergraduate research initiatives provide pre-service teachers with tremendous opportunities to gain hands-on experiences with many of the theories and strategies they study in their coursework. Such initiatives also serve as tremendous recruiting tools, especially for those early childhood education programs seeking to recruit more males, teacher candidates of color, and those from low-SES backgrounds. Rigorous preparation must be completed before teacher candidates begin to conduct fieldwork, but the benefits to teacher candidates, mentor teachers, and children are many.