Teacher Preparation in Changing Times: One Program’s Journey Toward Re-Vision and Revision

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe a major revision process to the early childhood teacher education program at our 4-year university. We briefly outline the major policy and standards changes that we have witnessed impacting our work as early childhood teacher educators that were, in part, the impetus for our program changes. We describe our teacher education program as it was configured 2 years ago and as it exists today after major change efforts, highlighting the purposes and desired outcomes of these changes. We have conceptualized this journey as both a revision of the program and a re-visioning process. We focus on our attempt to integrate the intentions underlying policy and standards changes into our work in preparing teachers for the full range of early childhood program auspices, as well as for any and all of the children who are enrolled in them. In particular, we emphasize the integration of coursework and classroom experiences to more fully prepare our teacher candidates for effective practice with dual-language learning young children and their families. One result of this work, we hope, is the normalization of “difference” for our teacher candidates and the resultant disposition toward responsibility for educating all children.