“Welcome to the Real World”: Navigating the Gap Between Best Teaching Practices and Current Reality

Abstract

Preservice teachers sometimes experience a gap between best practices that they learn in teacher preparation programs and actual practices that they encounter in classrooms as student teachers. In this self-study, I investigate the gap between best and actual practices, as experienced by a university teacher educator who spent a year as a student teacher in a middle and high school English language arts program. Occupying the identities of a student, a student teacher, a teacher educator, and a researcher, I explored the gap from these multiple perspectives, with the intent of learning how to better support student teachers' development. My findings fall into three distinct phases: (1) In “Mind the gap,” I explain the dilemma I encountered as a student teacher. (2) In “Mine the gap,” I describe the process of exploring the nature and extent of this dilemma. (3) In “The gap is mine,” I analyze a shift in my understanding of where the gap is located. I then illustrate, in a series of short vignettes, the significant impact of that shift on my practice, both as a teacher and as a supervisor of student teachers, and how a core reflection approach to teacher education has supported me in that work. Finally, I discuss some broader practical implications for teacher education programs.