Preparing Elementary Teachers

Programs designed collaboratively between school systems and schools of education provide a context for facilitating the integration of preservice classroom instruction with experience in the field, as well as making university classroom instruction more sensitive to current issues in public education. This paper describes an emerging model program--East Carolina University's Model Clinical Teaching Program (MCTP)--collaboratively planned by university and public school personnel, and discusses the program's purpose, goals, development, curriculum, field experiences, staff development, initial evaluation efforts, and a proposed longitudinal study of graduates. Evaluation results suggest that interns found the experience and associations with lead teachers to be very satisfactory; elementary principals were enthusiastic about lead teachers ' professional growth; lead teachers stated tha