Educators; Teacher Responsibility

Empowerment implies that student teachers become more confident and autonomous learners, with more responsibility for, and control over, their learning. Traditionally, student teachers have been a disempowered group, as teacher educators have tended to emphasize the voice of experts rather than novices and the voice of theory rather than practice. Twelve student teachers in the Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood) program at Macquarie University (New South Wales, Australia) described reactions to the first year of their preservice program. Reactions were analyzed using M. Belenky et al.'s metaphor of voice as an indicator of empowerment, with five broad epistemological perspectives: silence (denial of voice), received knowledge (reliance on voices of external authorities), subjective knowledge (tuning into one's intuitive voice), procedural knowledge (faith in the voice of reason), and constructed knowledg