TEAC 908E: Critical Conversations in U.S. Teacher Education Policy and Practice—A Peer Review of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio

Since compulsory school began in the early 1900s, there have been lively and at times intense debates regarding how teachers ought to be prepared. Current debates are particularly pitched as the achievement gap persists and teacher attrition remains high, made more intense by the level of polarization in the country. Debates in the field of teacher preparation, like the country writ large, are often characterized more by heat than light. Given this reality, I opted to use this peer review of teaching opportunity to think about my graduate course as a place where students could practice perspective-taking and dialogue around issues in teacher education policy and practice. There were three goals that guided my re-envisioning of the course: making the course more focused on depth rather than breadth; introducing many different perspectives on the same problem; and creating assessment opportunities that reflected and facilitated my aim of helping my students see the field of teacher preparation as a conversational space, and one that they were a part of