Do You Really Want to Do This?: Teacher Candidate Perspectives on Imperfect Placements

The clinical internship—also called student teaching—represents one of the most important experiences of teacher preparation programs nationwide yet remains not well understood. This article focuses on the experiences of teacher candidates who have struggled in their schools. Here we present data from a survey administered to 107 undergraduate and graduate teacher candidates (49 in elementary grades, 58 in secondary grades); we find that 7/107 (6.5%) respondents indicated imperfect placements. We then present data from semistructured follow-up interviews with those who struggled, using a constant comparative method for coding and analysis. Participants described five main categories of imperfection in clinical internship: overwhelming responsibility, a lack of support, negative mentors, overly controlled or constrained teaching contexts, and poor or negative feedback about teaching. We discuss what these findings might mean and suggest that inclusive coteaching models have the potential to ameliorate some imperfections, perhaps ultimately improving the work of the teachers our students become.