Teacher candidates' learning through university-level English learners

What is it about?

It describes a collaboration process between a teacher education program and a university ESL program in which teacher candidates were required to interact with university ELLs. The chapter delineates how the interactions affected teacher candidates’ understanding of ELL teaching and their development of knowledge, skills, and dispositions for the ELL population.

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Why is it important?

The collaboration project seems to benefit the teacher candidates in various ways. First, it creates a “third space” where they become both teachers and students. This boundary blurriness seems to have the teacher candidates experience the students’ viewpoints. Second, a university-based class and a field-based class seem to be in sync in the project by providing the teacher candidates with opportunities to immediately implement what they have learned in a traditional class with the ELLs. It is our intent to increase the opportunities for teacher candidates to learn in a third space in our university’s teacher education program so that they can implement effective teaching for ELLs.