ABSTRACT
A teaching force of around 3.6 million teachers works in about 90,000 public schools in the US. Throughout the formal history of teacher education in the US, there have been a variety of pathways into teaching both inside and outside colleges and universities. The clinical education for teachers that exists today in the US is highly varied in its characteristics and quality. Historically, one of the major problems in teacher education within the dominant college-recommending model has been the lack of coordination between coursework and clinical experiences. In addition, the quality of mentoring and assessment of the work of teacher candidates in school and community placements is highly variable, and it is more common than not that very little preparation and continuing support are provided to cooperating/mentor teachers and program supervisors. In university programs, the educators who currently provide the mentoring and assessment of teacher candidates' work in the field are often adjunct faculty or doctoral students with low status.
