ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the strategies, challenges, and perspectives that resulted from a critical, project-based clinical experience of 14 prospective social studies teachers. Over a period of several weeks, these teacher candidates worked with more than 90 young people from a large, diverse public high school to elicit their perspectives on citizenship and power using creative writing and photography. The goal was to provide a structure and purpose to a clinical experience in which these teacher candidates could support students in articulating their conceptions and perspectives on these two essential social studies concepts as they experienced these in their school and communities. The results from this project included explicit notions of the collaborative power in partnership projects and relationship-building that manifested in the teacher candidate/student interactions. Implications suggest that school/university partnerships can create a third space for learning that draws on effective means through which teacher candidates can work with students to engender their own development while also supporting the needs of the teachers and schools who host them.
