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Ultimately, the purpose of field experiences and clinical practice is to enable candidates to meet and exceed initial licensure standards for professional educators. We are interested in preparing Educators as Leaders. The unit ensures that candidates in initial and advanced programs demonstrate mastery of content areas and pedagogical and professional knowledge before admission to, and during, clinical practice. In the initial integrated extended program, candidates have received their Bachelors degree and are admitted to the Graduate School in order to enter the professional year. Candidates’ cumulative GPAs must be at least 3.00 in order for regular admission to the Graduate School, and they must have a minimum GPA of 2.5 in their major and minor to student teach. They must have earned no grade lower than a C in any professional education course. In the initial four year programs in music and health/physical education, assurances can also be provided (as demonstrated in Standard 1) that candidates know content, have adequate pedagogical and professional knowledge bases before entry into their capstone clinical experiences, and are assessed thoroughly during these experiences. The field experiences exhibit (http://soe.ku.edu/ncate/exhibits/field-experiences) provides information about all programs.
As shown in various initial and advanced assessments described in the KSDE program reports, assessments during clinical practice reveal that candidates meet professional, state, and institutional standards, and that they have a positive effect on student learning (http://soe.ku.edu/ncate/program-reports). Among the multiple measures as reported in standard one, required program report assessments include both field experiences (required assessment three) and student learning (assessment four). Candidates and their mentors can use the resultant data to determine areas needing improvement and an action plan for achieving those improvements.
Field experiences and clinical practice facilitate candidates’ achievement of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to affect learning in all students. Candidates support all learners, as shown in their required work with students with exceptionalities, and those from diverse ethnic, racial, gender, and socioeconomic groups. In regard to students with special needs and those whose primary language is not English, all candidates receive coursework and related field work in these areas. In addition, for the initial licensure program, candidates are afforded the opportunity to pursue provisional licensure endorsement in either adaptive special education, functional special education, or English as a Second Language. In addition to two to three specialized graduate-level courses, candidates split the spring semester internship between placements in their general education content specialties and placement in a site specific to special education or ESL.
Once employed, teachers have little if any control over demographics related to population density, racial/ethnic make-up of their students, and the socio-economic conditions from which students come to their classrooms. Therefore, with respect to diversity in terms of racial/ethnic heritages, socio-economic status, and population density, the unit has engaged in considerable effort to provide each candidate with a range of experiences. In so doing, we believe that we not only increase candidates’ knowledge and skill levels but, further, we proffer the disposition of “all means all.” As such, the unit keeps careful records regarding each candidate’s sum of field experiences and clinical practice with reference to percentages and indices of the three major demographic variables characterizing each field placement. Indeed, an electronic “Field Experience Transcript” is developed on each initial candidate. These transcripts report the experiences that each candidate has, where each experience was located, and the demography of that setting. The experiences that our candidates have are discussed in full in Standard 4. For the purposes of this element, however, it is important to know that all field placements have students with exceptionalities, all candidates have experiences in richly-diverse urban schools, two in every five have at least one major field experience in a setting where the nonwhite student population is above the state average, one in three has at least one major field experience in a school that has more students on free or reduced lunch than the state average (of 38 percent), and four in five has at least one major field experience in one of the two most highly populated, urban counties that we serve. All candidates have some experiences in rural, urban, diverse, high poverty schools.
Assessments for field experiences fall generally into one of two broad strategies. Early field experiences—completed prior to student teaching and internship—are integral parts of professional or pedagogy courses. The objectives for the experience are made clear to the candidate in the course and can be found on course syllabi. Evaluation of the experience is the responsibility of the faculty member who teaches the course; the clinical supervisor (cooperating teacher) has input into the decisions. The later field experiences—student teaching and internship—have specific pedagogical content expectations driven by what is being taught and professional expectations aligned with state standards. These are evaluated by both university supervisors and clinical supervisors. The array of field experiences offered by the unit can be found in the field experience exhibit http://soe.ku.edu/ncate/exhibits/field-experiences.
