School Observations and Classroom Experience

This chapter describes the clinical experiences of four teacher candidates while they were completing student teaching in a program with a heavy emphasis on help seeking and delay of gratification as two self-regulated learning strategies and it describes a set of classroom observations. The institution’s core values influence every aspect of teacher preparation including how student teaching placements are selected. Teacher candidates should be able to thrive in learning environments with diverse populations in urban settings, but in addition, be challenged to work with parents and educators whose backgrounds and life experiences are unfamiliar. Both public and private school settings provided venues for clinical experiences and the completion of the Teacher Work Sample. In addition, teacher candidates were observed in these settings using reliable instruments constructed to measure help seeking before, during, and after a lesson was planned and delivered. The findings across all teacher candidates evidence behaviors during their individual clinical experiences that can be attributed to self-regulatory practices. Engagement in self-monitoring and self-evaluation enabled teacher candidates to attribute success and failure to specific areas of weakness or strength.