Clinical Practice that Challenges the Status Quo: A Conceptual Analysis

Abstract

In current teacher education and policy discourse, a “pivot” toward clinical practice (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education [AACTE], 2018) has been touted as crucial for strengthening teacher education (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education [NCATE], 2010). Proponents of clinical practice advocate for prolonged, intensive student teaching along with clinical school-based experiences integrated across all aspects of teacher preparation (e.g., Burn & Mutton, 2015; Darling-Hammond, 2014). Simultaneously, “social justice” has proliferated as a central tenet in teacher education (Cochran-Smith, 2010). In this research-in-progress roundtable, we problematize the recent pivot toward extended clinical practice, taking a slightly different tack. In line with some scholars, we argue that without critical analysis, increased clinical experience risks replicating practice-as-is, rather than supporting candidates to interrogate and transform long-standing inequities in K-12 education in the United States. To do so, we outline a set of overlapping and reinforcing institutional pressures that shape teacher education and K-12 schooling structures.