A Companion to Research in Teacher Education

raised by his student teachers“related to everything from issues of power or racism
or class...it also could be how issues related to the erosion of the public education
system or the large discourse about disrespecting teachers. It could be about mental
health issues, test anxiety in classrooms, and sometimes these issues are pretty
heavy”. Giovanni (US) like many of the other LTEs felt he needed to create space
for discussion of issues student teachers were facing.
Thefindings above reveal that the LTEs developed courses that were responsive
to their student teachers’needs. Flexibility and a personalized approach charac-
terized their work.

9.8 Influence of Political Context

In an earlier section, the politicization of education was described. In all three
interviews most LTEs repeatedly referenced the political context in which they
worked. Most felt they were being jockeyed about by their governments which
impacted on them in various ways.
Required changes to structure and content of the program. With governments
increasingly setting program requirements many LTEs felt the impact both directly
and in less obvious ways. Some in the U.S. found the new education teacher
performance assessment (edTPA) exit portfolio was causing stress for student
teachers, which was having a ripple effect onto their courses (seehttp://www.edtpa.
com).Although they were not supposed to directly teach to the edTPA require-
ments, many revised their courses to ensure student teachers were prepared for it.
Those in England, where the government has mandated the number of days spent in
practice teaching, found that the practice teaching component started to overshadow
the academic program. With student teachers in university-based programs
spending up to two-thirds of their program in schools (Murray and Passy 2014 ,p.
497) some courses had to be eliminated and other courses had to be compressed.
With student teachers spending less time in academic courses (and with their
instructors) the LTEs noted the university had less significance for them. As a
consequence the student teachers did not identify as strongly with the university and
their particular cohort of fellow student teachers as those had in previous years.

Organic

Both organic

and preset

Preset

Fig. 9.6 Approach to
developing your course

146 C. Kosnik et al.