Gatekeeper or Nurturer: Maintaining Accountability While Encouraging Growth in Field Experiences
Candace A. Roberts, Trish Parrish, Karen Hahn

Abstract
Is the role of teacher educators that of nurturers or gatekeepers? We sometimes struggle to reach a balance between advocating for our students and gatekeeping for our profession. We wrestle with the notion of dispositions and how to assess them. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education expects that schools of education will assess pre-service teacher dispositions based on observable behavior in the classroom. One challenge for schools of education is to develop a mechanism that will serve in a multitude of cases to render decisions, based on observable behavior, regarding students’ performance and continued participation in the teacher preparation program. This article will provide a brief overview of how one university established a process for helping students who face difficult issues of inadequate performance in the field. We present a brief look at the path that brought our department to the development of a Professional Standards Committee. Then, three case studies of struggling teacher candidates will illuminate the process for readers.

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