Preparing to Teach Equitably: Knowledge, Confidence, and Clinical Experience in UD Teacher Preparation

• Erin Donnelly, English Education, University of Delaware

• Joy Esboldt, School of Education, University of Delaware

Preparing to Teach Equitably: Knowledge, Confidence, and Clinical Experience in UD Teacher Preparation

As teachers enter the classroom, research has shown that their ability to enact their commitments to teach equitably meets constraints and pressures of curriculum pacing and classroom management. 

While programs have increasingly started taking up residency programs, which embed a candidate in one school for a full year rather than the traditional one-semester placement, on the logic that more time in the classroom during preparation increases readiness, research specifically on issues of social justice remains limited. A limited body of research has examined students’ confidence scores related to enacting equitable teaching practices, but this fails to examine knowledge of equity-based pedagogical practices.

This proposed study examines both: what recent University of Delaware graduates across both pathways, traditional student teaching and residency understand about teaching diverse students equitably and how prepared they feel to do that. Tracking both can reveal where confidence outpaces understanding and vice versa. Both pathways foreground equity in their preparation, so pathway and program will help describe patterns rather than explain them.

This summer produced the study’s foundation: the survey and interview protocol, a formal research proposal submitted for ethics review, and a literature synthesis. The instruments are built to be reused with future graduating classes and guide program improvement.