Implementing professional standards in teacher preparation programs in the United States: Preservice teachers' understanding of teaching standards

Strong demands exist at a worldwide level to reform teacher education in the direction of teaching professionalism. In the United States, with the paradigm shift toward focusing on teacher performance, standards-based reform has been implemented in K-12 teacher education programs. The purpose of this paper is threefold: (1) to document the rhetoric of the standards-based movement in teacher preparation programs in the U.S. (2) to examine how a teacher education program develops and implements the reform of teaching standards by looking at a sample university (3) to explore how preservice teachers conceptualize teaching standards over the course of their training process. Our findings from the focus group interview with six preservice teachers were organized around four emergent themes: preperceptions of standards, learning to teach through "meeting" the standards, the representation of an e-portfolio, and preservice teachers' understanding of teaching standards. The authors discuss educational implications for teacher education programs.