Analysis Of The Master's Level Education Practice In American Research Universities

Student teaching is an important part of the teacher education, and it is very meaningful to the training of prospective teachers. It is safely to say that the quality of student teaching is critical to teacher professional development. Nowadays, more and more countries pay great attention to the question of how to improve the quality of student teaching.Other countries' experiences can be use for reference. By this way we might reflect our own student teaching and cultivate the quality of future-teachers. The education reform is going on in our teacher education today. The innovation manifests the following tendencies, involving of Comprehensive Universities into teacher education and improving of the level of preservice teacher education. In order to adapt to this wave of reform and to make some beneficial references, this paper explores master-level student teaching in American research universities.American research universities have been enhancing master-level student teaching since they participated in teacher education in the 20^th century. Now they form a good model. They make detail regulations of student teaching standards, eligibility requirements and settings. Participants in the student teaching are "Triad" (student teacher, cooperating teacher and supervisor). University faculty and school administrators are other members. The forms of student teaching include Pre-student teaching and student teaching. Teaching portfolio is adopted in the evaluation of student teachers.The model of Master-level student teaching in the Research University makes a notable impact on children and student teachers. Firstly, it can improve the performance of the children. Secondly, it helps student teacher pass praxis tests. In brief, student teaching assists prospective teachers with good profession quality, and accelerates the process of teacher professional development, and fosters the right of professional self-determination. Nevertheless, it has some faults. For example, the gains of student teaching depend mainly on the cooperative teacher, and there has no national standards to assess student teacher.Master-level student teaching in American Research University gives a few enlightenments to our student teaching. Firstly, it integrates subject matter preparation with professional education. Secondly, it trains student teacher as a "reflective teacher". Last but not least, it builds up assessment system with many factors.