EdLinks University-School Partnership, (The): Preservice Teachers Reading and Writing with Adolescents Labeled "At Risk"

In a recent article, Anderson, Blumenfeld, Pintrich, Clark, Marx, and Peterson (1995) called for reform in Educational Psychology courses as a challenge to the paradigm of "instrumental cognitive rationality" This phrase, coined by Habermas (1984), identifies traditional professional "training" programs as sites where students, like preservice teachers, learn knowledge and skills in a decontextualized setting early in their program. Later, following intensive concept oriented study, they are asked to apply what they've learned to real life settings. Students, including preservice teachers, have a very difficult time with this process for several reasons. For example, epistemologically speaking, in many ways knowledge is context bound and applying knowledge to new contexts is extremely difficult. In addition, and further compounding the situation, without the relevancy provided by context, many preservice teachers struggle through their foundational courses, using memorization to survive their tests. However, lacking the links to authentic applications, they are unable to make the appropriate transfer when asked to later in the program. In response, EdLinks: A University-School Partnership was created by the first author of this paper and the assistant principal of a branch of the local high school (second author) as a mechanism for reform in both teacher education and K-12 schooling.