This book—co-authored by a teacher educator, a diverse group of five pre-service student teachers, and their student teaching supervisor—takes a unique, illuminating look at the experience of student teaching from the perspective of student teachers. It is premised on learning to teach as an inquiry process enriched by collaborative conversations. Readers are invited into student teachers’ dilemmas and decisions as they negotiate between their public school placements and their university-based coursework. Throughout the year of student teaching, the authors document their discussions and reflections about teaching in inclusive classrooms that shed light on the complex process of learning to teach and also offer insights into issues of teaching for equity.

Each of the central chapters is written by an individual student teacher and tracks a specific question over the course of two semesters. Topics include:

contrasting models of inclusion and teachers’ differing orientations toward issues of community, difference, and normalcy;

how teachers foster peer relationships;

classroom management and discipline;

heterogeneous instruction;

and school-wide culture and systems that promote or mitigate against inclusion.

A new perspective on what can be learned from student teaching is provided by the student teachers’ supervisor. In the concluding chapter, the teacher educators address the connections among the student teachers’ inquiries and offer an analysis from a disability studies/disability rights perspective on how inclusion fits into a social (rather than a medical) model of disability. All of the authors of this book seek to contribute to conversations that place advocacy, inquiry, contestation, and challenge at the center of the teacher’s role. This volume is their invitation to readers to join in a larger conversation about the challenges of, and necessity for, becoming inclusive teachers.

Learning to Teach Inclusively is intended for inservice and preservice courses in elementary education, inclusion, and teacher research, and for field experience seminars. It is also suitable for graduate courses in teacher research, supervision, and research in teacher education.