The Diversity and Climate of Preservice Teachers' Student Teaching Experiences: Implications for Students of Color

A growing literature has established the importance of student teaching placements (or “field placements” in Massachusetts, the setting of this study) for teacher candidate development. But while findings from this prior literature imply that ethnoracially diverse field placements may be particularly important for improving the outcomes of students of color in these candidates’ later classrooms, this has not been tested explicitly. In this paper, we use field placement and inservice teacher and student data from Massachusetts to estimate the relationship between teachers’ field placement school characteristics and the later outcomes of their students once they enter the workforce. We find that Black students have disproportionately better test scores when their teacher did their field placement in a school with more Black students, and Hispanic students have disproportionately better perceptions of school climate when their teacher did their field placement in a school with more Hispanic students. But both findings only hold when the field placement was in a school that contributed to above average student perceptions of school climate. These findings suggest that diverse field placements can be a lever for improving outcomes for students of color, but only if those placements are also in schools with positive school climate.