Empowerment in student teaching through community service learning

the most influential phase of preservice teachers' development within a teacher education program (Burstein, 1992; Griffin, 1989). In particular, the relationship between the cooperating teacher and student teacher plays a critical role in student teachers' success. Preservice teachers are generally instructed to "do as I do" by their cooperating teachers. Thus, student teachers often find little opportunity to try out strategies they have learned in their university methods courses unless the practices are already in place in cooperating teachers' classrooms. In addition, few researchers have attempted to discern how to enhance preservice teachers' abilities to set their own goals and develop their own ways of teaching during the student teaching experience. This article focuses on community service learning projects as a means of promoting empowerment for student teachers. It draws on the experience of a university-sponsored program designed to enhance student teachers' empowerment through their work with community service learning projects in public elementary school classrooms. In this program, the student teachers had received training in service learning whereas most of the cooperating teachers had not had any such formal training. Thus, the potential for the power rela-