Learning to teach responsively through tutoring

This article describes a community service learning collaboration between a teacher education program and a nonprofit literacy society. Seventeen teacher candidates (TCs) tutored young readers weekly for seven months as part of their course-related field experience and completed reflective assignments analyzing their own learning and the learning of their tutees. The study demonstrates how the tutoring experience enhanced the pedagogical competence of TCs (kidwatching, assessment, instruction, responsiveness, professional conversations, and affirmation of impact). These findings align with contemporary research in literacy teacher preparation, which identifies that the combination of coursework and tutoring is effective in promoting the integration of TC knowledge and confidence in supporting student reading.