Dr. Emery Petchauer, Associate professor and coordinator of the English Education program, recently published Navigating Teacher Licensure Exams on Routledge. The book explores the high-takes exams that aspiring educators must pass in order to become licensed teachers and the range of experiences students have with these exams. 

Four years of research went into writing Navigating Teacher Licensure Exams. This scholarly book discusses how students pass the exam after initially failing, how they handle affective aspects of the exam like test anxiety, and how they build healthy advice networks. The book also addresses the racialized dimensions of these exams and the adverse impact they have on aspiring teachers of color.

“I worked closely with a number of students as they prepared to take their own exam, and afterwards, I tried to understand how they made sense of the experience,” Petchauer said, who also holds an appointment in the College of Education. “I actually went to the exam with students on a number of occasions to try to better understand what it was like for them to be at an exam setting and how they experienced that.”

Petchauer argues against the quick-fix study guides that often promise to help students “crack the code” of the exam. Instead, he argues that students have the most to learn from the experiences of others like them. Faculty members also have a role to play in this process. As a result, the book touches on how faculty members can better support aspiring teachers and design programs for their success.

More on teacher licensure exams from Emery Petchauer