TeachingWorks Deputy Director Francesca Forzani interviewed about teacher preparation by La Tercera
September 29, 2025
TeachingWorks Deputy Director Francesca Forzani was interviewed about the demands of practice-based teacher education in a September 22, 2025, article in La Tercera, a daily newspaper in Santiago, Chile. In “Cómo son los profesores de excelencia: la académica de EEUU que aboga por un cambio profundo en la docencia [What excellent teachers are like: the U.S. academic who advocates for profound changes in teaching],” Francesca weighs in on what makes a teacher education program excellent:
En el siglo XXI, todos los estudiantes merecen contar con un profesor competente y bien preparado en todo momento. Si bien es cierto que los aspirantes a docentes necesitan aprender en el aula, a partir de la experiencia, su formación clínica debe ser supervisada cuidadosamente y deben tener amplias oportunidades para practicar en entornos simulados antes de comenzar a trabajar como profesores. Un programa de formación docente de excelencia hoy en día debe tener una comprensión clara y detallada de las prácticas docentes que deben aprender sus graduados, un sistema de oportunidades de práctica que comience con experiencias simuladas y altamente estructuradas, y luego pase gradualmente a experiencias más auténticas a medida que crecen las habilidades de los aspirantes a profesores, y un sistema de evaluación que garantice que dichos aspirantes no se gradúen si no han dominado las habilidades esenciales y el criterio para utilizarlas de manera responsable y con atención a la equidad.
[In the 21st century, all students deserve a competent and well-prepared teacher at all times. While it is true that teacher candidates need to learn in the classroom, from experience, their clinical training must be carefully supervised, and they must have ample opportunities to practice in simulated settings before beginning work as teachers. An excellent teacher education program today must have a clear and detailed understanding of the teaching practices its graduates must learn, a system of practice opportunities that begins with highly structured, simulated experiences and then gradually moves to more authentic experiences as the teacher candidates’ skills grow, and an assessment system that ensures that such candidates do not graduate if they have not mastered essential skills and the judgment to use them responsibly and with attention to equity.]
Francesca also reflects on the lessons Chile could learn from U.S. teacher education, the impact AI is having on school and university teaching, and what the ideal education of the future might look like.
Read Francesca’s interview on the La Tercera website (original in Spanish).
