Challenging Prospective Teachers' Beliefs During Early Field Experience: A Quixotic Undertaking?

Field experiences are rarely designed to challenge prospective teachers' underlying beliefs about teaching and learning. In the experience described here, teacher education students are deliber ately brought face-to-face with their assumptions through encounters with negative numbers, third-graders, and an unconventional teacher. Although the students appear to reconsider their beliefs, such changes may be superficial and short-lived.