Teacher education is criticized for both fragmentation across courses and disconnect from practice[1]. Strong teacher education programs, however, offer coherent teacher preparation that is connected to practice[2]. Despite calls for research examining the ‘black box’ of teacher preparation[3], multi-site studies of teacher education instructional practices are rare. This paper explores the extensiveness of student teachers’ opportunities to make connections to practice within their coursework. Drawing on data and analytical framework from an international cross-case study of six university based teacher education programs in the US, Norway, and Finland, we focus on observations of language arts and mathematics methods courses. Observations cover a three-week period (total hours of observation data = 100). Analyses focused on eight dimensions considering student teachers’ opportunities to enact practice. Using a four-point scale, we scored the extensiveness of these opportunities, taking into account both their quantity and quality. Our findings show that across programs, student teachers had extensive opportunities to review teaching materials and take pupils’ perspective. However, they had fewer opportunities to practice dimensions more directly connected to routine classroom teaching practices, namely enact classroom practice, analyze pupil learning, and see models of teaching. Given recent interest on teacher education that is centered on the actual work of teaching practice[4], our findings suggest that across all programs, attention to enactment of practice may still be insufficient. Further, our results reveal differences among the programs. For instance, one program profile showed that some dimensions were highly emphasized in methods courses, whereas others were barely present. This seems like an “either-or-profile,” whereas another program profile can represent a “some-of-everything-profile”. These differences argue for greater attention to the discussion of practice in teacher education—what opportunities might matter most, and why? Finally, these findings suggest we may need to pay attention to opportunities to enact specific classroom practices.

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