The protocol, published in PLOS One by Gerardo Urra-Barra, Graciela Acevedo, Erich Leighton-Vallejos, Víctor Ruiz-González, and Camila Díaz-Ibáñez, does not yet report findings. Instead, it lays out a rigorous blueprint for a systematic synthesis of existing literature, registered in advance on the Open Science Framework to ensure transparency and traceability. The registered protocol, under registration number 10.17605/OSF.IO/UTR6V, specifies the methodology, inclusion criteria, search strategy, and analysis plan that the final review will follow, offering the research community a chance to scrutinize the approach before any results emerge.

At the heart of the review is a concept known as practice-based teacher education, or PBTE. Rather than treating teaching as a body of theory to be absorbed in lecture halls before any real contact with students, PBTE argues that professional learning should be constructed through authentic, situated teaching experiences that integrate pedagogical theory, disciplinary knowledge, and classroom action. The approach implies a substantial transformation in how initial teacher education programs are designed, particularly in relation to mentoring practices and the articulation between universities and schools. Instead of primarily theoretical or didactic preparation, PBTE promotes the active participation of pre-service teachers in simulated teaching, analysis of real classroom practices, guided mentorship from experienced educators, and systematic processes of critical reflection.

The Chilean context gives this protocol particular urgency. Alternative teaching certification programs have expanded rapidly within the Chilean tertiary education system, defined by the country’s National Accreditation Commission as formalized pathways offering study continuity to individuals who already hold a prior professional or technical degree, recognizing work experience and knowledge acquired within the school system. These programs connect prior learning with the completion of a bachelor’s degree in education and a specific disciplinary teaching certification. Yet their growth raises challenges for quality assurance, especially under current regulations in which accreditation is required to enroll new students. Chilean regulators currently lack an evidence base on how practice-based components should be designed and implemented in these programs, a gap the review is explicitly intended to fill.

Methodologically, the review will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews, as outlined in the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis, and will be reported in accordance with the PRISMA-ScR guidelines, the international standard for transparent reporting of scoping reviews. Data extraction and synthesis will be structured around the JBI Participants, Concept, and Context analytical framework, commonly abbreviated as PCC. This framework allows reviewers to organize evidence around who is being studied, what concept is being examined, and in what context the phenomenon occurs, providing a coherent analytical spine for a body of literature that is otherwise scattered across disciplines and countries.

The search strategy is deliberately precise. Systematic database searches will be conducted in Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus, two databases selected because they offer the broadest interdisciplinary coverage of peer-reviewed literature in education and the social sciences, support advanced Boolean search logic, and together index the large majority of high-impact journals in teacher education research. The search strings are structured in three thematic blocks covering PBTE terminology, initial teacher education, and alternative certification programs, crossed using the AND operator. Studies published between 2009 and 2025 will be included, a window chosen because it corresponds to the emergence and consolidation of practice-based approaches in teacher education, particularly the development of models such as core practices and high-leverage practices. Publications must be written in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, reflecting the linguistic competencies of the research team, although the language of program implementation itself is not restricted.

Inclusion criteria are equally carefully specified. On the participants side, studies must involve teacher candidates and teacher educators in programs explicitly defined by their authors as alternative teaching certification programs, directed at people who already hold a prior academic or professional qualification. Studies reporting only on traditional initial teacher education, involving candidates without such prior qualifications, will be excluded. On the concept side, a program will be considered PBTE-aligned if it explicitly incorporates at least one of three processes described by Grossman and colleagues: representation of practice, decomposition of practice, or approximation of practice, implemented in a structured and recurring manner within the program design. No restrictions apply to program length, disciplinary area, or intended education level.

The review will also cast a wide net over study types. Experimental and quasi-experimental designs, analytical observational studies including cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional designs, descriptive observational studies, and qualitative approaches such as phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, qualitative description, and action research will all be considered. Notably, opinion pieces and reflective articles will also be included, a decision the authors justify by pointing out that PBTE within alternative certification is an emerging area in which much of the available knowledge is still expressed through expert commentary and practitioner reflection rather than empirical studies. During data charting, these sources will be flagged by type and synthesized separately from empirical studies in the narrative synthesis, a safeguard against mixing evidence of very different strength.

Screening and extraction will follow established best practices for evidence synthesis. All citations will be imported into Rayyan, a systematic screening tool, with duplicates removed automatically. Before full-scale screening, a pilot test with four purposively selected articles will confirm inter-rater agreement on the eligibility criteria; an agreement rate below 75 percent will trigger joint discussion between reviewers and, if necessary, revision of the criteria. The authors candidly acknowledge that four articles constitute a limited pilot sample given the conceptual complexity of PBTE, and they commit to treating recurring disagreements during early full screening as an informal extension of the pilot phase. Titles and abstracts will then be assessed independently by at least two reviewers, with full-text assessment conducted independently by two reviewers and discrepancies resolved by consensus or a third reviewer. Data will be extracted independently by two or more reviewers using a purpose-built tool aligned with the PCC framework, piloted and refined before full extraction, with all modifications documented and justified in the final review.

The significance of this protocol extends well beyond Chile. Alternative certification routes are expanding as a workforce strategy across multiple countries facing comparable teacher shortage pressures, and the review aims to synthesize, for the first time, evidence on how practice-based approaches have been conceptualized and implemented specifically within this type of program. The final review will examine program duration, mentoring structures, practicum design, institutional type, teaching strategies, and reported outcomes, presenting results through descriptive tables, graphical representations, thematic maps, and a narrative synthesis organized around the PCC framework. The authors also acknowledge the limitations inherent in their design, including the restriction to two databases, the modest pilot sample, the heterogeneity introduced by including opinion pieces, and the absence of formal quality appraisal, which is standard for scoping reviews. By mapping the breadth of available evidence rather than judging its robustness, the review is positioned as the essential first synthesis step in a field still under development, one that could shape how the next generation of career-changing teachers is trained worldwide.

Subject of Research: Education Research

Article Title: Practice-based initial teacher education in alternative teaching certification programs: A scoping review protocol

Article References: Urra-Barra, G., Acevedo, G., Leighton-Vallejos, E., Ruiz-González, V., & Díaz-Ibáñez, C. (2026). Practice-based initial teacher education in alternative teaching certification programs: A scoping review protocol. PLOS One, 21(10), e0360047. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360047

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0360047

Keywords: teacher education, alternative certification, practice-based teacher education, scoping review, teacher shortage, PLOS One, Chile, mentoring, practicum, evidence synthesis, career changers, research protocol