Rationale: Faculty expertise
The depth of professional knowledge expected of those who teach college courses generally precludes any one person from being qualified to teach a wide range of disparate topics.
Programs that assign faculty to teach outside of individuals' areas of expertise serve neither their students nor their instructors well. It is certainly possible for an elementary practitioner to be an excellent instructor in a variety of subjects, and student teaching and other field placements should be designed to expose the prospective teacher to such practitioners. Coursework, however, is another matter. It is highly unlikely that any one individual would have the specialized professional background that would equip them to teach, for example, both reading and mathematics pedagogy or both the foundations of education and educational psychology in an elementary preparation program in a rigorous, research-based manner. With rare exceptions, having one person teach multiple, specialized topics is apt to do a disservice to preparation in at least one, if not all, of the subjects addressed.
