“…This is not to imply a simple 'cause and effect' explanation of pre-service teachers' learning, but rather to acknowledge that the beginning years of teaching are significant in laying the foundations of teachers' professional practice (Mockler, 2005(Mockler, , 2011. As beginning teachers in these formative years begin to navigate complex and at times challenging issues, they are reliant both on their educational preparation and on the guidance and example of more experienced teachers (Mena et al, 2017). As teacher educators we interviewed observe, however, some programs rely on students being able to learn about parent engagement through chance encounters: …when I hear students talking about their fear of parents and their lack of confidence at actually approaching parents or their lack of skill at actually knowing how to go about it, you know the gap becomes more obvious to me that we just assume that they will learn it by osmosis.…”