Search results for: Field work

During field experiences in teacher education, student teachers are generally placed individually with a mentor. Teacher education institutes search for alternative field experience models, inspired by collaborative learning such as team teaching. This study explores two team teaching models, parallel and sequential teaching, by investigating the student teachers’ perspective. Quantitative (survey) and qualitative (self-report) methods were used to map their attitudes toward both models, their perception on collaboration, advantages and disadvantages, and the conditions for implementation they consider critical. Student teachers adopt positive feelings toward both models. In sequential teaching, collaboration is experienced significantly higher than in parallel teaching. Both models have their own advantages and disadvantages, but advantages clearly outweigh disadvantages. In comparison with previous research, decreased workload and better management are new advantages, interdependence and complex management new disadvantages. “Preparation for new roles” is the most important condition in order to successfully implement both models.

In this study, the author investigates how student teachers perceive legitimacy conferred by their cooperating teachers. As this study illustrates, the ways in which cooperating teachers provide access to the lived experience of teaching are consequential. Being more than just a conduit for conveying the knowledge of teaching during the student teaching experience, cooperating teachers must be conscious of the moves they make and the access they provide student teachers to the work of teaching and teachers.

This article draws upon the author's experience while conducting an ethnographic study in an international school in mainland China. The author reflected on two issues: what field relations were established in what ways, and what threads to ethics and research validity the author encountered in the course of the fieldwork.