Constructing practices as school-based teacher educators: A cooperating teachers' study group.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Very little is known about the ways in which teacher educators construct and develop their practices. This study examined the experiences of a cohort of cooperating teachers as they worked in a collegial study group to construct their practices as School-Based Teacher Educators (SBTE's). The purposes of this study were to uncover the process by which the members of a cohort of SBTE's constructed practices as teacher educators, to identify conditions that facilitate this process, to explore any connections between their role-taking as school-based teacher educators and their participation in other professional and school renewal efforts, and to explore their perceptions about participating in a teacher educators' study group.
The study was intended to contribute to our understanding of the cooperating teacher experience as both a professional development opportunity for cooperating teachers and as a tool for school reform by contributing to the construction of a description of the process of development as a school-based teacher educator, currently lacking; identifying some characteristics of the study group process that would be useful for consideration for use in other contexts; and by examining any relationship between participation in the study group and other professional and reform efforts the teachers undertake.
A case study of the study group was constructed through the analysis of five data sources. Analysis revealed that working in a study group to co-construct practices as SBTE's may promote the development of a thoughtful approach to the supervision of novices; that the participants explicitly valued the opportunity to converse with their colleagues about issues related to practice, as opposed to administrative concerns; that they found that talking about their work with student teachers with their colleagues helped them construct and reflect on their SBTE practices while reminding them of good teaching practices. A tentative framework for an SBTE study group that has possible application in other contexts is proposed, and implications for schools of education, for policy, for schools and school districts, for teachers, and for researchers are discussed.