Huddles occur when two or more teachers use short, focused meetings, during the lesson, to discuss a necessary shift or adaptation to planned instruction (Tobin, Zurbano, Ford, & Carambo, 2003). The purposes of huddles may include redirection, extensive thinking, student understanding, corespect, logistics, student specifics and lesson mechanics (Author, 2015). In addition to huddles, interruptions occur when coteachers decide that a clarification, extension, or redirection of instruction is necessary. Since huddles and interruptions result in the exposure of internal rationales and produce changes to instruction in real time, these events provide student teachers in situ opportunities to develop adaptive teaching expertise. Adaptive teaching expertise enables a teacher to modify her/his planned instruction based on pupil cues in real time, adjust scripted curriculum guides to serve contextual demands, and balance experimental teaching approaches with risks to pupil learning and well-being (Author, 2012). Coteaching provides opportunities for student teachers to observe, practice, and debrief these shifts during their coteaching experiences, resulting in learning outcomes for teacher candidates that are qualitatively different than what the traditional model of student teaching can support or produce. (Tobin, et.al, 2003). This study examined video data from elementary, middle, and high school classrooms of cotaught lessons and student teachers’ weekly huddle journals, which documented when the huddle occurred, who initiated huddles, the topic of the huddle discussion and the teacher candidates’ report of what they learned from huddling over time. Preliminary results found that elementary and middle school host teachers initiated most of the huddles, which were focused on pacing and classroom management. Huddles occurred before, during, and after class. Some student teachers’ reports regarding what they learned via huddles were superficial and lacked sophisticated reflection on learning opportunities afforded during huddling. High school cooperating teachers reported failing to recognize huddling opportunities to discuss formal and focused approaches, and implications that curriculum choices and pedagogical strategies had for pupil learning. Data analysis highlights the importance of huddling during the lesson to re-direct instruction, provide support to candidates by suggesting alternative pedagogical strategies, examples and analogies to explain concepts, or to monitor classroom management.

Author (2010; 2012; 2015) Tobin, K., Zurbano, R., Ford, A., & Carambo, C. (2003). Learning to teach through coteaching and cogenerative dialogue. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 10(2), 51-73.