Prospective teachers (PTs) often come to elementary teacher education classes reporting poor previous learning experiences. Having participated in a traditional paradigm with a reliance on direct instruction throughout their previous schooling experiences, PTs expect teacher educators (TEs) will also engage in show and tell to instruct them on how to teach differently and better. Subsequently, TEs face the challenge of responding to the expectations of their students while cultivating experiences that support the development of a new vision of  teaching and learning. To support PTs in developing their teaching practice, we (a group of TEs) use co-teaching in our courses. In this paper, we will share (using data) PTs experiences co-teaching in our courses. 

Previous research has uncovered different conceptions of co-teaching as well as their affordances (Yopp et al., 2014). In many studies, examples of co-teaching showcase colleagues of equal status (e.g.practicing teachers) co-teaching lessons as well as in mentoring relationships (e.g. field placements). However, there is a lack of documented examples of co-teaching between TEs and PTs in course work. Conceptions of co-teaching range from a delivery model of instruction to interactions based on emergent ideas. Characterizations of co-teaching that place the teacher in a position of delivering content can be counterproductive to our goals and also reinforce traditional paradigms of teaching. Our work in co-teaching has been influenced by Bacharach (2010) conception of co-teaching as team teaching. Team teaching involves an invisible flow where teachers (a pair or the small group) are actively involved in the lesson. Marzocchi et al., (2021) described team teaching as interactive where teachers take on a role that is dependent on “in-the-moment” needs of students. This conception means that teachers need to develop their abilities to listen to the ideas of others and respond to them. Mason (1998) suggested that the work of TEs involves developing and enhancing different levels of awareness in PTs as opposed to simply helping them learn content that needs to be covered. He argues that PTs need to know how to navigate instructional situations so that their students experience a shift in attention and become aware of the ideas and concepts of which they were previously unaware.

Mason (1998) describes teachers’ awareness as consisting of three levels: a) Awareness-in-action is the “sensitivities to certain situations which provoke and enable action” (p. 257); b) Awareness-in-discipline is “sensitivities which enable us to be distanced from the doing sufficiently to instruct others, to give orders, literally, for doing things…” (p. 260); and c) Awareness-in-counsel is “sensitivities which enable us to be distanced from the act of directing the actions of others” (p. 260). A teacher’s level of awareness is associated with developing sensitivities that allow them to provoke student actions and teaching actions, like distancing themselves from doing and directing students. Mason’s suggestion for developing PTs’ awareness rather than delivering content aligns with our motivation to co-teach with PTs’ in our course work. Through co-teaching in their course work, it is our goal that PTs will develop sensitivities that provoke teacher or student actions. This assertion prompted us to ask: What new awareness do PTs have about teaching that you learned as a result of co-teaching?

The study took place at a small, rural university in Canada. The participants (n<50) were PTs in year one of a two-year degree program in elementary education. As TEs, we assigned small groups of PTs to co-teach one class with us in two different courses: a foundations course and a mathematics methods course. Generally, co-teaching involved PTs engaging in the following actions: 1) anticipating: prior to the class they anticipated what their peers would say and do in response to a selected task; 2) listening and observing: during the class, co-teachers presented the task, and circulated the classroom, documenting emerging ideas and compared them to their anticipated ideas; 3) responding in the moment to needs: at points during the co-teaching, TEs brought the group together to discuss their noticings and ways to respond; 4) implementing and documenting moves: co-teachers experimented with teaching moves (e.g. prompt) that extend the investigation (continued work); 5) comparing and analyzing peer’s work: Towards the end co-teaching, PTs orchestrate opportunities for peers’ to analyze and compare their work with others’ in the course. Co-teaching occurred for between 30 and 45 minutes depending on the goals of the lesson and engagement with the task. Our data consisted of student reflections to the following prompt (s): Describe your experiences co-teaching. As a result of the co-teaching, what new awareness do you have about teaching? To analyze our data, we will use phenomenography. Mason (2002) says that “[t]he aim [of phenomenography] is to describe and characterize different ways of experiencing/ [conceptualizing]” (p.162). All responses to the assignment prompt form a "pool of meaning". The pool of meaning develops qualitatively different categories of conceptualizing a phenomenon from the collected data through an iterative process where the researchers each conduct their own analysis and then confirm categories for consistency. The researchers will then meet to triangulate the evidence and, based on this evidence, make claims regarding the awarenesses that were developed as a result of co-teaching.

Although results are forthcoming, findings from this study will provide:a) new awarenesses that PTs developed as a result of co-teaching, and more specifically, sensitivities that supported PTs to act or get their peers to act; b) evidence of the affordances that co-teaching offers prospective teachers during their course work in two courses; and c) insights into an alignment or misalignment between TEs’ goals and PTs’ learnings.

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