Abstracts Category : Other

All for one and one for all: building communities of practice during a secondary social studies student teaching experience

by Jay Anthony Mann

Calls to redesign clinical experiences within teacher education programs continue to gain widespread attention. Traditional student teaching placements, characterized by one-to-one (1:1) assignments of a cooperating teacher and student teacher currently dominate most clinical experiences. Research studies continually identify concerns with these traditional placements, including but not limited to student teachers feelings of isolation, weak professional relationships among participants, and limited exposure to multiple pedagogies. Some interventions, such as paired placements and web-based communication tools, are encouraging but rarely used within the same experience or expanded in scope. As a single-iteration design-based research study (Ma & Harmon, 2009), I present a new model of shared student teaching placements whereby student teachers systematically work across a number of classrooms and regularly engage with multiple peers and practicing teachers in a broader community of practice. I investigate the model in its original design in a single high school setting with a small number of participants (n=11). Through qualitative data collection and analysis, I consider the design of the shared student teacher model with regard to participants experiential learning, instructional practices, and collaborative relationships. Presenting findings in three distinct narratives of critical learning incidents, I then discuss the student teachers situational learning through the theoretical framework of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and expansive learning. I conclude with an evaluation of learning outcomes influenced by the design and limitations that warrant additional research and possible future iterations of the model.Advisors/Committee Members: Johnston-Parsons, Marilyn A (advisor), Dressman, Mark A (Committee Chair), Schwandt, Thomas A (committee member), Dymond, Stacy K (committee member).