Clouded Views and Silver Linings: Learning to Teach Literacy in Cooperating Teachers' Classrooms

• In Event: Justice-Oriented Transformations in Preservice Teachers' Field Experiences

Abstract

Finding student teaching placements with cooperating teachers (CTs) who will effectively mentor preservice teachers (PSTs) is a long-standing challenge in teacher education. The relationship forged between CT and PST is also an important factor in PSTs’ learning and development. This paper reports on the student teaching experiences of Megan, a PST enrolled in a social justice-focused teacher education program (TEP), and explores the affordances and constraints of learning to teach literacy in two different CTs’ classrooms. Findings reveal that Megan had fewer opportunities to practice teaching literacy in TEP-aligned ways when student teaching in an attentive CT’s classroom with whom she had an extremely positive relationship than when apprenticing in a negligent CT’s classroom with whom she resented being placed.

Author

• Kathryn Struthers Ahmed, Hunter College