This study sought to determine the opinions of prospective teachers studying in the last year of the social studies undergraduate program about the school experience. More specifically, it was aimed to determine the views of social studies preservice teachers concerning the necessity of the school experience course, the contribution of the course…

This study critically addresses mentor and mentee understandings of mentoring primary education student teachers within existing operations of power in the context of Scottish Initial Teacher Education. Semi-structured interviews of mentors and student teachers were used to elicit relational understandings of the mentoring process within an…

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught supervisors of teacher candidates some critical lessons. From our time in quarantine, surfaced the disquisition of a focus on personal and professional work-life balance, creative problem solving in the home, and K-12 teacher candidate supervision. The necessity for self-care during the pandemic and in educators'…

This study determined the mediating roles of cooperating teachers' self-efficacy to pre-service teachers' classroom instruction and evaluation and their performance in practice teaching. The sample consisted of twenty-one cooperating Kindergarten teachers and twenty-one pre-school education (PSEd) pre-service teachers. This study employed…

The mentor-preservice teacher hierarchy, that privileges mentor teacher talk and experience, often dominates mentor-preservice conversations. To realize the full potential of teacher education approaches designed to engage preservice and mentor teachers together in shared learning and teaching tasks, attention is needed to better understand the…

Cooperating teachers and student teachers share a unique internship that allows the development of skills for both individuals. The literature states that cooperating teachers can grow from student teachers; however, there are a few sources that state the areas in which this growth occurs. The purpose of this study was to determine if growth or…

Growing evidence suggests that preservice candidates receive better coaching and are more instructionally effective when they are mentored by more instructionally effective cooperating teachers (CTs). Yet teacher education program leaders indicate it can be difficult to recruit instructionally effective teachers to serve as CTs, in part because…

During the clinical semester, the post-observation conference is a pivotal interaction that occurs between the pre-service teacher and the cooperating teacher. However, there is often limited participation by the pre-service teacher as the mentor dominates the conversation and is primarily engaged in the analysis of the observed lesson based on…

Student-centered pedagogies promote student learning in college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms. However, transitioning to active learning from traditional lecturing may be challenging for both students and instructors. This case study presents the development, implementation, and assessment of a modified…

This study explores how public-school teachers who host student teachers in urban, grade 7-12 classrooms (referred to as cooperating teachers or classroom mentors in this study) define their role in preparing pre-service teachers. This study is particularly interested in yielding insight into how participants describe the "practice" of…

As districts and schools struggle with persistent teacher shortages, many states have attempted to bolster the supply of teachers by loosening credentialing requirements or implementing fast-track programs that quickly bring new teachers into the classroom, often without student teaching or robust coursework about how to teach. Some states,…

Academy-Classroom model is the most recent program adopted by the Ministry of Education in Israel for trainee teachers' practical training. One of the model's primary goals is to bridge the gap between the needs and the reality of the school in connection with how academic institutions prepare their teachers. The study aimed to research the role…

The School of Education at Walter Baxter College (WBC; a pseudonym), a private, 4-year, liberal arts college located in the Midwestern United States, has not integrated role conceptualization training for cooperating teachers who have partnered within a yearlong, coteaching clinical practice model. The problem was that cooperating teachers have…

This paper presents a study that investigated how mentors perceived their long-term relationships with teacher candidates in a secondary teacher preparation program. The study describes the process by which the teacher candidates and the mentors select each other and how the relationship develops, with findings that suggest that the length of time…

Annual teacher attrition hovers around 8% and causes of teacher attrition have been studied widely. However, more needs to be known about specific aspects of teacher preparation that can foster retention. The goal of this study was to understand the perspectives of veteran teachers regarding retention. This investigation employed semi-structured…