Learning and teaching with preservice teachers: An action research for modelling and building faculty-school collaboration

Abstract

To make refinements in school curricula is not solely enough to improve the quality of education. We need to provide professional development for both in-service and preservice teachers to enable them implement those reforms in their classes. For preservice teachers, field experiences are the best opportunity to observe experienced teachers, make practice of reforms in a classroom setting and learn from their own teaching experiences. In this study, we aim i) to propose a model for faculty-school collaboration in which teacher educators and preservice teachers teach together in an elementary mathematics classroom and ii) to discuss the effects of this model on preservice teachers’, mathematics teachers’ and students’ views and practices. An action research was employed in a 7th grade mathematics classroom to investigate the impacts of the proposed model. The results revealed that our model made meaningful contributions to i) preservice teachers’ understanding and practice of teaching mathematics, ii) mentor teacher’s classroom practices and iii) elementary school students’ participations in mathematics lessons.