Emphasizing Collaborative Practices in Learning to Teach: Coteaching and Cogenerative Dialogue in a Field‐Based Methods Course

Source: Teaching Education, Volume 22, Issue 1, 2011, pages 91-101.

The current article depicts a field‐based methods course for preservice teachers.
The course has been designed to integrate shared teaching experiences in elementary classrooms with ongoing critical dialogues with a focus on highlighting the complexities of teaching.

The author describes the structure of the course.
Furthermore, the author explores the use of coteaching and cogenerative dialogue as approaches to learning how to teach.

Vignettes that typify experiences in this course are analyzed, and two main findings are explored.
First, coteaching provided critical support to preservice teachers as they taught their first lessons to children.
Second, cogenerative dialogues mediated reflexive dialogue around the complexities of teaching.

It is argued that at a time of increasing segmentation of teacher education, teacher educators need to support dialogic, multi‐perspectival approaches that emphasize the complex nature of teaching and learning in elementary classrooms.