Sharing the arena: Changing roles and negotiating power among teacher education participants

The “constant changing of myself”: Revising roles in undergraduate teacher preparation

“…ATE developed a partnership that brought together university teacher education faculty, school-based supervising teachers, and teacher certification candidates as part of a larger project to "'co-reform'" education at both the K-12 and the university levels (Szuminiski, Zath, & Benton, 1999, p. 296). Szuminiski, Zath, & Benton (1999) explain that the university teacher education faculty, "accustomed to being the most dominant and oftentimes the only voice" (p. 298), broadened their roles in two ways: as colleagues with others in several Revising Roles -6 teacher education departments and by inviting school-based cooperating teachers and certification students into conversations about planning. The school-based cooperating teachers met with the university teacher education faculty and the certification candidates in biweekly planning meetings and eventually felt themselves to be "co-developers" of the certification students' experiences, moving from a relationship that was "impositional" (i.e., here is your student teacher) to one that was "interactional" (Szuminiski, Zath, & Benton, 1999, p. 301).…”