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 ofeducation. We need to provide professional development for both in-service and preservice teachers toenable them implement those reforms in their classes. For preservice teachers, field experiences are thebest opportunity to observe experienced teachers, make practice of reforms in a classroom setting andlearn from their own teaching experiences. In this study, we aim i) to propose a model for faculty-schoolcollaboration in which teacher educators and preservice teachers teach together in an elementarymathematics classroom and ii) to discuss the effects of this model on preservice teachers’, mathematicsteachers’ and students’ views and practices. An action research was employed in a 7th grademathematics classroom to investigate the impacts of the proposed model. The results revealed that ourmodel made meaningful contributions to i) preservice teachers’ understanding and practice of teachingmathematics, ii) mentor teacher’s classroom practices and iii) elementary school students’ participationsin mathematics lessons.