Rehearsing Professional Roles
REHEARSING PROFESSIONAL ROLES IN COMMUNITY:
TEACHER IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT IN A SCHOOL-UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP
Introduction
In this paper, we document a school-university partnership effort developed
within the current American context for teacher education – in particular, where federal
and state education policies have given school districts strong incentives for focusing
teachers on pre-packaged curricula designed to raise scores on standardized tests – and
where universities are under increasing pressure to prepare teaching candidates who can
implement such curricula successfully. We describe and provide evidence about what we
call an “intentional partnership”—a school-university relationship which emphasizes
systematic dialogue in relation to the internship experiences of pre-service teachers. This
partnership aims for beginning teacher development in a collaborative context, where
various forces affecting experienced teachers, teacher educators, and pre-service teachers
are made visible and discussed openly with both generosity and skepticism. In particular,
we are interested in how such partnerships might influence beginning teachers’ identity
development, in a time when “dominant discourses position teachers as passive recipients
of others’ expert knowledge, rather than as knowers in [their] own right” (Luna, et al,
2004, p.69). The following question guides our work: In what ways might an intentional
partnership structure influence beginning teachers’ professional identity development,
especially their sense of agency in relation to school curricula?
We organize our paper into four parts. First, we define our intentional partnership
model and provide a rationale for our emphasis on teacher identity development. Second,
we describe our meeting practices and how we’ve collected evidence on the partnership.
Rehearsing Professional Roles
Third, we provide evidence of the various ways we see teachers taking on identity
positions in the partnership. Fourth, we consider implications for teacher identity
development and evolving partnership practices.
Conceptual Framework: Intentional Partnerships and Teacher Identity
Comparing Partnership Models
We describe our partnership model in relation to two other approaches to schooluniversity collaboration: informal partnerships and professional development schools.
We position an intentional partnership between these two models, although it draws
elements from both (Hamel & Ryken, 2006). Table 1 compares the three models, their
purposes, structure, and central practices.
[Insert Table 1 here]
From our own experience with local schools, we identify an “informal partnership”
as a school site where we have created successful internships (observation and student
teaching experiences) with mentor teachers and principals for several years, often
mediated through one-on-one relationships between specific individuals. Informal
partnerships exist where principals consistently agree to work with our students, where a
handful of mentors know our program well, and where our pre-service students
consistently report positive internship experiences. Our program has a strong reputation
at such schools, and relationships between mentors and university supervisors have
matured over time. Informal partnership sites may shift over time with teacher mobility
and attrition, but this is precisely the wisdom of the informal model. Both school and
university can step back from the relationship, if needed.
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An intentional partnership, by contrast, extends an informal partnership by
intentionally fostering and structuring dialogue among educational professionals invested
in a single internship site – pre-service teachers, mentors, supervisors, professors, and
principal. Cochran-Smith (2005) notes that “many goals of teacher preparation are best
met in the intersections of universities, schools, and communities” (p. 13). Here, the
metaphor of “intersection” frames the school-university relationship as a meeting place of
multiple, competing interests – locations where professionals from distinct contexts will
hold mutual investment and many differences. The primary focus of an intentional
partnership, in our view, is on developing intersection spaces where such different
interests and investment come into view.
An intentional partnership, like a professional development school (PDS), is a
programmatic, capacity-building structure, rather than a set of informal or idiosyncratic
relationships between a few individuals across institutions. However, unlike an
intentional partnership, PDS’s emphasize system-building across educational institutions.
According to the National Association for the Development of Professional Development
Schools, professional development schools share philosophical commitments to
advancing equity, reflective practice, active engagement in the school and broader
community, and public communication about teaching practice. While an intentional
partnership shares such goals, PDS’s hold, in addition, four logistical requirements 1)
“An articulation agreement developed by the respective participants delineating the roles
and responsibilities of all involved,” 2) “A structure that allows all participants a forum
for ongoing governance, reflection, and collaboration,” 3) “Work by college/university
faculty and P–12 faculty in formal roles across and institutional settings,” and 4)
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“Dedicated and shared resources and formal rewards and recognition structures,”
(Executive Council, 2008, p. 3). In this sense, the ultimate aim of a PDS involves the
achievement of such elements as “common vision” and “joint work” (NCATE, 2001).
By contrast, the intentional partnership model focuses specifically on cultivating
dialogue and hearing different points of view. While professional development schools
certainly embrace dialogue and perspective-taking, the central aim of our intentional
partnership is to cultivate substantive communication events – productive dialogue
between individuals who are positioned very differently in relation to pre-service teacher
growth. The primary goal, in the words of Cochran-Smith (2000), is to “help make
visible and accessible everyday events and practices and the ways they are differently
understood by different stakeholders in the educational process” (p.167). We are
particularly interested in how the intentional crossing of voices makes visible various
forces, interests, and pressures that shape conceptions of teaching and learning across
institutions.
Goodlad (1988) indeed argues that school-university partnerships hinge most
essentially on substantive interaction. He writes of the difficulty of maintaining rich
communication across institutions:
The most significant [partnership] elements, such as collaborative inquiry,
are also the most difficult to achieve and, simultaneously, the most
deceptively subtle in their mature functioning. Consequently, they usually
are the ones least likely to be diligently cultivated and most likely to be
sacrificed to ‘packages’ or quick-fix panaceas (p.20).
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Given the difficulty in achieving such “mature functioning,” we have focused our efforts
on how mentor teachers, principals, teacher educators, and pre-service teachers might
have powerful conversations together around shared questions that cross institutions.
Such dialogue provides beginning and experienced teachers with a forum within which to
articulate how varied forces are shaping their work and to hear alternative points of view.
Identity Development in Partnership
Underlying our conception of partnership is the notion that learning to teach is
centrally about identity development (Alsup, 2006; Costello, 2005; Olsen, 2008), not
merely about instructional tools, knowledge, skill sets, behaviors, or even dispositions.
Alsup (2006) highlights that identity development for teachers is complex, that
“establishing…a rich multi-faceted identity…requires the acceptance of ambiguity,
multiple subjectivities, shifting contexts, and uncomfortable tension among ideological
perspectives” (p.192). Acknowledging and grappling with the fundamental tensions of
becoming a teacher necessarily involves attention to the ways in which individuals move
within and between diverse spaces, in particular, university and school contexts, as well
as to one’s agency in relation to school curricula. Pre-service teachers entering school
sites, for example, despite the progressive practices they have experienced in methods
courses, can quickly adopt default identities that assume teaching to be an isolated act,
teachers as “implementers” of curriculum, and school as real-world vs. university as
idealized theory. Thus, our partnership work aims to address how pre-service teachers
see themselves as professionals – i.e. whether or not they have a voice in their
professional community, whether they are authorized to experiment and question,
whether they feel they have to choose sides between university and school or between
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theory and practice. Intentional partnerships likewise encourage teacher educators and
mentor teachers to co-inhabit the spaces where such tensions are experienced and to share
their own tensions with those new to our profession.
Students in professional schools face distinct challenges as they work to take on a
new professional identity—in our case, the identity of teacher. Costello (2005) suggests
that students in professional schools are often “preoccupied with questions such as Who
am I? What are my ideals? and What are my priorities?” (p. 26). She notes that,
While a professional student may be “converted” to a new view of himself,
this occurs only after the student “rehearses” and “portrays” the
professional role to others, “realizing” a professional identity by
“mastering performance situations.” Thus, professional identity is not
necessarily a self concept but a representation of the self to others.
Professional identity is “asserted,” “claimed,” and “secured” (p. 31).
From this perspective, partnership meetings aim to provide an important space for preservice teachers to try on identity positions and to rehearse such roles by talking about
teaching and learning in the company of mentor teachers and professors. Rehearsals in
this context allow teachers to take on or appropriate various forms of talk and action that
may shape how they envision their role and voice in schools. During partnership
meetings, this could look like teachers asking critical questions about the adopted
curriculum, identifying and reframing assumptions, or wondering about the broader
purpose of teaching a particular subject.
Costello also emphasizes how physical space, role models, and discourse
powerfully impact the socialization process in professional schools. In her research she
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found that professors in a school of law controlled conversation, spoke with authority,
and devalued displays of emotion, thus enacting the identity of lawyer as one who is
competitive, articulate, and tough. By contrast, students in a school of social welfare
were socialized to see their role as one of dilemma management that involved
collaboration and omni-directional power relations. Our partnership meetings strive to
open up possibilities for identity development – specifically by socializing students
toward teacher collaboration in the consideration of teaching dilemmas. We believe this
best occurs in a school setting but with multiple teacher education stakeholders present.
In other words, we strive to provide pre-service teachers, mentors, and teacher educators
opportunities to rehearse in a public school setting (rather than a university classroom)
the process of raising questions about their own practice, commenting on gaps and
overlaps between school and university expectations, and generating questions about both
school-based curricula and university-sanctioned practices.
Meeting Practices
The central practice of the intentional partnership is discussion of specific
dilemmas of teaching by analyzing student, teacher, and/or curriculum artifacts.
Meetings typically follow a five part agenda: 1) welcome and review of previous
meetings, 2) introduction of a teaching dilemma, 3) small group discussion, 4) whole
group discussion, and 5) feedback. During the academic year, we aim to meet as a group
in six one-hour meetings, three in the fall semester and three in the spring. Table 2
summarizes the meeting topics, discussion questions posed, and the artifacts shared in
2006-2007.
[Insert Table 2 here]
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As seen in Table 2, meetings typically involve 15-20 individuals with a roughly
equal balance of pre-service teachers, mentor teachers, and university faculty. To
intentionally support the crossing of multiple voices and perspectives, we have developed
a triad planning structure. A pre-service teacher, his or her mentor, and a university
teacher educator gather before each partnership meeting to decide what artifacts will be
shared and to generate discussion questions. The pre-service teacher is given a lead role
in selecting student learning artifacts and in facilitating the partnership meeting. Table 2
shows that partnership meeting discussions are focused on pre-service teacher questions
and that topics range from discussion of curriculum to broad topics such as classroom
routines or assessment standards. Artifacts shared in meetings range from student work
to descriptions of classroom practice to role plays.
Sirotnik (1988) emphasizes “the obligation to leave empirical and critical records
of organizational activity” (p. 180); thus we have developed a systematic method to
document stakeholder perspectives by seeking feedback and creating transcripts. We
seek feedback from all participants at the end of each meeting; participants respond to the
writing prompt, “What do you take away from today’s partnership meeting?” on index
cards. These responses are typed up and organized into a table by stakeholder group
(pre-service teacher, elementary school, university) to make patterns in perspectives
visible. Meeting transcripts are created by two university professors who have taken
written notes during the meeting. After each meeting, one professor types up a complete
transcript and writes reflective commentary. The second professor reviews the transcript,
adding detail and writing additional reflective commentary.
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To better understand the nature of interaction during partnership meetings and to
explore our questions about identity development, we have examined meeting talk as
well as the feedback cards. We have examined meeting data in three different ways
following Miles and Huberman’s (1994) recommendation for data reduction, display, and
verification. First, we examined turn-taking and types of talk that individuals used at
meetings. An analysis of turn-taking relates directly to our concern that pre-service
teachers have the opportunity to rehearse a professional role in the company of others.
We began our analysis using a grounded method to identify types of talk and to record
who was talking and how often. A “turn” was defined as a T-unit (Hunt, 1965),
essentially a “meaning unit” composed of a main clause along with the subordinate
clauses that go with it. As part of this process, we identified two important types of
discourse, what we call “informative” and “exploratory” talk.
With the feedback cards, we conducted a content analysis of the participants’
comments. The two researchers independently coded the feedback cards using a
grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and then met and developed a shared
coding scheme through “inter-subjective consensus” (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 11).
Using the shared coding scheme the feedback cards were re-coded. This analysis helped
us reconsider the impacts of partnership meetings on teacher identity development. For
example, we noted that when reflecting on partnership meetings, all participants
emphasized three facets of teacher identity—teacher as learner, teacher as curriculum
theorist, and teacher as member of a learning community.
Teacher Identity Rehearsal: Searching for Evidence
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Costello’s (2005) emphasis on “realizing” a professional identity by “mastering
performance situations” (p. 31) challenges us to carefully consider the opportunities preservice teachers have to rehearse various kinds of teaching stances and teacher talk within
a school site and in the company of a range of professionals. We have specifically
examined the ways in which discourse opportunities shape the kinds of agency beginning
teachers might take on amidst district or state curricular demands.
Two Types of Discourse
Two general kinds of discourse occur in our partnership meetings—informative
and exploratory. Informative discourse involves one-directional sharing of information
amongst experts or from expert to novice. For example, our first meeting focused on
“Walk to Read,” a grouping system which involves moving students from their home
classroom into teaching groups in different rooms aimed at each student’s instructional
level. At this meeting, the school principal made a clarification to pre-service students:
“There are 5-6 different elements that you work into that 90 minute reading block. Most
of you don’t see reading [during observation] and you need to know this stuff.” In this
comment, the principal shared information and stated what was important information to
know. At this early time in the school year, our teaching candidates were observing one
classroom, and thus some had not yet observed the reading curriculum. From a
university perspective, partnership meetings have helped make visible the kinds of
discourse that teaching candidates experience during their placement – in this case how
direct information about an adopted reading program is offered and the urgency with
which such information is shared. Later, in this same meeting, a pre-service teacher
asked, while examining an assessment artifact, “On decoding in the ‘tricky word’ section,
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do you just write the word there?” She sought direct information from a mentor teacher
about how to complete an assessment form documenting student reading skills.
In contrast, exploratory discourse involves questions, challenges, probes,
proposals, or re-framing. Such discourse offers opportunity for beginning teachers to
rehearse a professional identity as questioner and problem-poser in a school setting. For
example, at the end of our discussion about reading, a mentor teacher wondered aloud, “I
know we are teaching kids to read, but are we creating readers?” The mentor teacher was
posing a question to the group contrasting two purposes of reading instruction. Similarly,
as mentor teachers presented pages of reading scores, a new pre-service teacher
repeatedly asked, “What are your goals for the Read Well program? I’m trying to figure
out your goals.” Here the pre-service teacher was re-framing the discourse from a focus
on “data” to the larger purposes of learning to read with a particular program.
Table 3 shows the distribution of informative and exploratory discourse over the
course of six partnership meetings. Turns listed as “other discourse” typically reflect
introductory directions, background information, or positive affirmations of other
members.
[Insert Table 3 here]
This analysis reveals a shift in balance of exploratory and informative talk after
implementation of planning triad meetings (which began after the first meeting in
September). In the first September meeting, planned by the school principal and three
mentor teachers, nearly two-thirds of the discourse was informative, the one way sharing
of information, about reading instruction at this elementary school. Subsequent meetings
show more of a balance of these two forms of talk, although the balance varies across
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meetings – sometimes favoring one kind of talk over another. However, the planning
triad structure, embedding the intersection of three different voices (pre-service, mentor,
university faculty) into the planning process, seems to foster a different kind of
professional discourse, namely, greater balance of exploratory and informative talk. In
addition, using focused student learning artifacts – for example, a 3rd grader’s written
responses to mathematical problems – and having a pre-service teacher pose a question
about student work, has generated more exploratory talk. We have found that such
balance is important given the sometimes differing aims of stakeholders – when, as
Goodlad (1988) says, the inquiry-oriented culture of the university meets the practiceoriented culture of the school. This analysis has helped us realize the power and
prevalence of informative discourse in this partnership school, especially as teachers
make sense of curriculum mandates, and that creating space for exploratory discourse
requires intentionality. In addition, we have come to value the role of both informative
and exploratory talk in the school setting, rather than meetings that dramatically favor
one over the other. We see here the need for beginning teachers to have diverse rehearsal
spaces, where they can try on different kinds of language with professional peers and
become conscious of different forms of teacher talk.
The nature of talk is important to identity development. The shifting balance of
exploratory and informative talk, for example, is consistent with Alsup’s (2006) focus on
identity development involving tensions among multiple perspectives. For example, the
pre-service teacher who raised questions about “purposes” of the school reading program
can be seen as working to negotiate between simply “implementing” and “having agency”
as a professional – or between tinkering with state mandates and having an expanded
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sense of a teacher as curriculum theorist. Costello (2005) highlights how role models can
powerfully impact such identity development work. Using exploratory and informative
talk, mentor teachers and university teacher educators model for pre-service teachers and
each other how to problem-pose and re-frame issues – as well as how to share
information. As with Lave and Wenger’s (1991) notion of legitimate peripheral
participation, beginning teachers become novice participants within a particular culture,
both observing and “trying on” the diverse discourse practices of the more experienced
members of the community. The nature of this rehearsal space, we argue, can strongly
shape the identities and discourses that beginning teachers learn to enact professionally.
Turn-Taking
Turn-taking patterns help us examine the issue of speaking rights (Cazden 2001)
among participants, that is, who feels authorized to talk during partnership meetings and,
by inference, how authority to speak might be constructed among professionals in
schools. While we believe that listening to dialogue is an important form of legitimate
peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), our goal is to create meeting contexts
where multiple voices and stakeholders are heard and where pre-service teachers
participate actively. This is a challenging goal, but one that we believe affects a
beginning teacher’s professional identity – i.e. whether or not a beginning teacher
believes teaching fundamentally involves collaborative dialogue, whether a beginning
teacher can have a professional voice among experienced teaching professionals, or
whether critical questioning might be a possible value, even an expectation, among
colleagues. Navigating turn-taking in partnership meetings, new teachers may gain a
heightened sense of how to enter a professional conversation as a novice, when to remain
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silent, and when to insert a new voice or question even in contexts where that voice is
undervalued.
Table 4 shows the turn-taking patterns among pre-service teachers, school-based
and university-based participants at each meeting.
[Insert Table 4 here]
Such data helps us think about the resources and questions that help to elicit productive,
multi-vocal teacher talk. For example, our fifth meeting focused on classroom routines.
Two artifacts were shared—the pre-service teacher and mentor teacher role-played a
student turning in math homework, and the mentor teacher shared a two page singlespaced typed account of every classroom procedure for the first hour of class. At this
meeting, school-based participants (mentor teachers and principal) took 65% of speaking
turns, whereas pre-service teachers took a listening stance with only 13% of speaking
turns. Our second meeting, which focused on a change in the district math curriculum,
school-based participants took 54% of the speaking turns compared to university-based
participants taking only 22% of the turns. At our third meeting, where the two preservice teachers linked their questions about classroom discussion to Cazden’s (2001)
views of nontraditional discourse, university-based participants took 40% of the speaking
turns, compared to 26% turns by school-based participants.
We are thus considering the degree to which meeting topics and the nature of the
artifacts impact the balance of turn-taking. It appears that conversations focused
specifically on curriculum initiatives of the school, or more generalized issues
(“assessment,” “classroom routines”) rather than experiences specific to one classroom,
invite the input of school-based participants. In addition, we are now more aware of how
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different artifacts shape speaking rights. Focused artifacts of student work seem to invite
the participation of pre-service teachers and to strike a balance of talk, perhaps because
they are a text that can be held in one’s hand in the way that a description of classroom
practice or role play cannot, or perhaps because analyzing them does not require judging
the events, and teacher, in one classroom.
[insert Figure 1 here]
In this way, successful artifacts allow the voices and thinking of school children to
become present during meetings, but perhaps more importantly they simultaneously
create a “third point” (Lipton & Wellman, 2003, pp. 30-31) – that is, a reference point
which mediates substantive communication between different parties without putting
those parties at substantive risk. Such artifacts in combination with a focused pre-service
question have tended to invite pre-service participation and engender greater balance in
turn-taking during meetings. Less successful have been artifacts that hold too much data
(too many artifacts or too much data on any one artifact). This year we have had a
generous view of what constitutes an artifact, next year we may focus on student work
specifically to better support the participation of pre-service teachers.
Participant Feedback
Our content analysis of participant feedback reveals important trends in teacher
identity development for all participants—pre-service teachers, mentor teachers, and
university teacher educators. The goal in partnership meetings is to intentionally support
the intersection of multiple voices, and to view pre-service learning as embedded within a
wider circle of professionals engaged in ongoing development and growth. Thus we
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share participants’ written reflections as evidence of how a multi-vocal dialogue can
impact teacher identity development for a range of educators.
In their reactions to meetings, pre-service teachers often write about a tension
between their desire for answers and the realization that teaching involves numerous,
ongoing dilemmas. They claim a deeper sense of agency toward their teaching practice,
even as the answers they seek are not always forthcoming in partnership discussions.
The written reflections reveal how pre-service teachers come to see themselves as
teacher-learners in professional dialogue with others.
(pre-service teacher A): Hearing so many voices in the room agree that
the sense-making continues is both reassuring and daunting, but at least I
don’t feel so much anxiety about how far I have to come in 10 months.
(pre-service teacher B): I came without so many questions expecting
some answers or advice, and I believe I got some really good advice. But
it was nice to see in the discussion that people who have been doing this
forever still don’t have all the answers. Even though we are teachers we
will always be learners. It was also nice to be in a place with superiors in
more of a peer way.
In both comments, students highlight the importance of claiming a sense of teaching that
goes beyond “finding the answers,” and in which students find a sense of collegiality
among experienced professionals.
Mentor teachers write about their struggles to make sense of curricular realities
and practices, often taking an inquiry orientation by expressing a desire to understand the
issues they face. Like pre-service teachers, they explicitly recognize the ongoing growth
and development involved in learning to teach. Mentor teachers’ consistent use of the
words “deep” and “deeper” suggest that partnership meetings create a context that allows
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them to explore questions and tensions that might not come to the forefront amidst the
daily demands of teaching.
(mentor A): I think it feels good to have time to discuss meaningfully the
deep issues about math materials. We’re as confused about the process as
the MAT students are, and they need to see that we too struggle to make
sense out of what and how we’re teaching kids. I think it was important to
hear that you are always growing and learning no matter how long you’ve
been teaching.
(mentor B): it is good for the student teachers to hear and be involved in
“deeper” discussions about what we teach. We have to be involved at the
district leveling choosing programs and not just sit back and wait for
programs to be given to us to use.
University professors and supervisors typically comment on pre-service teacher
participation and growth, acknowledge increased awareness regarding student work and
variation across classroom and school sites, and recognize how their assumptions differ
from curriculum enacted in school sites.
(university faculty A): My previously clear understanding of the
differences between “drill” and “practice” became muddied when I looked
at samples of work. I’m concerned about the outcome of using Saxon and
Investigations with no guidance—with every school, and sometimes with
a school-every classroom, doing something different.
(university faculty B): I’m struck by vast differences between my own
literacy assumptions and the assessment practices and structures of Walk
to Read.
As teacher educators participating in the partnership we identify our own
assumptions and have those assumptions and our perspectives challenged. We become
more aware of the “deceptively subtle functioning” of our intentional partnership
(Goodlad, 1988) and also become sensitized to shifts in pre-service teacher identity as
well as in our own. As one university professor wrote about a pre-service teacher’s
pointed comment during a meeting:
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I took away the power of Rob’s rejoinder today—his insistence that we do
not lose the spirit of the partnership by too much talk between mentors and
professors. By voicing this concern aloud … he enacted something
mentioned early in the meeting—i.e. the importance of taking on the role
of “professional in conversation”—rather than just polite novice.
Although Alsup (2006) and Costello (2005) emphasize identity development for new
professionals, the feedback cards make visible to us the ongoing nature of identity
development among all partnership members. We see how teachers with varying
experience are shaped through implicit questions at work in the partnership, such as
“What are others’ experiencing?” “What kinds of discourse are allowed in this setting?”
“What kinds of certainty must I portray about my practice?” and “What might my
teaching look like in the future?”
Implications
Identity in Community
A fundamental shift in our thinking has been to conceive of identity development
as central to the purposes of partnership. In particular, we are concerned with how preservice teachers conceive of themselves in relation to broader institutions—the public
schools and university—both of which directly attempt to shape their pedagogical
thinking. We believe their teacher identities are shaped by whether and how school and
university talk and work together, how we regard each other, and how we listen to one
another. We have learned the importance of intentionally fostering multi-vocal dialogue
– in a few designated partner schools – which helps make visible our various
intersections, differences, and mutual investments. Such conversations not only re-cast
the borders between institutions but also provide beginning teachers with an image of the
possible, giving them experience with an “alternative, extended professional community,”
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which may be essential in reducing the sense of isolation which renders teacher agency a
risky prospect (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2006, p. 58). Such talk, we assert, has the potential
to shift how pre-service teachers see themselves as professionals.
Costello’s (2005) focus on rehearsal space and claiming a professional identity
has been especially helpful as we conceptualize what it means to take on the identity of a
teacher. We have come to see our partnership meetings not only as locations where preservice teachers acquire skills and knowledge, but as locations where they negotiate who
they are and might become as teachers. Partnership meetings provide a rehearsal space to
engage questions about the status of one’s professional voice and to pose questions based
on ongoing teaching dilemmas. Such interaction provides opportunity to experience how
one claims a position and voice within a school community and in relation to the
demands of outside institutions and authorities. Participants gain a heightened sense of
how to enter a professional conversation as a novice and when to assert exploratory
voices even in contexts where such discourse may be undervalued. Perhaps most
important, novices participate with experienced teachers, school leaders, and professors,
who enact such practices in a community. Our research reminds us that teacher identity
development is a life-long process – but also one that is shaped powerfully during early
apprenticeship experiences – and that early career teachers seldom experience contexts
where multi-vocal dialogue (university professor, mentor teacher, field supervisor,
principal, pre-service teacher) is active.
Partnership Practices
Our partnership practices shift and evolve as we have more experiences working
with partner schools. Yet, a few core features stand out. Of central importance to
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creating multi-vocal dialogue is the triad planning structure, which both supports preservice teachers to take a lead role by presenting a dilemma from their practice, and also
situates three perspectives in the planning process (pre-service, mentor, and university
teacher educator).
In addition, student artifacts that are both accessible and complex are essential.
Specifically, we have learned to ask pre-service teachers to locate a “provocative pairing”
of artifacts, that is, two student artifacts from the same learning task that differ in a way
that raises questions or is intriguing. We have found that a beginning teacher’s authentic,
classroom-based question combined with a provocative pairing of artifacts can produce
powerful dialogue across experience levels – dialogue that is specific to classroom
practice and elicits connection to conceptual views, pedagogical theories, and political
realities.
Finally, the questions below guide us specifically in planning and assessing
partnership meetings:

Are meeting conversations multi-vocal? Who is talking and how often?

What is the balance of informative and exploratory talk? What impacts this
balance?

What kinds of artifacts, topics, and planning structures support multi-vocal
dialogue?

To what degree are pre-service teacher questions central to the discussion?

To what extent do meetings help us, as teacher educators, better understand
the experiences of our pre-service students and their mentors -- and envision
program change or growth?
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Conclusion
Our intentional partnership model brings pre-service teachers, mentor teachers,
and teacher educators into a shared acculturation process in the context of series of
purposeful meetings. In this setting, educators investigate curriculum and pedagogy,
express uncertainties, and verbalize the many tensions faced in teaching. Like Luna et
al’s (2004) group of educators engaged in a critical literacy teacher inquiry group, we
have realized that
Within the dominant discourse of professional development, support for teachers
is typically conceptualized as having access to expert advice, resource materials,
and funding. Although we agree that all of these elements are important for
teachers’ professional growth, support in our group had more to do with being
listened to, challenged, and validated . . . (p. 79).
As noted earlier, Costello (2005) suggests that students in professional schools struggle to
take on professional identities. For teachers, part of this includes negotiating ways of
relating to curriculum. By reviewing student discourse during meetings, we see preservice teachers rehearsing the professional role of teacher and explicitly stating their
ideals and priorities in the company of a range of teacher educators and mentors. They
are affirmed in active curricular thinking and are being heard within a larger, diverse
group. We are reminded that identity never develops outside of a social world – that the
construction of that social world matters, and that the responses that others give in that
world help us to know who we are and the limits of what might be possible.
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Rehearsing Professional Roles
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