Conference Agenda

Prospective teachers (PTs) often come to elementary teacher education classes reporting poor previous learning experiences. Having participated in a traditional paradigm with a reliance on direct instruction throughout their previous schooling experiences, PTs expect teacher educators (TEs) will also engage in show and tell to instruct them on how to teach differently and better. Subsequently, TEs face the challenge of responding to the expectations of their students while cultivating experiences that support the development of a new vision of teaching and learning. To support PTs in developing their teaching practice, we (a group of TEs) use co-teaching in our courses. In this paper, we will share (using data) PTs experiences co-teaching in our courses.

Previous research has uncovered different conceptions of co-teaching as well as their affordances (Yopp et al., 2014). In many studies, examples of co-teaching showcase colleagues of equal status (e.g.practicing teachers) co-teaching lessons as well as in mentoring relationships (e.g. field placements). However, there is a lack of documented examples of co-teaching between TEs and PTs in course work. Conceptions of co-teaching range from a delivery model of instruction to interactions based on emergent ideas. Characterizations of co-teaching that place the teacher in a position of delivering content can be counterproductive to our goals and also reinforce traditional paradigms of teaching. Our work in co-teaching has been influenced by Bacharach (2010) conception of co-teaching as team teaching. Team teaching involves an invisible flow where teachers (a pair or the small group) are actively involved in the lesson. Marzocchi et al., (2021) described team teaching as interactive where teachers take on a role that is dependent on “in-the-moment” needs of students. This conception means that teachers need to develop their abilities to listen to the ideas of others and respond to them. Mason (1998) suggested that the work of TEs involves developing and enhancing different levels of awareness in PTs as opposed to simply helping them learn content that needs to be covered. He argues that PTs need to know how to navigate instructional situations so that their students experience a shift in attention and become aware of the ideas and concepts of which they were previously unaware.

Mason (1998) describes teachers’ awareness as consisting of three levels: a) Awareness-in-action is the “sensitivities to certain situations which provoke and enable action” (p. 257); b) Awareness-in-discipline is “sensitivities which enable us to be distanced from the doing sufficiently to instruct others, to give orders, literally, for doing things…” (p. 260); and c) Awareness-in-counsel is “sensitivities which enable us to be distanced from the act of directing the actions of others” (p. 260). A teacher’s level of awareness is associated with developing sensitivities that allow them to provoke student actions and teaching actions, like distancing themselves from doing and directing students. Mason’s suggestion for developing PTs’ awareness rather than delivering content aligns with our motivation to co-teach with PTs’ in our course work. Through co-teaching in their course work, it is our goal that PTs will develop sensitivities that provoke teacher or student actions. This assertion prompted us to ask: What new awareness do PTs have about teaching that you learned as a result of co-teaching?

The use of classroom videos as mediator for authentic observing and reasoning in teacher education has shown a range of advantages (Blomberg et al., 2014), and there is a respectable body of studies, especially in the subject mathematics and on more generic approaches. But there is little research related to other subjects (Dindyal et al., 2021). In Danish teacher education, five course designs that includes the use of classroom videos and the three phases observe, reason and predict, that is the learning to notice framework (van Es & Sherin, 2011), have been developed and carried out parallel in the three subject didactical courses: Danish L1, English L2 and Mathematics. Unlike many other studies, where the learning to notice courses are separated from regular teaching (Amador et al., 2021), the challenge was to integrate the five designs into the regular courses.

According to a recent literature review on methodological issues there is also a limited number of studies based on subject-comparative approaches and longitudinal investigations (Amador et al., 2021). Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore this approach from a longitudinal perspective. The research question of this paper is what characterises student teachers’ development of noticing and reasoning competences in three different subjects over the period of their first two years of teacher education.

Both the concept of noticing and the concept of reasoning seems to vary from study to study. While the distinction between novice noticing and teacher noticing appears more obvious (Stahnke & Blömeke, 2021), it remains unclear what counts for professional reasoning. Considering different educational traditions there are different expectations of what kind of didactical arguments and forms of knowledge are valued and approved in reasoning (Blömeke et al., 2014; König et al., 2014). In addition, one may assume differences between subject traditions (Blömeke et al., 2016). The investigation of noticing and reasoning competencies tries to identify progression or degression (Amador et al., 2021) of the student teachers’ accurateness of noticing, the use of different kinds of didactical knowledge and kinds of arguments, and the ways of connecting the observed with didactical forms of knowledge during the path of two years teacher education.

The research conducted explored the effects that participating in a professional learning community (PLC) had on the professional identity and practice of facilitators of second-career science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers (SCSTs). This research investigated the SEMEL professional learning communities (SPLCs), which were introduced in 2020 as part of the "From High-Tech to Teaching" program in Israel. The program model is composed of the SPLC facilitators' community and the SCST communities, which function in various academic institutions across Israel. The main focus of this research is the SPLC facilitators' community, the ways it impacts the SCST communities and the overall induction process and the effectiveness of the new model.

In recent years, Israel has been experiencing a severe teacher shortage, particularly in STEM disciplines (Even-​Zahav et al., 2022). In order to address this shortage, the "From High-Tech to Teaching" program was created in 2019. The program recruits current and former high-tech employees who wish to become teachers and oversees their training and induction process. These teachers provide an important resource for the educational system, as they possess significant STEM discipline knowledge, prior organizational experience, and other relevant skills (Akiri & Dori, 2022; Wagner & Imanuel-Noy, 2014).

In 2020, the program's stakeholders realized that this unique population requires a different approach and decided to change the training model for these teachers from a traditional heterogeneous top-down practicum course to a professional learning community, a model that has been used successfully in other professional learning and teacher-induction settings (Glaze-Crampes, 2020). In the new bottom-up, dialogical model, the SCSTs participate in a homogeneous, disciplinary-based PLC in which they can share the unique challenges they face. In 2020, eight new SCST communities were established in various academic institutions and were led by two facilitators: a traditional practicum facilitator with knowledge in teacher induction and a former SCST, who brought the required disciplinary knowledge and field experience.

The new PLC model incorporates communal characteristics into the SCST induction process (Hord and Summers, 2008; Olsson, 2019) and encourages the SCSTs to discuss their challenges in a reflective, dialogical manner that focuses on their teaching practices and day to day experiences. The SCST facilitators participate in the SPLC facilitators' community, where they can share the challenges they face in their practice and acquire facilitation knowledge and techniques.

The research investigated all three tiers of the program (policy makers, SPLC facilitators, and SCST facilitators) using qualitative methodology. The objectives were to assess the effectiveness of the new model, to examine the effects that PLC participation had on SCST facilitator professional identity and practice, and to learn how these facilitators contributed to SCST development. By examining the experiences of the facilitators and SCSTs, the research provided valuable insights into how PLCs can be effectively implemented to support teacher professional development and induction and to support second-career teachers, while learning how these communities can be used to address teacher shortages in STEM disciplines.