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Metaphoric Reflections on Collaboration in a TeacherEducation PracticumLinda Peterat a & M. Gale smith aa University of British Columbia , CanadaPublished online: 11 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Linda Peterat & M. Gale smith (1996) Metaphoric Reflections on Collaboration in a Teacher EducationPracticum, Educational Action Research, 4:1, 15-28

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Educational Action Research, Volume 4, No. 1, 1996

Metaphoric Reflections onCollaboration in a TeacherEducation Practicum

LINDA PETERAT & M. GALE SMITHUniversity of British Columbia, Canada

ABSTRACT This paper examines experiences of collaboration in a teachereducation practicum. The reflections on experiences are illuminatedmetaphorically through considering the student teaching triad as chambermusic. This action research report also strives toward being written in a pluralvoice and as a writerly text. The music metaphor enables an account of theresonances and dissonances: the frustrations, doubts, and discomforts withincollaborative projects. Questions are raised about the ways of initiating andsustaining collaboration; and about the form action research accounts can take.

In an action research report, exploring collaboration and the studentteaching triad - student teacher, faculty adviser [1], school adviser [2], Gore(1991) states that the common metaphor of an equilaterial triangle is"unrealistic and perhaps even undesirable" (p. 268). Instead she suggests,"there is some value in thinking of the student teaching triad as chambermusic". These two metaphors and the meanings, questions, and visions theyevoke encourage the reflections on collaboration in this paper. We take upthe invitation to explore further the value Gore believes music holds ingaining insight into collaboration among participants in a teacher educationpracticum. [3] As well, this action research report explores formats for writingaction research reports that venture into writing in a plural voice andwriterly text.

The importance of collaboration among universities and schools inreforming teacher education programmes has been well established(Brookhart & Loadman, 1992; Bruneau, Henderson, McCracken, Kimble &Hawthorn. 1992; Carson, 1989; Castle & Giblin, 1992; Clift & Say. 1988;Corcoran & Andrew, 1988; Erickson, 1991; Smith, 1992). However, theexperience and meanings of collaboration among participants in suchteacher education projects is less well established (some exceptions areMiller, 1990; Gore, 1991).

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For 3 years, we, as faculty advisers, participated with school advisersand student teachers in a collaborative practicum project in home economicsteacher education. The idea of collaborative resonance, borrowed fromMarilyn Cochran-Smith's (1991) work, provided a guiding ethos for thepractices we wished to create as part of the project. Through more opendiscussion, meetings, and listening we believed that we could all learn moreof each others' expectations and beliefs, and more meaningfully link thepracticum with course work in the teacher education programme.

In initial explorations of collaboration with school advisers and studentteachers, we recognised some of the different meanings collaboration couldhave (Peterat, 1993). Student teachers indicated that support offered byfellow student teachers encouraged more risk taking in teaching, that beingwith a peer student teacher (or two) in the same school alleviates somestress and tension. We heard that fostering norms of collaboration during apracticum is likely to encourage student and beginning teachers to reach outto other colleagues in a school in collaborative ways, and to encourageseeking ways to build collaborative relationships with peers as a beginningteacher. School advisers indicated that collaboration encouraged jointplanning of courses with student teachers, it permitted them to learn fromstudent teachers, and it meant being less judgemental in evaluation andmore working together for improvements. They also indicated thatcollaboration encouraged them to reflect on their own teaching, to questionwhat is done and why, and to be more flexible and open in deciding onappropriate practices. We faculty advisers found that open discussions withteachers and student teachers encouraged us to examine our own teachingand faculty advising practices, and let us learn about what we do, and howwe might do it better.

As we constructed this initial story of collaboration, we did so in theface-to-face dialogue of collaboration. But this format held us to theacceptable politeness and tact essential in caring human relationships, andthus only captured the positive and pleasant dimensions of thecollaboration. It may be that the common format of writing action researchreports encourages partial and successful tales rather than portrayal ofcomplex and contradictory experiences. Sumara & Luce-Kapler (1993) writeabout collaboration in action research projects:

We believe that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding ofthe nature of collaboration in action research. As a slogan forparticipatory educational research, collaboration seems to havebecome aligned with the idea of equal participation, responsibilityand representation - ail subsumed within a comfortable, friendlycommunity of persons engaged in a mutually interesting project orendeavor, (p. 393)

In this paper we intentionally probe the 'underside' of collaboration; thetensions, frustrations, discomfort, and dissonance, to reach a deeperunderstanding of collaborative practice in a teacher education setting.

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Writing Action Research

The form and style of account writing appropriate to action research is acontinuing debate. Richard Winter (1989) argues for a "plural text" in writingaction research accounts, one which "can accommodate a plural structure ofinquiry" (p. 62). He proposes that accounts retain independentinterpretations, show differences, contradictions, possibilities, and openquestions. He further writes that "readers will expect a report to besufficiently organized to be accessible to a conventional act of reading, aswell as sufficiently open to allow for readers' various interpretations" (p. 64).

Sumara & Luce-Kapler (1993) use the notion of writerly text tohighlight the co-labouring nature of collaborative action research. While theyuse the "writerly text' as a metaphor for the lived experience of doing actionresearch, we find it has value as a vision for the writing of action researchaccounts. Proposing Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient as an example ofa writerly text. Sumara & Luce-Kapler (1993) describe the form of writerlytext as "less predictable", requiring the reader to "make connections betweenimages, events, and settings presented" (p. 390) and to synthesise "thepossibilities offered by the text with elements of his or her own experience"(Sumara & Luce-Kapler, 1993, p. 387). Sumara & Luce-Kapler furthersuggest that a writerly text does not seek closure but rather 'co-labouring'with the reader, which deliberately shifts the authority of the text from thewriter toward a co-authoring of the reader with the writer.

We strive toward a writerly, plural voice research account. Our purposeis to share moments of collaboration in the context of a teacher educationpracticum. We strive to be evocative and inspiring of reflections in thereader. We do recognise that our account is limited by its partiality; that it isonly one kind of text that may be written about our experiences, one threadin what has been described as a "tangle of texts" (Sumara & Luce-Kapler,1993, p. 388).

The following anecdotes and quotations are reconstructions ofconversations which occurred with school advisers in planning and reflectivemeetings, and student teachers in advisory meetings during 3 years of aproject. Proceedings of the meetings were audiotaped and transcribed.Anecdotes from the meetings and advising were recorded in our journals.Direct quotes from conversations are often incomplete because thoughts areexpressed which connect back to one's or another's thoughts expressedmuch earlier, and sometimes people complete each other's sentences orinterrupt and talk over each other. Therefore, quotes have beenreconstructed to the extent necessary for understanding by the reader. As wewove conversation segments and anecdotes into this report, they also losttheir impact because they do not convey the emotion of face-to-facecommunication, nor can they convey to the reader the history of the variousrelationships that evolve among school and faculty advisers over time. Wehave tried to recapture in the form of writing something of the emotion, the

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intensity, and uncertainties experienced. We wish to evoke the silenceswhich accompany the spoken voices.

Metaphors are considered appropriate heuristics in analysing andreporting action research (Altrichter et al. 1993). They have the advantage ofgenerating meaning through images and associations. They can highlight"different facets of the same complex event" (Altrichter et al. 1993, p. 129),and thus enrich the research data and activity. They can also point topossibilities and open up new action strategies. We use the metaphor ofmusic suggested by Gore not because of any close affinity to music, butbecause it allows us to imagine, and playfully to project, possibilities. It alsohighlights listening, which was what we increasingly did as faculty advisersin the project. Transcripts of meetings revealed that while we talked more inplanning meetings with teachers, we talked very little in reflective meetings.Our initial attachment to "collaborative resonance" (Cochran-Smith, 1991) asa guiding ethos in the project focused our reflections on music and listeningas root orientations and led us to play with related terms in the expandedmusic metaphor. We highlight central features of our collaborative practiceand our reflections as dissonance, refrains, and improvisations in thefollowing account.

A Collaborative Teacher Education Practicum

When we initiated a collaborative practicum, we extended an invitation toschool advisers to join with us to seek ways to improve our working togetherin the practicum. We extended the invitation knowing that we were askingfor a relationship that might ask more of all of us. We also knew that ourdesire to secure the commitment of teachers to a collaborative projectdepended on their good will and willingness to take in and care for ourstudent teachers. They hold an ultimate power of refusal over us. If we donot build a feeling of 'being with' them, if we are not tactful, or do not care asmuch about their concerns as those of our student teachers, they may say'no'.

Dissonance

The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1981, p. 766) defines'dissonance' as an inharmonious or harsh sound or combination of sounds.We believe resonance of intent can be achieved through increasedcommunication about beliefs and practices, but resonance is not easilysecured, enduring, and perhaps not totally desirable. Dissonance stands outin contrast to 'resonance', an ideal we have sought to achieve in ourrelationship with school advisers and student teachers. Gore (1991) notesthat, "in music, dissonance is deliberately created to enhance the pleasurein the following consonance" (p. 268).

As part of encouraging collaboration, we place student teachers inpairs in home economics departments and encourage them to team plan,team teach, and peer assess.

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Gale: It was the week before the 2 week pre-practicum experiencewhen Alice came up to me after class. She was worried. The lableader in her Principles of Teaching course had said that mostteachers teach as they are taught. "I don't want to do that Howcan I make sure that doesn't happen?"

Linda: It was 2.30 on Friday afternoon at the end of the first weekof practicum. Diane, a student teacher called me at my office. Isensed the distress and concern in her voice. She said she felt shehad a personality conflict with her teaching partner and that theycouldn't work well together. She wondered if they could split theclasses they had planned to team teach, and each teach some ontheir own. Was this okay? She said they had different ideas aboutwhat was important to teach as well as how to teach it. She feltthey both were stubborn, with strong personalities, and haddefinite ideas about what they believed and wanted to teach. Shewondered: was this normal to have these difficulties?

Gale: Mary arrived at my office at the end of first term and prior tothe beginning of the practicum. She was furious at her teachingpartner. Sharon. They had collaborated on final assignments fortwo courses and she felt that Sharon had not pulled her weight.She felt it was unfair of Sharon to turn in such a shoddy productand was not looking forward to the practicum placement. Shecalled Sharon dizzy', and said she was so mad that she couldn'teven talk to her.

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1987, p. 367) defines 'dissonance'as a mingling of discordant sounds. We hope that teachers can share therewards and difficulties of working with student teachers throughconversation with each other, and thus learn from each other about how todeal with particular situations or challenges.

Linda: It was the afternoon of a day-long meeting with schooladvisers in June of last year. We had spent the bright sunny daysat the Faculty Club, lunch beside the pond in the sunshine, and lotsof talk about the successes of the practicum. We had hoped that byletting teachers talk about ways they had worked with the studentteacher pairs, that the advantages of having two student teachersrather than one in a department would become evident. Despitemuch positive and supportive talk about paired placements, Shirleyreported that in her view it was 'more work' to have two studentteachers.

Shirley: One would ask me a question and there was never a timewhen we could all sit down together and I could tell both of them

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the same thing at the same time. I found I had to repeat everythingtwice and worry if I had told each of them the same thing. I missedmy classes. I missed being in the classroom teaching. It seems Iwas gone so much. We are a small department (two teachers) sowith two student teachers, I didn't teach much. Then the point ofthem not getting away from each other much. They relied on eachother too much and isolated themselves from others in the schoolthey didn't reach out to others.

We hope that our student teachers will be innovative and novel in theirteaching, that they will try things that mean taking some risk, or doingthings other than the norm in a particular classroom. This was a positionencouraged by some school advisers, one of whom expressed early in theproject: "I do not teach the way I was taught to teach. Several things have ledto my trying to change. I am concerned that student teachers don't havesome of the new strategies or that they are afraid to try and therefore rely ontraditional methods we are trying to break away from".

In the reflective meeting at the end of the second year, we asked whatkinds of things student teachers did during practicum that the schooladvisers would describe as risk taking and what might have accounted forthe students' willingness to take risks in teaching. They described severalspecific incidents when they felt their student teachers had taken risks.Clare, a school adviser in another school countered: "I consider that as verycreative but I wouldn't necessarily say that's a risk taking thing. I'm, havinga hard time figuring out what is (risk taking)". School advisers continued todescribe further examples of activity they considered to be risk taking. Aftertwo more examples from other teachers, one asked Clare: "Can I ask youwhat you would mean by risk taking?" Clare continued: "I'm having a hardtime ... with what I would consider risk taking. If you thought it through wellenough and you thought through the major problems that could come upwith it, I guess I wouldn't consider anything a risk that happened in theclassroom. Maybe it might be more risk taking if you took them out of theclassroom to ...".

The teachers involved and the nature of their involvement in the projecthas differed each year. Some have been more committed than others to theemphasis on collaboration and reflection. Some have a more long-standingrelationship with and understanding of us. Carmen was involved for the firstyear in the project. She was in her second year of teaching and her opennessand empathy were much appreciated by the student teachers who workedwith her.

Carmen: I find that student teachers feel they have to be so perfectand they have to prove themselves to their adviser... they have todo eveything perfectly and they have to be therefor everything,and they have to ... they can't be human. I don't know why studentteachers get that perception. That I had to do everything ... bendover backwards for everyone that asked me to ... I'm not sure how

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we can change that perception. I think they should be able to comeinto their practicum with that human feeling. Tm human, I'm goingto make mistakes and this is where I'm going to learn.' I don't seethat happening, and I wish we could change that a bit. We shouldhave aforumfor them so they can speak about what they see andhow they feel in the situation and then it becomes more of aprocess they are involved with.

Refrain

Gage Canadian Dictionary (1983, p. 947) defines 'refrain' as a phrase orverse repeated regularly in a song or poem. The refrains occurring in astudent teaching practicum are often called by others 'dilemmas' or'problems', and described as such they urge resolution or amelioration. Asrefrains they are reminders of the repetitious nature of each year of teaching,and teacher education programmes. They call us again to wonder anew.Student teachers are each year beginners, and each year we faculty andschool advisers begin again and ponder again over recurring concerns.

At the end of the practicum last year, student teachers replied toanonymous surveys, evaluating their experience during practicum. Twostudent teachers indicated dissatisfaction with "the opportunity to do myown original lesson and unit planning during practicum". These commentswere reviewed by faculty and school advisers in a reflective meeting at theend of the year.

Linda: I wonder if there could be a type of progression [in thepracticum] where everything is given, then they are given thingsbut asked to make some changes in what is given, then there is thefreedom to do your own thing totally?

Clare: I think the progression goes from 'give me free rein' and then'my god, this is unbelievable' please help!

Janine: We said you are welcome to anything here. They usedthings but there were changes made. Some things came back thesame and some things were different.

Monica: We involved student teachers in planning with students.They gave them a choice of 13-14 topics. They worked withplanning what the majority of grade eights wanted.

How should a school adviser be present to give feedback to student teachersand at the same time permit the student teacher to feel in charge of theclassroom?

Penny: They needed you to be in the classroomfor a short time andmake some written comments about what you saw - they wanted

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that a lot. But at the same time they did not want you in theclassroom.

We have sought ways of encouraging student teachers to be reflective abouttheir teaching and to develop abilities of learning from their teaching. Wehave encouraged journal writing, usually beginning in their first termcurriculum and instruction course and continuing into their second termpracticum. The questions linger in the minds of school advisers of whether itis an important and realistic expectation to have student teachers keepjournals during practicum or whether their time might be spent on othermore important things.

Donna: Reflection is good but is it possible in a practicum whenthere are so many other little details of even an administrative sortto deal with?

Carmen: I wonder aboutjoumal writing when there seems to be somuch dissatisfaction with doing it?

Carmen: I hate bothjournal writing and videotaping so with some Ihave real empathy. I wonder if talking could be just as effective? Ifteam teaching, I wonder if they could talk and reflect together andmaybe tape the conversation. Extroverted student teachers mayfeel more comfortable talking over these things. Maybe we couldindividualise the expectation?

Time is a frequently occurring refrain in our meetings with school advisers.Collaboration takes time, reflection takes time, meetings and discussionstake time. Time is scarce for home economics teachers who teach manydifferent courses each day to students of vastly different abilities.

Student teacher: Tell me when are we supposed to find time to dojournal writing?

Linda: Take 10-15 minutes at the end of the day before you gohome to write about events that stand out in your mind.

Gale: Or, if you bus - consider writing on the bus - if you drive, useyour commuting time to talk into a tape-recorder.

Student teacher. I need that time to myself-just to have quiet time.Cooperative group work also takes time and is sometimes overdone whenthere is no communication among instructors in the teacher educationprogramme.

Gale: In my home economics curriculum and instruction course Iencourage students to use the course assignments to prepare forthe student teaching practicum. I encourage students who will beat the same school to team plan. This year I was surprised when

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only one pair decided to complete the final assignment together. Allthe other students in the class chose to do their final projectsindividually. I brought this up in class one day by asking them totell me about group work. I was amazed to learn that most of themwere in several groups. Some were in as many as five groups. Theysaid that while they enjoyed some group work, it was becoming aburden. Most groups just could not find a time outside of classwhen all members could meet. [Many of the students work tofinance their education.] Most agreed that their groups did notfunction well because they just didn't have time to do themjustice.

Student teacher: I am just so overwhelmed with all this planning Ihave to do. How far ahead should we have lessons planned?

Improvise

Cage Canadian Dictionary (1983, p. 586), defines 'improvise' as make orprovide off-hand, using whatever materials, etc. happen to be.Improvisations have arisen from group meetings, from discussions amongourselves, with student teachers, and school advisers. There have beeninitiatives without closure, and unpredicted actions taken as efforts toenhance collaboration. In group meetings, school advisers made suggestionsand clarified ideas.

Janine: I have a good arrangement. My office is right adjacent tomy classroom. I can sit in there while not physically in the room, Ican hear everything that goes on.

Carmen: My idea of risk taking is to have a student teacher whodoes everything other than you do. They don't watch you andmimic. They just come in and go for what they want to do.

Nancy: Trying something novel or different and not knowing if youwill regain control of a class or how they will respond is risk taking.

Another school adviser responded to Shirley's expressed difficulties withpaired placements:

Monica: I can identify with Shirley and I long ago gave up beingprotective mother to my classes. I have no difficulty now turningthem over to student teachers.

The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1981, p. 1393) defines'improvise' as "to compose on the spur of the moment". Sharp disagreementsor the urgency in the voice of a student teacher sensing difficulty, caused usto draw on experience and formulate advice.

Linda: As a beginning teacher you may be feeling you have to do somuch for your students. Do you think they might take more of a

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part in your lessons? You are doing international foods. Could anyof your kids or their parents be resources for you? How can youcapitalise on their wealth of experience and differences? Do youthink you can get them involved and contributing to your classesrather than doing for them?

Gale: I did my best to calm her down, asked her how this could beresolved and said that I would be out the first week of practicum tosee how they were getting along. When I arrived they appeared tobe enthusiastically working together. When I asked Mary in privateshe just said they had worked it out. This pair turned out to be themost successful of all the student teachers I advised. Curious abouthow this came about given the intensity of Mary's anger in thebeginning, I approached Sharon 6 months later and asked her totell me about it. She said that she realised that she had let Marydown and felt really bad about it but that they realised that it wasmainly a communication problem and became determined to beclear about everything they were going to do from then on.

Linda: Diane, there is no set way that we expect you to team teach.Do you think the difficulty you are having is in planning forteaching or actually teaching in the classroom? If it's in theteaching, one of you could take major responsibility and the secondperson assist; or if it's in planning, you could also divide up theresponsibility, then talk over your plans together.

Diane (4 weeks later): I want to tell my students the same thingwhen they have to work with a partner. In the workplace and oftenin life they wEl have to work with others and they have to be ableto know how to work out a positive and useful relationship.

Collaborating

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1990, p. 259) defines'collaborating' as "to labour together; to work jointly with others or togetheresp. in an intellectual endeavor". Reflections on the collaborative practices inthe practicum project emphasise the labouring inherent in establishing andsustaining such practices. Differences of perspective, beliefs, and viewpointsare inherent in collaborating and our reflections are reminders of differences.But it is also assumed that the clashes of differences, the discomforts ofdiagreements and dissonance are also necessary for learning to occur, and itis the learning that is valued. We recognized that our expectations ofcollaboration would not happen naturally among student teachers, schooladvisers, and us. We recognised the need to talk explicitly with studentteachers about the expectations of, reasons for, and ways of workingtogether. We needed to talk with student teachers and school advisers about

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ways of collaborating together, and to become involved with them in somecurriculum planning activities. We also recognised the need to buildcommunity among participants in the sense of encouraging support and carefor each other and the willingness to take the perspective of the other.

Collaborating frequently faltered on communication. What is necessaryto become better listeners of our students and school advisers? Can we riskspeaking true words to each other? How can we best respond to thequestions and anxieties of student teachers? What do students hear in ourresponses and advice? What language should we use to build and sustaincollaboration in advising student teachers?

Collaborating frequently enhanced communication. Student teachersand school advisers both expressed the desire to break with traditionalmodes of teaching to change the ways they had been taught or wereteaching. But, what was creative and risky teaching? Student teachers maybe considered as taking a risk in their teaching only if we grant to schooladvisers the authority in defining appropriate practices. Then risk becomes abreak with traditional practice in that classroom. Is risk in teaching definedin relation to the school adviser or the students in the classes? What isnecessary to encourage student teachers and school advisers to articulatetheir beliefs about practice and to collaborate in constructing new ones?

Collaborating builds the relationship between school and facultyadvisers. While some school advisers change each year, some remain formany years. Histories develop and traditions build in long-term relations.Resonance emerges in certain assumptions about ways of advising studentteachers and beliefs about good teaching practices. In teacher educationprogrammes that are 12 months' duration, meetings and relationships haveto unfold with great intensity. While beliefs among school and facultyadvisers may gain jn resonance, what is needed to bring student teachersand new school advisers into an ongoing collaborative practice? How canstudent teachers find the space to be human in an institutionalised ethosnot of their own making? While collaborative relationships clearly build overtime, what is necessary for them to be reconstructed with student teachersand new participants each year?

Collaborating builds intensity in some relationships and not others.Faculty advisers, school advisers and student teachers as part of practicumtriads form a naturally collaborative unit in that institutional expectationsare that they work together. University teacher educators do not oftencollaborate on their practices. University educators may share little of whatthey teach and how they teach the same students in a teacher educationprogramme. They often have little input into programme policy andfrequently share little of their beliefs, philosophies, and practices in teachereducation. What is necessary to value collaborative practice amongprofessors in teacher education programmes? How can educators begin tochange the cultures of schools and universities to foster collaborativepractices?

Sumara & Luce-Kapler write: "It is during moments of disagreement, ofnegotiation, of labouring over that which is difficult that we gain insights

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into ourselves, each other, and whatever enterprise binds us together" (1993,p. 394). Jennifer Gore (1991) notes that we should not assume that"consonance will always predominate, or is always necessary" (p. 268). Shesuggests that dissonance may be necessary for learning to occur. While ourhopes for collaboration are that we can construct learning communities ofpractice, our hopes project from realities where differences are bounded, andmyths and misperceptions dominate. Collaboration is a promise, apossibility, perhaps never a reality.

Toward a Writerly Text

Striving for a writerly text has enabled us to delve deeper into ourexperiences to recapture them in ways that may be more evocative for thereader, and more true to the experience as lived. Our research has soughtinsights on collaborative practices in a teacher education practicum. Relyingon the views and voices of student teachers and school advisers, the writingof this paper has been collaborative between us as faculty advisers. Butwriting is also a solitary activity and therefore one voice easily comes todominate in the final form a paper takes. Writing is also a distancingactivity, a (sometimes welcome) 'cooling out' from the intensity of theexperiences of collaborative research. In much research it is accepted thatthis distancing and cooling permits a more accurate and true account.

Whether we have achieved a writerly text is probably not for us todecide, but rather awaits the opinions of the readers. The writing of writerlytexts we suspect arises more readily from the calm, isolation, and quiet of asole author constructing an imagined account. It may be that writerly textsrequire a different starting point and will have to permit the author(s) muchmore freedom in text construction, and may require no data (in thetraditional sense) and no attempt by the writer to dictate how the workshould be interpreted. They may then support Gauthier's (1992) view thataction research can be done by an individual alone in her/his office, andco-labouring would be more clearly located in reading, where the reader isactively encouraged to co-produce meanings and insert oneself into the textby rewriting it.

Correspondence

Linda Peterat, Department of Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education.University of British Columbia. 2125 Main Mall, Vancouver, BritishColumbia V6T 1Z4, Canada. Email: peterat@unixg.ubc.ca

Notes

[1] School adviser is the name given to the teacher in the school who oversees astudent teacher's practicum. In other teacher education programmes, this personmay be called sponsor teacher or cooperating teacher.

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COLLABORATION IN A TEACHER EDUCATION PRACTICUM

|2] Faculty adviser designates the university representative who observes the studentteachers and meets with school advisers during the practicum. In otherprogrammes, this person may be called university supervisor or a similar term.

[3] Practicum refers to the student teaching component in the teacher educationprogramme. It consists of two time blocks of 2 and 13 weeks in a 12-monthpost-baccalaureate, Bachelor of Education programme.

ReferencesAltrichter, H., Posch, P., & Somekh, B. (1993) Teachers Investigate their Work. New

York: Routledge.

Brookhart, S. & Loadman, W. (1992) School-university collaboration: across cultures,Teaching Education, 4, pp. 53-68.

Bruneau, B.J., Henderson, J.G., McCracken, N., Kimble, P.K. & Hawthorn, R.D. (1992)Collaborative reflections of teacher education, Teaching Education, 4, pp. 11-20.

Carson, T. (1989) Collaboratively inquiring into action research, in T.R. Carson &D. Sumara (Eds) Exploring Collaborative Action Research, Proceedings of the NinthInvitational Conferences of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies.Edmonton: Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta.

Castle, J.B. & Giblin, A. (1992) Reflection-for-action: a collaborative venture inpreservice education, Teaching Education, 4, pp. 21-34.

Clift, R.T. & Say, M. (1988). Teacher education: collaboration or conflict? Journal ofTeacher Education, 39, pp. 2-7.

Cochran-Smith, M. (1991) Reinventing student teaching, Journal of Teacher Education,42, pp. 104-118.

The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1981). Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Corcoran, E. & Andrew, M. (1988) A full year internship: an example ofschool-university collaboration, Journal of Teacher Education, 39, pp. 17-24.

Erickson, G. (191) Collaborative inquiry and the professional development of scienceteachers, Journal of Educational Thought, 25, pp. 228-245.

Gage Canadian Dictionary (1983). Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing.

Gauthier, C. (1992) Between crystal and smoke, or, how to miss the point in the debateabout action research, in W. Pinar & W. Reynolds (Eds) Understanding Curriculumas Phenomenological and Deconstructed Text. New York: Teachers College Press.

Gore, J . (1991) Practicing what we preach: action research and the supervision ofstudent teachers, in B.R. Tabachnik & K. Zeichner (Eds) Issues and Practices inInquiry-oriented Teacher Education. London: Falmer Press.

Miller, J . (1990) Creating Spaces and Finding Voices, Teachers Collaborating forEmpowerment. New York: State University of New York Press.

Peterat, L. (1993) Re-storying the practicum experience: toward a collaborativeresonance approach, Perspectives in Education, Fall, pp. 61-64.

Smith, S.D. (1992) Professional partnerships and educational change: effectivecollaboration over time, Journal of Teacher Education, 43, pp. 243-256.

Sumara, D. & Luce-Kapler, R. (1993) Action research as a writerly text: locatingco-labouring in collaboration, Educational Action Research, 1, pp. 387-395.

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1990). Springfield: Merriam-Webster.

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LINDA PETERAT & M. GALE SMITH

Winter, R. (1989) Learning From Experience: principles and practice in action-research.London: Falmer Press.

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