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Supporting the Cooperating Teacher in a Student Teaching Experience

Traci Kay Kell, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Abstract

Cooperating teachers are eager and willing to work with student teachers. However, they are not prepared to be in effective mentor relationships. (Izadinia, 2015) Cooperating teachers hold a dualistic position of being a mentor and while still being responsible for their classroom. Most cooperating teachers are not trained to mentor and provide quality feedback to student teachers. The purpose of this study is to examine the mentoring and reflective feedback skills for cooperating teachers. I organized my research around these two questions. How do cooperating teachers provide mentoring, and reflective feedback to student teachers? What support do cooperating teachers require to mentor student teachers? I chose these questions to reflect the purpose of the study, which is to find out how cooperating teachers mentor and provide feedback to student teachers that most likely have not had training. In this study, I conducted a case study, following a cooperating teacher for a semester using interviews, observations, and responses to peer-reviewed journal articles that all focused on the mentoring and reflective feedback skills of the cooperating teacher. The results of how this cooperating teacher provided mentoring and self-reflection skills and what kind of support she needed reflected previous studies. There is little professional development for these skills; therefore, cooperating teachers are not prepared to provide formal, quality, feedback.

Subject Area

Teacher education|Adult education

Recommended Citation

Kell, Traci Kay, "Supporting the Cooperating Teacher in a Student Teaching Experience" (2020). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI28025967.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI28025967

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