Collaborative teacher professional development

 – An analysis of pre-service teachers’ professional development and the role of the internship teacher in Denmark and Japan

Speaker

Camilla Hellsten Østergaard, University College Copenhagen

Abstract

In the first two years of studying to become a mathematics teacher, Danish pre-service teachers dedicate one day per week to internships at primary and lower secondary schools. This new structure calls for the creation of collaborative research-practice partnerships between University College and internship schools.During their internship, Danish pre-service teachers observe teachers instructing classes, and they discuss their observations and plan smaller interventions. The quality of a student’s internship is critical to their training in teaching mathematics;thus, the internship teacher (koshi) plays an extremely important role.

However, few studies have examined the nature and structure of the supervision and comments from koshis during lesson planning and post-lesson reflections. In this presentation, weanalyse the post-lesson reflections of pre-service teachers and koshis in Denmark and Japan, with a particular focus on the comments from koshis. We found that the koshis’ comments could be clustered into various categories that follow some kind of national script. These categories provide insight into the nature of post-lesson reflections and offer a basis for novel forms of collaborative research-practice partnerships as well as new ways of structuring the collaborative work in pre-service teachers’ professional development.