In February, Professor Sharon Christensen gave a presentation at the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators national conference in Phoenix, AZ. The title of her presentation was Rethinking the Student Teaching Experience: Engaging in a Dialogue about Paired-Placement Student Teaching. Below are the responses to a few questions that we asked Professor Christensen about her presentation.
Who were your collaborators for this presentation?
Kelly Edenfield, University of Georgia
Who would you say is the target audience for your presentation?
Mathematics educators who work with student teachers in mathematics teacher educator programs
What is the big problem you hoped to address with this presentation?
In a typical student teaching experience, there is one teacher candidate paired with one mentor teacher. Often there is a feeling of isolation for the teacher candidate and a sink or swim mentality. In this presentation we wanted to show a different option for the student teaching experience that would address these concerns.
What are some of the key ideas shared in the presentation?
In the paired student teaching experiences there are two teacher candidates with one mentor teacher. This allows the teacher candidates to focus on planning lessons that develop and use student thinking as well as reflecting and learning from the lesson that was taught.
What are some of the main ideas you hope your audience will take from your presentation?
The paired student teaching model provides more opportunities for teacher candidates to plan well-crafted lessons and learn and reflect on their teaching experiences.
What else would you like to say about this presentation?
Students enjoy being part of a paired student teaching experience. Here are a couple of quotes from previous students from the paired student teaching experience – “It made the beginning stages less overwhelming” and “Seeing how things went for another student teacher and learning from each other was very beneficial and I think it make me able to improve the way I was teaching”.