Collaboration in student teaching: Learning to teach in the context of changing curriculum practice

Abstract The paper represents a study of a project designed to rethink the student teaching practicum. The “collaborative model” encourages teaming between teachers and student-teachers and creates opportunities for them to create new curriculum and explore new methods of instruction. The major portion of the paper describes the research project that we devised to study and evaluate our collaborative model and also offers two case studies that describe the processes at work in two of the teams. One study describes a team who established a collaborative relationship; the other, illustrates some of the difficulties with this approach. Finally, we offer conclusions and recommendations based on our findings.