Cascading,Colliding,and Mediating: How Teacher Preparation and K-12 Education Contexts Influence Mentor Teachers’ Work

Mentoring Within Two Contexts

Our model begins by acknowledging that the work of mentor teachers is situated within two different contexts—the context of K-12 schooling and the context of teacher preparation (Figure 1); the overlapping nature of our model is designed to show that mentor teachers work in both contexts simultaneously. Informed by two theoretical perspectives—systems theory and complexity theory—we also suggest through our model that within each of these contexts there are dynamic “systems”—self-organizing networks of interrelated individuals and activities (Ennis, 1992)—that influence mentor teachers’ work with candidates. General systems theory was described by a biologist, Luwig von Bertalanffy (1968), as a means for understanding how an organism worked by examining the patterns and relationships within a living system. His theory has since been taken up in a variety of different disciplines, both within and outside the biological sciences. Bronfenbrenner (1994) applied the central tenets of systems theory to the social sciences, developing what he termed “ecological systems theory.” He proposed that children’s development is best understood by looking at the many systems and actors within those systems surrounding the individual child. His well-known heuristic places the child at the center and sets out a series of nested concentric circles, with each circle representative of a different system surrounding that child. Bronfenbrenner argues that each system has an impact on the child’s development; the closer the concentric circle is to the center, the more direct influence the institutions and individuals within that system have on the child.

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Figure 1.

Systems theory model of mentor teachers.

In our model, we put mentor teachers at the center and the concentric circles surrounding them to represent the different systems that shape their work. To represent their position as individuals within both the context of K-12 schooling and the context of teacher preparation, there are two sets of concentric circles that overlap, representing different systems in which they work. The innermost circles consist of the individuals, policies, and practices with whom the mentor teacher is in direct interaction at the school level (K-12 teaching) and at the clinical level (teacher preparation). Surrounding this are circles in both contexts representing district and school (K-12 teaching) and preparation program (teacher preparation), culture, policy, and practice—These all inform the actions that mentors engage in with the individuals, but their influence is more indirect. The next set of concentric circles represent teaching policies emanating from the federal and state level (K-12 teaching) and the state and district teacher preparation policies (teacher preparation). The outermost circles represent societal and cultural beliefs about teaching (K-12 teaching) and learning to teach (teacher preparation).

As a means of showing the dynamic nature of our model, we also draw on complexity theory. As with other scholars who utilize systems theories, we seek to depict the interactions between the systems as neither mutually exclusive nor linear (Rogoff, 2003; Vélez-Agosto, Soto-Crespo, Vizcarrondo-Oppenheimer, Vega-Molina, & Coll, 2017). Indeed, Cochran-Smith et al. (2014) note that there are many ways of understanding complexity theory, but what unites them is the central tenet that “the multi-dimensional relationships and dynamic interactions among agents and elements are responsible for patterns and phenomena” (p. 106). In complex systems, the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts, but instead is a result of interactions between the parts; any one specific aspect of a complex system cannot be studied in isolation of the entire system. Opfer and Pedder (2011) and Davis and Sumara (1997) discuss teacher learning as imbedded within a similar series of nested systems and subsystems, describing teacher learning through the lens of complexity theory as learning that is interdependent and reciprocal. Moreover, these researchers argue that change in one system or part of a system can and does shape change in and across systems. Overall, complexity theories offer us the opportunity to highlight the dynamic and non-linear relationships between individuals, curricula, policies, and institutions within and across the systems and contexts in our model.

Understanding the work of mentor teachers through a complexity systems model provides a more contextualized understanding of their work as well as the various dynamic influences, possibilities, and challenges that they face in mentoring candidates. Much of the literature to date focuses on specific characteristics of good mentor teachers or effective practices they use with candidates. For example, researchers have found that effective mentors regularly reflect on their own practice (e.g., Boreen, Johnson, Niday, & Potts, 2000; Cherian, 2007), are passionate about their work with K-12 students (e.g., Graham, 2006; Osunde, 1996), and are student-centered (e.g., Feiman-Nemser & Carver, 2012; Gardiner, 2011). The literature also emphasizes the role of mentor as local guide to candidates (e.g., Fairbanks, Freedman, & Kahn, 2000; Feiman-Nemser & Parker, 1992; Valencia, Martin, Place, & Grossman, 2009) as well as the benefits of positive relationships between mentor and candidate (e.g., Clarke, 2006; Draves, 2008; Glenn, 2006; Haigh, Pinder, & McDonald, 2006; Stanulis & Russell, 2000). While providing a critically important window into the work of mentor teachers, the research generally does not highlight the demands they face and negotiate as individuals situated within both the contexts of K-12 education and teacher preparation. Through our model, we aim to highlight the complex work of mentor teachers and the pressure that they face. We now discuss teacher preparation and K-12 teaching as two individual contexts, highlighting some of the key systems at work within each context and how they connect to mentor teachers. Following, we utilize two examples—Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) and co-teaching—to illustrate how mentor teachers’ work is influenced by their placement within these two contexts.

The Context of Teacher Preparation in the United States

We begin by describing the systems within the context of teacher preparation (Figure 2). Within this context, mentor teachers interact with multiple individuals and institutions that affect their practice with candidates. These include state teacher licensure policies, local district practices and policies around acting as a mentor teacher, and the policies and practices of teacher preparation programs.

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Figure 2.

The context of teacher preparation.

Societal and cultural beliefs about mentoring and learning to teach

While empirical literature on mentor teachers as teacher educators demonstrate specific ways that preparation programs, K-12 schools, and mentor teachers themselves develop their mentoring practices and perspectives (e.g., Bullough, 2005; Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Leatham & Peterson, 2010), overarching ideologies in the United States are rooted in the belief that good mentors are born that way (Achinstein & Athanases, 2006; Feiman-Nemser, 2001) and that by virtue of being a strong teacher of children, they will be quality mentors (Clarke et al., 2014; Graham, 2006; Koerner, Rust, & Baumgartner, 2002; Leshem, 2009; Wang, 2001). This is demonstrated through the common lack of training or preparation for mentors (Feiman-Nemser & Carver, 2012; Gareis & Grant, 2014), as well as the lack of standards or guidelines around what good mentoring looks like from either preparation programs or state departments of education (Clarke et al., 2014; Valencia et al., 2009). Instead, mentors are positioned as experts who have significant experience in a specific area, and mentees as those who lack knowledge and want to learn. Mentees are told, “the more you can learn from the experts around you, the better you will do in your career” (Farren, 2006, p. 70).

Just as mentoring is positioned in a specific way, so too is the process of learning to teach. The majority of teaching candidates become licensed through university-based preparation programs; however, nationwide debates about the need for teacher education reflect a dominant belief that some people are just naturally good teachers, or that “smart” people will be “good” teachers (e.g., Darling-Hammond, Holtzman, Gatlin, & Heilig, 2005; Murray, 2008).

Societal and cultural beliefs about mentoring and learning to teach affect mentor teacher practice in indirect ways, as well as the foundation of policies and programmatic design, and also work as a countervailing force to teacher preparation programs, K-12 schools, and individuals and institutions interested in developing alternate beliefs about mentoring and learning to teach.

State teacher licensure policy

Requirements for preservice teacher preparation programs and certification are determined by each state (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). States dictate everything from the number of hours a candidate must complete, to the standards that must be met by candidates, to the exams each candidate must pass to obtain their certification. Although there is some variation across states in terms of these requirements, in general, candidates are held to similar expectations for certification (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). Within California, as an example, candidates are required to pass several certification exams, including a content-area knowledge exam and a teacher performance assessment as well as meet teacher performance expectation standards set by the state (California Commission on Teacher Credentialing [CCTC], 2016, 2017).

Although these aforementioned policies hold candidates to somewhat similar expectations across states, there is greater variance in the extent of state requirements to be mentor teachers. For instance, in Pennsylvania, teachers must have 3 years of experience in the subject area (Pennsylvania Code Title 22, 2016) prior to serving as a mentor teacher, while in Florida mentor teachers’ K-12 students must meet specific academic performance measures (Greenberg, Pomerance, & Walsh, 2011). Some states, such as Texas, also require their mentor teachers to complete training prior to serving as a mentor teacher, and to update that training every 3 years (Texas Education Agency, 2011); however, this seems to be an uncommon requirement (Clarke et al., 2014; Gareis & Grant, 2014). So, although it is not uniform across the United States, state requirements shape who can be selected as a mentor teacher and what they must do (e.g., training) prior to beginning their work with candidates.

Teacher preparation program policy and practice

Teacher preparation programs develop policies and practices based on state requirements, accreditation requirements, and their own mission and beliefs about quality teacher preparation. Each teacher preparation program has its own set of expectations for mentor teachers and literature on mentor teacher practice has highlighted the program’s role in shaping what mentors ultimately do with candidates (e.g., Anderson & Stillman, 2011; Hagger, Burn, Mutton, & Brindley, 2008; McDonald, 2005; Zeichner & Gore, 1990). For example, although it is a common expectation that mentor teachers open their classrooms to candidates, and engage in a gradual release of responsibility (slowly having the candidate take on more classroom tasks until they are fully responsible for the class), it is our experience that this may not always be the case, particularly in high-accountability classroom settings (Goodwin, Roegman, & Reagan, 2016). Moreover, there is inconsistency across programs related to expectations for mentor teachers to formally evaluate candidates (Benedict, Thomas, Kimerling, & Leko, 2013). Whereas some programs require mentor teachers to provide written and structured feedback at different points across the clinical experience, others see this as the purview of university-affiliated supervisors, with whom mentor teachers only have occasional contact (Lezovsky & Zieger, 2004). Therefore, due to preparation program policies and expectations, there is variability in the amount of time mentor teachers spend in planning, instruction, and assessment of their K-12 students while the candidate is in their classroom, and variability in the demands for providing structured feedback to their candidates on their developing practice.

In addition to specific programmatic features that shape mentor teachers’ work with candidates, programs vary in structure in terms of length of program, number and sequence of courses, and connection between clinical experiences and university coursework. Some programs have all coursework clustered in semesters prior to the capstone student teaching experience, whereas others have candidates completing courses while immersed in their clinical experience (Zeichner & Conklin, 2005). These variations indirectly influence mentor teachers in terms of the amount of time candidates spend inside their classrooms and the degree to which candidates are focused solely on the clinical experience.

The Context of K-12 Teaching in the United States

Within the context of K-12 teaching, mentor teachers are in constant interaction with colleagues, students, families, and administrators in the processes of teaching and learning. Their work is affected by these individuals as well as school, district, state, and federal policy, and the culture and norms of their schools and communities (Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

The context of K-12 teaching.

Societal and cultural beliefs about teaching

Across the United States exists a wide range of beliefs about teaching. This includes the oft-repeated and misinterpreted line from George Bernard Shaw (1903/2000) that an individual “who cannot, teaches” (p. 230) often used to suggest that teachers are those who are not able to do other things (Rousmaniere, 2013). Nationwide is a sentiment that overall, teachers are not talented, especially those in poor communities (Berliner & Glass, 2014). Teachers are often positioned as the reason for low student test scores, with initiatives related to teacher evaluation serving as incentives to encourage teachers to try harder to raise their students’ achievement levels (Hursh, 2007). Mentor teachers may regularly face stakeholders who question their value, and also work within this accountability climate that focuses on student performance on annual assessments and testing.

Contrasting these negative beliefs about teachers and the increasing measures of accountability aimed at ensured teacher quality, the growing opt-out movement illustrates competing beliefs about teaching and learning. Strauss (2016) reports that many parents across the United States are refusing to allow their children to take their state’s standardized achievement tests—up to 20% of New York students did not take the state tests in the spring of 2015, for example. While most parents opt out for the sake of their children, several held a corresponding belief that their children’s scores are being used to unfairly assess teachers (Sackstein, 2018).

These beliefs about teaching, that suggest a growing divide in perspectives about the quality of teachers in the United States, create a challenging environment for mentor teachers in their role as teachers of K-12 students. The beliefs may affect mentors not only directly in terms of parents holding negative views about their capacities and students opting out of testing but also indirectly in terms of how beliefs influence policy development. In their role as gatekeepers (Martin, 1994), mentor teachers have responsibility of insuring that teacher candidates are prepared to teach regardless of the potentially competing values and beliefs about what it means to teach.

Federal and state policies

Mentor teachers’ work is situated within federal and state K-12 policy systems that currently support systems of accountability, surveillance, and compliance. Federal and/or state policy require frequent testing of students and this focus on achieving specific outcomes has led principals and schools to pay attention to technical aspects of their work to ensure they are in compliance with various policies and mandates (Nelson, de la Colina, & Boone, 2008).

Mentor teachers’ performance, like that of all teachers, has begun to be evaluated in new ways as a result of the Race to the Top federal initiative, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. New York State, for example, received a US$700 million award which in part required the state to develop a teacher evaluation system for all classroom teachers that was implemented in the 2012-2013 school year (Leonardatos & Zahedi, 2014). This system included performance assessments of teaching practice and inclusion of student assessment data in determining personnel decisions and teacher ratings. Alongside the change in teacher evaluation, the state also adopted the Common Core Standards, bringing in changes to curriculum in 2011 and student assessment in 2012. These two state mandates—teacher evaluation and Common Core—increased the pressure on teachers to engage in practices that would theoretically lead to successful evaluations and assessments, shifting their time away from other tasks of teaching. For mentor teachers, these federal and state policies demand they put their attention on the external demands of accountability in terms of their K-12 students’ learning needs, while also balancing the needs of the candidate (Anderson & Stillman, 2011; Goodwin et al., 2016; Kolman, 2017).

School and district policies and practice

Partner districts have policies in place that guide teaching and its evaluation, which affects their certificated employees, including mentor teachers. For example, districts often mandate curriculum to be implemented, and thus mentor teachers are required to teach from these curricula and have their candidates do the same (Anderson & Stillman, 2013; Valencia et al., 2009). In addition, districts expect that mentor teachers will focus primarily on their pupils, the job for which they were hired, and not on the learning of the candidate. This means that mentor teachers cannot simply leave their candidate with the class unsupervised (e.g., New York City Department of Education, n.d.).

District policies and practice around teacher evaluation, following from state and federal policy, have an indirect influence on mentor teacher practice. For example, the New York City Department of Education annually published school grades and conducted regular reviews of schools that had received poor grades. In 2012, the district released individual ratings for each teacher, using value-added methods of determining their effectiveness based on changes in their students’ performance on standardized assessments. These ratings were published in local newspapers and included school names and photos of all of the teachers. This type of practice put pressure on mentor teachers to improve K-12 student achievement on specific assessments, making them less willing or able to give greater responsibility to candidates who are still learning to teach (Graham, 2006; Ratner & Kolman, 2016).

Compensation for mentor teachers is also something that districts often address in their policies. For example, some districts will not allow mentor teachers to receive monetary stipends for their role, and thus are given other kinds of incentives, including university tuition credits (New York City Department of Education, n.d.), professional learning opportunities, resources to support their mentoring, and professional recognition (Fives, Mills, & Dacey, 2016). Even when they are provided with a stipend, the amount is often minimal (Gareis & Grant, 2014). This has the potential to create competition among mentor teachers for candidates who attend expensive universities and, thus, have the potential to provide more valuable university tuition credits.

A mentor teacher’s individual school, in terms of policy, practice, norms, and culture, has the most immediate impact on their mentoring practice. In what Gutierrez (2006) describes as “tight-tight” (p. 3) accountability environments, the policy environment leads to intensive monitoring by principals, affecting teachers’ everyday practice, including a narrow teaching of the curriculum (Gutierrez, 2006; Moore & Clarke, 2016). In many cases, such policies reduce teachers’ autonomy under the assumption that it will improve test scores (Gutierrez, 2006; Moore & Clarke, 2016), thus affecting what their candidate may do in the classroom as well. Individual schools, thus, interpret policies through the lens of their mission and the administration’s vision, affecting the practices of the mentor teacher as well as the extent to which a candidate might be allowed to take on certain tasks (Kolman, Roegman, & Goodwin, 2015).

Interactions in and Across Systems and Contexts

As we laid out initially in this article, we see this model as dynamic. Mentor teachers work with candidates and K-12 students simultaneously with ideas and policies moving through and interacting within the different systems across both contexts. We now introduce three ways that ideas, individuals, policies, and beliefs interact to influence the work of mentor teachers: cascading, colliding, and mediating. We then illustrate their dynamic interactions within and across the systems and contexts in our model through two examples, edTPA and co-teaching.

We use cascading as a reference to the process by which an action occurring within one system successively triggers or initiates something in another system. In her work in dynamic systems theory with school curriculum, Ennis (1992) describes how curricular decisions made by a school board cascade to influence the curriculum initiated in schools, which then cascades and influences what teachers do in classrooms, which then cascades and influences the learning of individual students. She argues that there can be factors within the larger context that constrain the cascading effect, such as when a teacher’s philosophy of education affects how they choose to teach the new curriculum chosen by the board. Within our dynamic model, the movement through systems is not necessarily linear or unidirectional; rather, we believe the cascading effect can occur in a variety of ways.

Colliding refers to the common occurrence of disagreement between messages, values, or practices both within and across systems and contexts. Within education policy research, this kind of collision is widely described (e.g., Manna, 2011; McCabe & Sipple, 2011; Mitchell, Shipps, & Crowson, 2017; Sachs, 2001; Spring, 2016). For example, Manna (2011) discusses collisions during the era of No Child Left Behind between policymakers who wanted greater accountability for K-12 schools and the historical structures and practices in states, districts, and schools. McCabe and Sipple (2011), similarly, discuss the collision of early childhood education and K-12 education, once separate educational systems, as universal prekindergarten programs proliferated across the United States. Collisions may occur within a system, such as when a mentor teacher and their candidate have different beliefs, or between systems, such as when state policy and district policy prioritize different educational goals.

Mediating refers to the ways in which individuals within systems work to interpret ideas and policies through their own lens (Coburn, 2001). K-12 teachers have been characterized as strong mediating forces within the literature, particularly in reference to education policy (e.g., Coburn, 2001; Spillane, 1999; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). For instance, Tyack and Cuban (1995) argue that teachers mediate practices, belief systems, and norms that come to bear on their work from outside of their schools and experiences. Spillane’s (1999) study is one example of mediating, where he describes teachers mediating mathematics reform policy through their prior experiences with math teaching, their perceived capacity to make change, their desire to make change, as well as their perceptions of their K-12 students’ learning. Mentor teachers engage in mediation throughout their interactions with candidates as they interpret policies, ideas, and beliefs that emanate from within both contexts.

These interactions are dynamic and complex, but do not necessarily occur in mutually exclusive ways. For example, when policies cascade through different systems (Snyder, 2013) or when policies and beliefs collide in teacher candidates’ clinical experiences (Heineke, Ryan, & Tocci, 2015), mentor teachers have opportunities to mediate policies and competing values through their conversations with candidates. The experience of competing values may be more common for teacher candidates than their preparation programs realize or desire, as suggested by Canrinus, Bergem, Klette, and Hammerness (2017). They argue that candidates are more likely to experience fragmentation within their coursework and between their coursework and their field placements, and they suggest that preparation programs work to improve coherence, a process “in which all courses within a program are aligned . . . and build sequentially on one another based on a clear vision of good teaching” (p. 2). In light of this work on conceptual coherence in teacher education (Klette & Hammerness, 2016), our framework highlights that mentor teachers may be navigating the lack of coherence themselves while supporting teacher candidates in their own navigations.

As a means of illustrating cascading, colliding, and mediating within our model, we draw on two examples. First, we describe edTPA’s implementation in New York State and its influence on mentor teachers’ work. Second, we discuss the co-teaching model of providing special education services to K-12 students with disabilities and its interaction with the process of mentoring. Through these examples, we illustrate the complexity of interactions between systems and contexts that influence mentor teachers’ work with candidates.

Mentoring During edTPA’s Implementation in New York State

Our first illustration draws on the NYSDOE’s implementation of the edTPA, a performance assessment that candidates must pass as part of their licensure requirements. We utilize this example in particular because it effectively shows how the mentor teacher must navigate something (edTPA) that originates in one context (teacher preparation) that interacts to shape their work in the other context (K-12 education).

Candidates in New York State have historically been required to pass a range of pen-and-paper exams to become certified by the state to teach. As a result of nationwide concerns that newly licensed teachers were not sufficiently prepared, the edTPA was developed as a standardized performance-based assessment for candidates and designed to be a more effective assessment of candidates’ knowledge and skills (Darling-Hammond & Hyler, 2013). For the majority of subject areas, candidates complete three “tasks”: (a) planning a series of three-to-five lessons, (b) implementing these lessons, and (c) assessing student learning from these lessons. In response to the state requirement that all candidates pass this assessment, teacher preparation faculty, administrators, and staff began to mobilize to ensure candidates would be prepared (Greenblatt & O’Hara, 2015; Ratner & Kolman, 2016). The majority of this work occurred within teacher preparation programs, including modifying coursework, setting up the technology tools to upload candidates’ edTPA portfolios, and hiring additional support staff (Kolman, Gellert, & McLurkin, 2017; Ledwell & Oyler, 2016; Lys, L’Esperance, Dobson & Bullock, 2014; Meuwissen, Choppin, Cloonan, & Shang-Butler, 2016; Tuck & Gorlewski, 2016). Each teacher preparation program addressed the NYSDOE implementation of the edTPA in different ways based on its culture, structure, and the moral and philosophical alignment between the edTPA and faculty and staff (Ledwell & Oyler, 2016; Lys et al., 2014; Ratner & Kolman, 2016; Tuck & Gorlewski, 2016). The first instance of cascading, therefore, was from the state policy level, where the edTPA became a mandate, to the teacher preparation program level where it was interpreted and implemented (see Figure 4).

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Figure 4.

Illustration of Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) policy cascading from teacher preparation to K-12 teaching.

One component of the edTPA requires candidates to video record themselves teaching within their clinical placements, a key portion of the portfolio. Teacher preparation programs realized the need to work with mentor teachers so they would be aware and ready to provide the structures and space necessary for candidates to effectively complete the edTPA. University-affiliated supervisors, clinical experience directors, placement staff, and teacher preparation faculty were tasked with communicating these new requirements to mentor teachers, representing a second cascading movement. Moreover, it was imperative that mentor teachers were aware of, and willing to abide by, the “Guidelines for Acceptable Candidate Support,” which dictates allowable supports for candidates as they completed their edTPA portfolios (Behney, 2016; Meuwissen et al., 2016; Ratner & Kolman, 2016). Often, mentor teachers or administrators were hesitant to allow video recording, and candidates received inconsistent messages about what kind of permission they required to video record in their clinical placement classrooms (Meuwissen et al., 2016). Indeed, clinical placement staff, faculty, and administrators in schools of education across New York City had to put pressure on New York City Board of Education to inform all schools that the video recording component could be completed in classrooms (Kolman et al., 2017), another cascading effect. However, even with these district-level communications, candidates continued to encounter problems with this aspect of the edTPA. As the NYSDOE policy cascaded from the state level to the teacher preparation program, mentor teachers were left with varying degrees of understanding and supports to help candidates in completing the video recordings, while also teaching the K-12 students in their classrooms.

In addition, there were often disagreements about how edTPA lessons should be structured. Some mentor teachers had different visions of teaching than what was required by the edTPA (Meuwissen et al., 2016). For example, the literacy component of edTPA for elementary education requires that candidates teach “essential strategies” and “skills” to the students. Many mentor teachers did not ascribe to the essential strategy approach; that is, that students should always be taught a strategy, which they will then practice independently, to become better readers, writers, and mathematicians. Therefore, with these required lessons working against the common structures of their classrooms, a collision occurred. While mentor teachers’ work was affected by the need to provide candidates with time and support to develop their portfolio, they also mediated the messages of the edTPA designers through what they permitted candidates to do within their classrooms.

The edTPA also had direct impacts on candidates, which affected their relationship with mentor teachers. Tuck and Gorlweski (2016) describe this interaction as state policy “infiltrating” the mentor–candidate relationship. Candidates have reported that edTPA required so much time and preparation that it took away time from other traditional components of student experiences, such as lesson planning for everyday instruction. Instead of working on a daily lesson plan, for example, candidates focused on the small set of work that was part of their portfolio (Ledwell & Oyler, 2016; Meuwissen et al., 2016). Thus, this policy cascaded to teacher preparation programs and the learning of candidates and, in some cases, collided with the norms and values of the teacher preparation program.

As has been illustrated in this section, the edTPA policy, which originated in the state teacher preparation policy system, cascaded into teacher preparation programs, which then cascaded into (and, at times, collided with) the work of mentor teachers and their interactions with candidates, as well as school district policy around video recording.

Mentoring of Candidates Within Co-Teaching Classrooms

Our second illustration looks at mentor teachers’ work with candidates in co-teaching classrooms. In the co-teaching classrooms described here, a special education teacher and a general education teacher work together to teach the same group of students. Within their class is a mixture of students receiving special education services and those who are not; ideally, both teachers take on responsibility for planning, teaching, and assessing all students (Friend, Cook, Hurley-Chamberlain, & Shamberger, 2010). This example highlights how something that originates within the K-12 teaching context can interact with mentor teachers’ work within the context of teacher preparation (Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

Illustration of collisions and mediation in co-teaching. IDEIA = Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act.

Federal policy and legislation, particularly the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act [IDEIA]), served as impetus for many states and districts to develop co-teaching classrooms to facilitate students receiving special education services in a general education setting (Friend et al., 2010). New York City Department of Education schools, for example, offer integrated co-teaching classrooms, with no more than 40% of the students having an Individualized Education Program (IEP) with each pair of co-teachers (New York City Department of Education, n.d.). Mentor teachers who are special education certified, and those who are general education certified, work with candidates from their respective licensure programs in these co-teaching classrooms. ¹ ), served as impetus for many states and districts to develop co-teaching classrooms to facilitate students receiving special education services in a general education setting (Friend et al., 2010).]

The literature suggests that IDEIA’s policy guidance also cascaded into the context of teacher preparation, with many teacher preparation programs advertising a commitment to preparing their candidates for the realities of these co-teaching classrooms (e.g., Grant & Gillette, 2006; Strieker, Gillis, & Zong, 2013). For some programs, this included a stated commitment to addressing candidates’ deficit beliefs about students receiving special education services and the value of inclusive classrooms (e.g., Keefe, Rossi, de Valenzuela, & Howarth, 2000; Loiacono & Valenti, 2010; Oyler, 2011). This resulted in instances where candidates entered their clinical experiences with beliefs and practices that differed from that of their mentor teacher (Naraian & Schlessinger, 2017; Recchia & Puig, 2011; Renzaglia, Hutchins, & Lee, 1997). When ideas and policies cascade into the classroom in this way, mentor teachers can be faced with the challenge of mediating them for the candidates. For instance, mentor teachers might suggest to candidates that teacher preparation programs are out of touch with the realities of classrooms (Sakallı Gümüş, 2015). Our experiences also suggest this is true, with mentor teachers explaining service models and instructional approaches to candidates who are unfamiliar with the specifics of special education and the ways in which they are enacted in that particular school context. In such cases, mentor teachers are tasked with finding effective ways to support candidates in unpacking these disagreements while still serving their K-12 students and ensuring special education law is being followed. This collision of the teacher preparation context and the K-12 context requires deft mediation by the mentor teacher to ensure a positive learning environment for all.

Mentoring of teacher candidates is also occurring simultaneously with the mentor teacher and their co-teaching partner negotiating the challenges of teaching together. Another level of mediation occurs within the traditional candidate–mentor teacher relationship as a new person, the co-teacher, is brought in. The mentor teacher must support a relationship between the candidate and the co-teacher (Kamens, 2007), which is especially difficult if the two co-teachers have different beliefs. Mentor teachers mediate by supporting candidates in understanding their dynamic with their co-teachers.

Although IDEIA has always mandated students with disabilities be placed in the least restrictive environment, the segregation of special education from general education continues to be a concern in K-12 schools (National Council on Disability, 2018). Reflecting a history of oppression and marginalization of people with disabilities in the United States (Baglieri, Valle, Connor, & Gallagher, 2011), this segregation is true for special education teachers as well. The co-teaching model challenges this history, as it collides against long-standing school structures that isolate teachers most generally (Lortie, 1977) and special education teachers specifically. It is common at the secondary level, for example, for co-teaching pairs to lack a common planning period; it is also common for the special education teacher to work as a co-teacher with multiple content teachers, involving three to five new relationships to negotiate (Scruggs, Mastropieri, & McDuffie, 2007). Furthermore, in the ideal co-teaching classroom, both teachers serve as mentors to the candidate, but in most situations, to our knowledge, only one is the formal mentor teacher. Alongside supporting the candidate’s learning, mentor teachers must help candidates understand that beyond individual differences in beliefs about instruction, the co-teaching model itself presents a structural challenge to K-12 school systems. The taken-for-granted separation of special education from general education that is part of how schools have historically been organized collides with the demands of co-teaching for collaboration.

Discussion and Implications

Our model emphasizes the interacting systems that influence mentor teachers as they participate in the preparation of candidates. It is not just that an experienced teacher takes on a candidate and prepares them to be a teacher; rather, their work is situated within historical norms, policy environments, and school, district, and societal belief systems that encourage certain types of actions and constrains others. Moreover, mentor teachers themselves have beliefs and histories that shape the ways they mediate these pressures for teacher candidates. Mentor teachers are constantly working within two contexts that present different demands and incentives as they engage in teaching both K-12 students and candidates. This simultaneous task, and the many systems in which each task is embedded, provides a complex environment for mentoring.

This framework illustrates both the situatedness of mentor teachers and possibilities for their agency. Their daily interactions with candidates who encounter conflicting beliefs or contradictory policies allow them to mediate educational policy and practice for candidates throughout their clinical experiences. Just as policies or practices are influencing their work, mentor teachers’ work also influences the policies and practices of others within the systems in which they are situated. Each system matters, but it is also the way that the systems interact with each other within and across contexts that inform the work of mentor teachers.

Although the literature has highlighted the critical work that mentor teachers engage in to educate candidates, it does not generally address the pressures and influences that cascade and collide across the contexts of K-12 education and teacher preparation, nor their role in mediating these cascades and collisions. For example, much of what has been written about edTPA discusses the role of the mentor teacher in supporting candidates in the effective completion of the assessment (e.g., Burns, Henry, & Lindauer, 2015; Greenblatt & O’Hara, 2015; Margolis & Doring, 2013; Meuwissen & Choppin, 2015; Ratner & Kolman, 2016). Although these authors acknowledge that mentor teachers want to help their candidates, and rarely have the knowledge to do so, only two of the articles (Greenblatt & O’Hara, 2015; Ratner & Kolman, 2016) explicitly discuss how actions within other systems influence mentor teachers’ support of the candidate. Even then, this is not the focus of the research.

Our model makes visible the complex process of mentoring candidates—pressures and messages emanate from within contexts and systems and the mentor teacher often serves as a mediator. This has clear implications for practice, research, and policy. Our model highlights interactions and influences across the two contexts and makes clear the complexity of the mentor teacher’s role within them. Given that preparation programs and K-12 contexts are mediating state policy, creating their own policies and practices, and putting expectations on mentor teachers to engage in certain behaviors, creating spaces for shared conversation can provide opportunities for each to understand the pressures, expectations, and barriers for effective clinical preparation for teacher candidates. This is avenue and example of a practice that could strengthen clinical partnerships and also provide better learning opportunities for teacher candidates and K-12 pupils. For example, with this kind of communication, when mentor teachers mediate challenging situations or complex policies for candidates, they can do so in alignment with the preparation program vision. Otherwise, preparation programs leave much learning about the day-to-day experiences of K-12 teachers in the hands of mentor teachers, who may support the program vision or communicate a conflicting set of values. In so doing, programs may strengthen their coherence (Darling-Hammond, Hammerness, Grossman, Rust, & Shulman, 2005; Grossman, Hammerness, McDonald, & Ronfeldt, 2008); that is, they could develop clearer messaging and practices that are consistent between mentor teachers, teacher preparation faculty, and teacher candidates. This is not to say that shared conversations are always beneficial; without intentional and thoughtful facilitation, differences in beliefs and values may remain hidden and marginalized voices may continue to be marginalized (Singleton & Linton, 2006). However, it is incumbent upon teacher preparation programs to find ways to support teacher candidates and mentor teachers in uncovering, examining, and reflecting upon challenging situations and competing values.

Although it may not be a common expectation that K-12 schools interact directly with teacher preparation programs, we see these interactions as promising opportunities for authentic partnerships. Currently a small number of preparation programs partner directly with districts with the goal of preparing future teachers to work in the partner district (e.g., Klein, Taylor, Onore, Strom, & Abrams, 2013; Solomon, 2009). When K-12 districts work directly with teacher preparation programs, with mentor teachers, teacher educators, and administrators from each context meeting together, learning from each other, and supporting their shared work of K-12 children’s education, they are more likely to be effective in these endeavors. Instead of viewing K-12 schools only as potential sites and mentor teachers only as individuals who are willing to host, or of viewing teacher preparation as teaching candidates a specific sets of skills or knowledge, this framework illustrates how the two contexts are in constant interaction with each other.

This framework also has implications for future research. We call on ourselves and others who research teacher preparation to situate our work within the contexts and systems in which mentors, candidates, and faculty operate. In particular, future research on mentor teachers that considers their work through a systems and complexity theory lens can further highlight the extent to which other policies, ideas, and beliefs complicate their practice and present a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a mentor for candidates.

Those involved in teacher preparation policy and K-12 education policy need to realize that their policies have implications outside of their own context. Rippner (2015) notes that “policymakers and professionals in each sector need to be able to peer over the ledges of their silos” (p. 4) to gain a more holistic understanding of the K-12 education system in the United States. A variety of accrediting bodies, professional organizations, educational platforms, and government bodies are all involved in different aspects of educating children. Currently, each focuses on its own domain without understanding how they are all part of a system and changes in one part of the system affect the context as a whole, as we illustrate with this framework. As policymakers develop policy within their domains, dialoguing with policymakers across various education domains can support more holistic approaches to reforming education.

Conclusion

These interactions are complex and often contradictory for mentor teachers. To think that a mentor teacher who is an experienced teacher of students will simply take on candidates and turn them into exemplary novice teachers is naïve amid these interacting and overlapping systems and contexts. Rather, the mentoring of candidates, even for the strongest of K-12 teachers and mentors, is a complex endeavor that requires mentor teachers to navigate both contexts while also supporting candidates’ socialization into the profession (Clarke et al., 2014; Wang & Odell, 2002).

The “conditions for effective mentoring” (Hobson, Ashby, Malderez, & Tomlinson, 2009, p. 211) are not universally in place. The theoretical framework we present here brings description and understanding to the actual conditions of mentoring—the contexts and systems at play—and the ways in which they shape how mentor teachers can and do support the learning of candidates within clinical placements.