Chapter 11: Fostering Collaborative and Reflective Teacher Candidates Through Paired Placement Student Teaching Experiences¹

As discussed in Chapter 5 of this book, which provides an overview of the Clinical Experience Research Action Cluster (CERAC), one goal of the CERAC is to increase the quality of the student teaching experience and address the inadequate supply of quality mentor teachers to oversee the experience. As a result of a thorough review of the literature related to clinical or field experiences in education, the paired placement model for student teaching emerged as one way of addressing this goal. In this model, a pair of teacher candidates work daily with an experienced mathematics mentor/coach who is devoted full time to helping the teacher candidates address the craft of teaching, plan lessons jointly, and teach those same lessons while actively observing, reflecting, and revising (Leatham & Peterson, 2010b). According to Leatham and Peterson (2010b), within this setting teacher candidates are slated to quickly realize that not everyone learns the way they learn, and their focus shifts to the learning of their students rather than their own learning. Furthermore, fewer mentor teachers are needed, and teacher candidates can be placed with mentor teachers who teach in alignment with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS-M; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ mathematics teaching practices (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, NCTM, 2014). Moreover, the paired placement model is