The nature and substance of cooperating teacher reflection

The learning opportunties for student-teachers in practicum settings has long been acknowledged and studied in considerable depth. However, the learning opportunities for cooperating teachers, while celebrated and extolled as an important reciprocal benefit, have not been verified to the same degree. Drawing on the concept of reflection, and specifically the ways in which teachers reframe aspects of their advisory practice, this study follows the conversations of five teachers and their student-teachers during a 13-week practicum. Among the things that we learn from these teachers is that the oft-heard argument that “a teacher is a teacher is a teacher” is wrong-headed, that the biography and the cultural milieu that shape one's advisory practices needs to be explicit, and that reflection is born of incidents but primarily thematic in nature.