Teacher educators and student teachers working as partners to improve the effectiveness of modelling: A professional learning journey for the teacher educators

A distinctive feature of the practice of teacher education is the value of teacher educators as role models for student teachers. This potential is not always realised because teacher educators do not always know how to model their practice, and when they do their student teachers may not notice it. Knowing this, a project team from a Dutch institute for teacher education trialled a 12-week intervention to address these shortcomings with six teacher educators. The intervention aimed to first put an emphasis on the teacher educators’ explicit modelling during classes; second, develop their student teachers’ observation skills so that they better noticed the teacher educators’ use of modelling; and third, organise a professional dialogue between teacher educators and students about the practice of teaching. The intervention was an attempt to facilitate the idea of teacher educators working with student teachers as partners to improve teacher education. The researchers used data from questionnaires completed by the teacher educators and their student teachers to establish the outcomes of the intervention. This data suggested that the intervention contributed to the professional learning and practice of the teacher educators and helped student teachers to learn from and about their teacher educators’ modelled practice.