Building
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Longitudinal Case Study
Two Heads Are Better than One:
Influencing Preservice Classroom Teachers' Understanding and Practice of Classroom-Library
Collaboration
Judi Moreillon: Home | Author | Educator | Advocate Two Heads Are Better than One: Interventions During Participants' Preservice Education Two Heads Are Better than One: During their presentation, the panel shared standards-based collaborative lessons and unit plans, research strategy handouts in K-5 student-friendly language, graphic organizers, and student assessment rubrics. In addition, the teams also passed around samples of students' learning artifacts and shared student work that was published on the Web. The classroom teachers and teacher-librarians shared their experience of collaboration from both personal and professional perspectives. The principals shared the value they place on these collaborative practices and the many ways they support these learning and teaching opportunities in their schools. Although the preservice teachers asked few questions during the presentation itself, their concerns were evident in the question-and-answer period. Although the unmistakable focus of the panel and that evening's class was clearly collaboration and the majority of the students had brought prepared questions on that topic, many of their questions were related to interviewing for jobs, offering advise to new teachers, and delving into political issues in education, such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the focus on high-stakes testing, and standards-based instruction. I am a firm believer in following the students' interests so I did not attempt to redirect their questions. However, as a researcher, I was disappointed in the data collected during the panel discussion. Upon later reflection, I realized that one way to improve the impact of the panel could have been to ask teacher-librarians to invite novice, rather than veteran, classroom teachers to be on their presentation team. The depth of the curriculum planning and instruction demonstrated was exemplary. It may have been too sophisticated for preservice teachers, who may have had trouble picturing themselves in these scenarios. In addition, the study participants' assignment for that week had been to compose a letter of interest for a teaching position; their focus on interviewing and landing a job was the natural result. After the panel presentation, students made astute observations in their response journals. These examples are representative of the range of comments:
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