This research essay examined a growing trend in a rural area of the Midwest where PK-12 school districts are partnering with a local university to hire teacher candidates (TCs) as the Teachers of Record (TORs). Many rural school districts are challenged to address the teacher shortage. As a result, many school districts are hiring TCs as the TOR…

Recently there has been increasing emphasis on co-teaching experiences for teacher candidates. Despite the significance of collaboration between cooperating teachers and student teachers, limited empirical attention has focused on student teachers' co-teaching experiences. The following study utilized survey data to ascertain if student teachers'…

Accrediting organizations and regulations have compelled teacher preparation programs to establish partnerships with PK-12 schools to produce quality educators by utilizing effective teaching approaches such as co-teaching. The study examined co-teaching survey completed in the middle of student teaching. Data was collected from cooperating…

The focus of this research is to examine the impact of an instructional instrument to improve the quality of pre-service teachers' lesson plans. The HEAT instrument focuses on four components essential to high-quality lesson plans: "H"igher-Order Thinking, "E"ngaged Learning, "A"uthentic Learning, and…

With national and state regulatory changes related to clinical practice within teacher education programs a reality, one university examined the outcomes of co-teaching model trainings required for stakeholders, both higher education faculty and P-12 educators. The training participants indicated the co-teaching model could increase student…

Colleagues at a midwestern university implemented a multi-semester co-teaching pilot for student teaching, and based on the data collected, are moving toward full implementation in the spring of 2015 for all pre-service teachers in the College of Education (COE). Part of the study replicated work conducted by St. Cloud University (Bacharach &…