Abstract:
In this chapter, we report on two studies in a Master’s
program for practicing teachers that maintains collaborative culture making
at its core, for students and faculty alike. We conducted two studies related
to this collaborative culture making and concluded that collaboration is
essential to programs of study for teachers and teacher educators. In the first
study, we investigated the perspectives of our alumni on their collaborative
experiences. Findings indicated links between alumni’s multi-layered
collaborative experiences in the program and their subsequent pursuit of
National Board certification. In the second study, we conducted a collective
self-study of a faculty teaching team’s collaborative experiences and factors
that they believe enhanced their continued professional development. Both
studies are placed within a description of the Initiatives in Educational
Transformation (IET) program, which aligns with sociocultural practices of learning with and through others. To frame our work, we draw from
Vygotskian (1978) theory and Samaras’ (2004) notion of learning zones,
adapted from Vygotsky’s conception of the zone of proximal development
and the social construction of knowledge. The work of Lave and Wenger
(1991) in situated learning also informs this work.
