RUME 14 (Volume 2)
2011
Portland, Oregon
STUDENT TEACHER AND COOPERATING TEACHER TENSIONS IN A HIGH SCHOOL MATHEMATICS TEACHER INTERNSHIP: THE CASE OF LUIS AND SHERI
Page: 399
In this paper, we investigate interpersonal difficulties that student teachers and cooperating teachers experience during the teaching internship by exploring the tension between one high school mathematics student teacher and his cooperating teacher. We identified seven causes of this tension, which included different ideas about what mathematics should be taught and how it should be taught and a strained personal relationship. We compare these findings to results from interviews with 6 other student teachers and 8 of their mentors. These results suggest that (a) cooperating teachers may offer less freedom than they realize, (b) mathematics educators and cooperating teachers may have very different goals for student teaching, (c) cooperating teachers may hold unrealistic expectations about the student teachers prior to their student- teaching experience, and (d) personal relationships can greatly impact the overall student- teaching experience.