Student Cohorts in Teacher Education: Support Groups or Intellectual Communities?

Abstract

Recent initiatives in preservice teacher education have experimented with cohorts as a way to create supportive ties among peers, mutual intellectual support, and a sense of professionalism. The initiatives reflect a belief in collaboration, one expressed in educational literature supporting related forms of collaboration in education, such as descriptions of learning communities and of cooperative learning in classrooms. A review of this literature suggests a number of cautions, however, about the value and success of collaboration among colleagues, and in any case does not address the needs of cohorts in teacher education directly. To begin closing this information gap, the authors studied one particular teacher education program organized around cohorts. Sixteen students in a preservice bachelor of education program were interviewed at length about their experiences with cohort peers. Their comments were analyzed for recurring themes. Overall, they expressed a liking for cohort organization, but to varying degrees. Appreciation of the cohorts was focused almost entirely on the immediate social support provided by the cohort as a whole. It had little to do with its potential for academic stimulation, long-term professional ties, or individual personal friendships. Students reported a number of factors that affected their liking for cohorts, such as their age, prior family or job responsibilities, religion, and geographic distance of their home from the university.