“Together, I Don’t Feel so Alone”: Collaborative Teaching as Third Space in University/School Sites

Abstract

This qualitative study foregrounded four teacher educators’ perceptions of teaching collaboratively at shared school sites over the span of two years. As we reconvened to reflect on our experiences both individually and collectively, we retrospectively examined the affordances and challenges from this shared experience. Our data collection was guided by Pinar’s method of currere which involves four “steps or moments that are temporal and reflective.” These moments are “the regressive’' as past experiences are revisited; “the progressive” as the future was anticipated; “the analytic” to seek understanding of the past and future together; and finally, “the synthetical” to mobilize for action based upon these understandings. In considering the demands of university/school partnership work, methodologies such as currere, an autobiographical curriculum theory and method to support a context for reflection, is one that is rarely afforded due to the demands of higher education in general, and in field-based teacher education in particular. In analyzing these reflective interviews, we began to make sense of how these relationships shaped our perspectives of the past and led us to understand our present. Findings suggest that collaborative teaching created a third space that transformed our relationships with our teaching partners, enhanced our relationships with our students, and informed curricular revisions.