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Developing Reflective Teaching:negotiation in the practicumJ.M. Mitchell aa Charles Sturt UniversityPublished online: 02 Jun 2006.

To cite this article: J.M. Mitchell (1996) Developing Reflective Teaching: negotiationin the practicum, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 24:1, 47-61, DOI:10.1080/1359866960240105

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Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1996 47

Developing Reflective Teaching: negotiation in thepracticum

J. M. MITCHELL, Charles Sturt University

ABSTRACT The relationship between practice-teaching students and their school-based super-visors or 'associates' is an important aspect of the practicum. This study presents twocase-studies as a means of analysing this relationship and the impact it might have on thefuture classroom practices of the student teacher. In the first case-study the relationship ishierarchical: the associate teacher is assumed to know how to be a good teacher, and technicalknowledge about 'good practice' is merely transmitted to the student. In the second case theopinions and knowledge of both parties are respected, and the student is an active participantin the evaluation process. It is argued that the second approach is more likely to encourage thedevelopment of reflective teaching. This study is part of a wider study on the interactionbetween student teachers and associates in the practicum.

Introduction

What takes place in the negotiations between associate teachers and student teachersduring the practicum? How do the participants resolve complex questions about thecurriculum and pedagogical technique? What impact does this have on the everydaypractice of classroom teaching? Evaluation is a critical part of practicum activity. Atbest, evaluative interactions between practicum participants serve as a means by whichknowledge of teaching can be shared within a jointly constructed framework. Goodteaching can be seen as the product of reflective action, and it is sensitive to differentkinds of understanding. In order for student teachers to become good teachers theyneed access to the kinds of knowledge that enable them to recognise these ways ofunderstanding. Reflective action, then, can be part of the evaluative process. At itsworst, the evaluative process can reinforce associate or supervising teachers' control ofnot only the discourse but also of this knowledge. The student teacher becomes caughtin the procedures and rituals of the classroom without considering, questioning orcomprehending the overall purpose of what is being done.

Post-lesson conferences are an important forum for practicum evaluation. How,therefore, should they be conducted? In this study, two post-lesson conferences areanalysed with respect to how the associate teacher and student teacher interact in orderto evaluate teaching practice. I have chosen these two cases because, whilst there arecommonalities, they represent quite different ways of evaluating. The contrast hashelped to highlight the possible meanings of 'evaluate' in this context and how thelanguage that the participants use both creates and reflects different types of evaluativediscourse. My focus is on the relationship between the participants and on how theynegotiate the evaluative criteria in post-lesson conferences.

The matching of the student teacher and associate teacher in the practicum is usually

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one of chance. The relationship that develops, and the nature of the experience,depends on a multitude of factors, not least of which are the values of the participantsand the context which they are in. Through my experience of working with studentteachers as a liaison lecturer, I have noticed the variety of ways in which teachers talkabout and evaluate student-teachers' teaching practice. I have been struck by the feelingthat some of the ways of evaluating, particularly in the post-lesson conferences, arebetter than others.

Making explicit the ways in which practicum participants interact with one anotherin post-lesson conferences provides detail which can help explain the problems andpossibilities associated with this part of supervisory practice. My interpretation of theconference interactions is based on an analysis of the language used by the participants.Scripts which summarise the evaluative interaction have been developed. These scriptsaim to explicate the meaning of 'evaluate' in each case. These scripts are useful becausethey make clear the purpose of the activity and the position of the practicum partici-pants with respect to each other and with respect to what they know. They also providea basis for comparison and critique.

Background

This research is part of a broader study analysing the evaluative conversations betweenstudent teachers and their associate teachers during practicum. The student teacherswere enrolled in the Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) at the University ofCanberra. The students in the study were all completing a social-science-curriculumunit. For their practice-teaching placements the student teachers were in either a juniorhigh school (Years 7-10) or in a senior college (Years 11-12). 'Associate' teacher is theterm used for teachers in schools who have responsibility for supervising and evaluatingstudent teachers.

Of the twelve cases that are part of the broader study, I have chosen to consider twocases in this paper in which there are some interesting points of comparison andcontrast. In both the cases, the student teachers were working with Year 11 students inclasses that had a strong 'academic' focus. In both these cases, issues of behaviourmanagement were not prominent during the post-lesson conference, unlike manyinstances in Year 7-10 classes. The way in which the participants evaluated the lessonwas quite different in these two cases. Case 1 was based on the teacher adopting a 'youlearn from me' approach, whereas case 2 was based much more on a 'let's find outtogether' model.

Both of the student teachers were particularly enthusiastic and thoughtful in theirapproach to teaching practice. Judy had an arts degree and Matthew an economicsdegree and both had worked prior to deciding to do the Diploma in Education. BothJudy and Matthew were in their late twenties. Matthew had chosen to go to a privatecoeducational high school for his second round of field experience in the one-yearprogramme. His associate teacher, David, was in his late thirties. Matthew was thesecond student teacher that David had worked with. Judy was doing her secondfield-experience unit at a secondary college, teaching history. Her associate teacher,Simon, was also in his late thirties.

Method

The post-lesson conferences between the student teachers and their associate teachers

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Developing Reflective Teaching 49

were taped. They were not 'staged' in any way. Taping the conferences may have hadan impact on the nature of what was said in the evaluation, but it was stressed to theparticipants that they should talk as they normally would. In most instances, theparticipants appeared to do this. A transcription of the taped interaction was given tothe participants. Each participant was interviewed after they had read the transcription.The purpose of the interview was to enable the participants to talk about theirunderstanding of the evaluation. They were given the chance to say why they saidparticular things, the importance of particular evaluative criteria, how they perceivedtheir roles, the degree to which the evaluation reflected and/or helped shape theirthinking about teaching and what they considered important teaching knowledge, andto provide background information and contextual details that were not evident fromthe transcriptions. The interviews were semi-structured in the sense that there weresome initial questions to open the conversation, but these changed and were modifieddepending on the situation and interests of the interviewee and the range of issues thatemerged in the post-lesson conference.

The post-lesson conferences and follow-up interviews provided a huge amount ofdata. The problem with such an amount of data is making sense of it. What has beenof note is the variety and richness of what people said and did, and, more interestingly,their explanations for the things they said and did. Such relatively unstructured data,whilst messy to deal with, is often the most useful, in that there is a greater possibilityof uncovering the participants' perspectives and values. Using the data in this study itis possible to make some observations about what people understand the verbs 'evalu-ate' and 'teach' to mean and to consider the impact this has on their thinking andactions in both the post-lesson conference and classroom practice. These meanings,and the values inherent in them, can then be set within a broader context and cultureof teaching.

In reading the transcripts, certain issues emerge which provide the starting point foranalysis:

(1) the use of T , 'you' and 'we';(2) the amount of talking that each person does, and the nature of turn taking in the

interaction;(3) the relationship between the participants with respect to their knowledge of

teaching;(4) the extent to which the evaluative criteria were negotiated;(5) the congruence between what is said in the post-lesson conference and the

follow-up interview.

Case-study 1: Matthew and David—thinking and doing

The post-lesson conference that was taped followed a Year 11 economics class. AsMatthew's associate teacher, David, often remarked, this was a difficult class to take interms of content and the mix of students. The class were studying the law ofdifferentials and the challenge for Matthew was to develop strategies to help clarify thefairly complex content knowledge. The feedback that David provided for Matthew wasa mixture of both positive and negative comments. The way in which David structuredthe post-lesson conference was to elaborate on the notes that he had made throughoutthe lesson. In his commentary on the lesson, David covered a range of ideas related toteaching: the need to focus the class with concrete instructions, flexibility in lessonplans to adapt to the behaviour of the class, the success of an analogy in clarifying

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content, the positive effects of moving around the class, the pros and cons of stoppinga class when work is under way, quiet talk between students as productive in thisparticular class in helping to create a positive work environment and his view thatsometimes one has to be pragmatic when concluding a lesson.

The conference opening presented below is typical of the interaction between Davidand Matthew:

David: I might just run through a few things. As I said, firstly it's a difficultarea to teach and, which ever way it's addressed, I think it's—some studentsare going to be a bit lost regardless. That you put on the board, there's a littlebit of chatter, it sort of lost them a little bit and—again and putting that on theboard, personally I would have probably played it by ear and said right I'm notgoing to put that on the board, I'm going to get straight into something. Thatwas sort of meant to be a focus for them to sort of say right we're going to dothat, I don't know whether they need that. Again this is a personal thing, whatI tend to do is just do one step at a time say right this is the heading, put thisin your books, this is the focus of what we're going to be doing now and thengo on. In other words, give them concrete instructions of saying, right, this iswhat we're going to do first, put that heading down and then have discussion,give them a definition they can write it down, as you were doing basically, justa point.

Matthew. Maybe I should have done it before the lesson started, that's why ...

David: Have it on the board already, yeah, because that was another problem,came straight from the other class, I had to race off to something veryimportant and I said I was going to bring an overhead projector down and Iforgot that and so you know, a little bit of a shemozzle which is a lot to do withme. I thought it was good, no, no, perhaps it was because you were nervous,a couple of people in here were looking at you, you asked a number ofquestions early and people were just falling out, they weren't putting theirhands up, probably because of nerves because it was fine the other day,particularly in Year 9 making a point, no don't call out, put your hand up, oneat a time—nerves basically that point, because I know you're normally prettyfirm with that. I thought perhaps just the way the lesson was flowing, perhapsthe chalk and talk and questions and questions was a little bit overdone

Matthew: Right

David: Good, and some of these, I mean, it's a difficult area ...

In this case the evaluation was primarily dependent on what the evaluator thought andknew with respect to their conception of good practice. The relationship between theevaluator and the evaluatee was dichotomous. One was the knower, the subject and thethinker, the other the known, the object and the doer. One way in which this isexemplified in this case is the way in which the post-lesson conference reads as amonologue. David talked and Matthew did not get the opportunity to say very much.The transcription contains 2546 words and Matthew said 189 of those. David had 10talking turns and said an average of 254.6 words per turn. Matthew had 9 turns andsaid an average of 21 words per turn. In this post-lesson conference no questions wereasked. The evaluation in this instance was one-way.

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The following excerpts show the way in which David is positioned as the knower.Note how everything is predicated on what he thinks.

/ thought perhaps just the way the lesson was flowing, perhaps the chalk andtalk and questions and questions was a little bit over done.

/ thought maybe you improved a lot with your clutch on them, with yourgeneral clutch on management, a couple of points you said right I wanteveryone to listen here, I want everyone to listen here, I want everyone tofocus on the point I want to make, I thought you became stronger and strongerwith that as a list.

/ thought it was good the way you gave that handout out to everyone and thenmade very clear that all understood your instructions, you stopped and saidright I want you all to listen.

In that sort of case, / would think, perhaps you might have a little bit more,embellish your introduction by saying look, I hate you people to head in thewrong direction, or I hate anyone here to do too much work.

The I/you relationship in the above examples is notable. David thought something andMatthew did something. The dualism implicit in what David was saying established ahierarchical relationship.

In some instances David's criticisms were based on what he himself would do inMatthew's situation. For example, he said:

That you put on the board, there's a little bit of chatter, it sort of lost thema little bit and ... personally I would have probably played it by ear and saidright I'm not going to put that on the board, I'm going to get straight intosomething. That was sort of meant to be a focus for them to sort of say rightwe're going to do that. I don't know whether they need that, again this is apersonal thing, what I tend to do is just do one step at a time—say right thisis the heading, put this in your books, this is the focus of what we're going tobe doing now and then go on.

In this instance, David validated his position and his point of view by referring to hisown experience. Whilst he was talking about what he would do, it was often based onwhat he had done. The shift in tenses in these passages show this. This makes clear thathe knew more than Matthew and in so doing he excluded Matthew's knowledge.

The extracts from the transcript of the evaluation that have been presented alsohighlight the nature of the evaluative criteria that David used. As well as beingprocedural and technical, they were imposed and non-negotiable. There was noconsideration of what Matthew might think. The value that David put on good practicein the way he set the criteria was subjective and not intersubjective. David began bysaying that he 'might just run through a few things' and in so doing silenced Matthew.

What was particularly interesting about this case was that both the participants airedconcerns about the evaluation in the follow-up interviews. Matthew made the followingcomments:

It's important for the associate, and this didn't necessarily happen every timeand I wish it had've—it's important for the associate to give you time to sayhow you felt the lesson went. OK so part of the thing about feedback is thatyou should, they should give you an opportunity for you to speak, they shouldlisten.

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Matthew's reasons for saying this are particularly interesting and important:

... if I was taking the feedback sessions—and I'd do this in other feedbackcontexts—you should ask the person themself first 'How do you feel it went?',you know, did you think it was all right or did you think it was a bomb or, andthen they can come in and they can either confirm or deny some of the thingsyou said, or you know, reinterpret it and say your right, that was very good ...

Also:

I think most people, everyone, has an impression about the lesson, someimpression which they can say, now often my impressions initially were wrongand quite often some people are harder on themselves than they should be,some people were softer on themselves than they should be, and quite oftenI was harder on myself, I thought well that was just atrocious you know, Ididn't feel it was right, I had the wrong feeling ... [T] hat's when the associatecan come in and say either well, yeah there was some things could beimproved there or they can say now look, you might have felt that but reallyyou achieved your objectives, you achieved these objectives bang, bang, bang,OK the time at the end of the lesson wasn't that great but it wasn't a write-offas a lesson [T]he other, the other important thing about giving a studentteacher a chance to do that is so that they can start to be realistic about theirself assessment because in their on going career as a teacher the self assess-ment is going to be the most important . . ."

For Matthew, the fact that he did not have the opportunity to air his thoughtsprevented him from really having the chance to negotiate the evaluative criteria,validate his feelings or indeed to reflect in any critical way on his teaching. The processand the content of the feedback were determined by the associate. Matthew reinforcedthis point later in the interview when he said that one of the factors underpinningevaluations was a 'deficit approach' in other words a focus on a need to fill the studentteacher up with knowledge about teaching. This deficit notion is interesting because itrests on an assumption that it is implicit in the nature of evaluating in this context thatthere is a dichotomy between thinker/doer, subject/object, expert/novice, master/ap-prentice, knower/known. David, albeit unwittingly, took on a role in the post-lessonconference as a knower that required him to transmit information.

David did talk about this during the interview:

I found it difficult to know just how much help to give him in preparinglessons, I mean with this year we're doing work that I have done many, manytimes before and basically ... I could say to myself well I know what works, Iknow what task—at least I think works and what doesn't, do this and don't dothat but, I think he would perhaps wouldn't learn as much from that.

It's really hard isn't it? [interviewer]

It is, it is. Because I sort of want to say, oh you know just do this and it willwork.

Whilst I thought David did in fact do that during the feedback, he acknowledged theproblematic nature of his position as an associate teacher. David assumed here thatMatthew would learn more if he did it on his own. This makes a separation in therelationship between the associate teacher and the student teacher. Ironically, in his

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next statement David both grappled with this problem and contradicted his initialstatement:

[S]ometimes some things will work for one person but just not for another ...[O]n one occasion he introduced a new section of work in a particular wayand I said well that was good, I'll try it and it was a disaster, it didn't work forme at all.

The relationship and level of interaction between Matthew and David represents aparticular way of evaluating. 'Evaluating' in this context was hierarchical, non-nego-tiable and based on a strong knower/known dichotomy. The comments made by bothMatthew and David in the follow up-interviews indicate that there was not a sharedunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of evaluating in this context. There was alack of recognition that both participants knew something about teaching. The interac-tion between the participants was not intersubjective in the sense that the discussion didnot emanate from the interests and concerns of both people, nor was it critical in thesense that the participants did not place the evaluation in a wider social context. In thisinstance, the associate teacher, through the evaluation, had control of what was said inthe post-lesson conference in a way that limited the potential for a more diverseunderstanding of classroom practice and teaching knowledge.

Case-study 2: Judy and Simon—working together

The feedback session that was taped followed a lesson with a Year 11 class who weredoing a unit of work on the Arab/Israeli conflict. Two things were immediatelynoticeable about this post-lesson conference: it was a genuine dialogue and it was long!This feedback session lasted over an hour. These two features alone reflect importantaspects of the values of Judy, the student teacher, and Simon, the associate teacher, andof the sort of relationship they had.

The evaluating process in this post-lesson conference was subjective and intersubjec-tive: both the participants knew something about teaching and had a point of viewabout good practice. They said things to each other about the lesson in a way thatsought consensus in terms of understanding what had happened and developingteaching activities in the future. In the exchange, Simon had 91 turns and Judy had 90.The average length of these turns for Simon was 34.2 words and for Judy 23.7 words.These values are much closer than the average number or words per turn for Matthewand David. Judy and Simon asked each other questions, and there were numerousinterjections. This suggests that the evaluation in this context was conversational andinteractive: both the participants evaluated together. The following passage is typical ofthe nature of the interchange.

Simon: Yeah I think, well I was doing my participation chart and after a whileI didn't need to do it because you were getting access to every person, bywalking around and talking to them ...

Judy: But when you do that participation chart up did you mean that I washaving access to everyone when they were already in their groups and startingto work on the documents or beforehand?

Simon: No, after they started the group work

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Judy: During, yeah during the group work. Because what about the introduc-tion?

Simon: Because you were then free, free to approach them.

Judy: Yes, well exactly, and I spoke to everyone in the class then, but theintroduction bit, what, what did we do, we talked about Hertzel's primarydocument and the news, what about their participation rate there, did I, didI get to them all?

Simon: No.

Judy: No, so that's what that chart is?

Simon: No what was happening was the usual thing, the dominant people weretalking but it wasn't bad, it was better, in fact I think ... I noticed you gettingto the quiet girls and ...

Judy: Yeah, I asked them specifically, yeah.

Simon: But having noticed that I then noticed that once they started workingin groups it was even better and the same was true today, you got accessmultiple times to every student.

Judy: Well it's a lot easier to do that, I mean your not talking to the class asa whole.

The focus in this section was on the participation rates for the students. It is worthnoting that this was something that Judy and Simon had talked about before the lessonand the purpose of the group-work strategy that was used was to encourage studentparticipation. The criteria for the evaluation in this sense had been negotiated duringthe preparation of the lesson. In this section Judy asked three questions. These were notsimply clarifications; they also served as a means by which she could negotiate theevaluative criteria. She did this by asking about the participation rate in the introduc-tory part of the lesson. Judy's statement at the end of this excerpt shows that she hadher own opinion about this activity. Both the participants told each other what theythought about the activity and both put a positive value on it.

Likewise, the following excerpt shows that both Simon and Judy had the opportunityto think about their practice with respect to what the other person thought and to whatthey thought was good practice.

Simon: I sort of do that group work stuff as a matter of course, but I don'tthink about it like I did these two times so it was very valuable for me to seewhat could be gained from the group work, because sometimes you'll putthem to a group and you'll have something else to do and you'll take theopportunity to do that thing and let them play on by themselves, and just sortof visit them irregularly, and because you were following up both sides weregetting lots out of it I think, both you and them.

Judy: Yeah, I think it worked well; it certainly worked for me because that wasthe first opportunity I had to, to sort of chat with them on the individual basis,but it also gave me a chance to learn what they actually knew as well whichwas virtually nothing most of them, and in actual fact it clarified a lot of thingsin my mind as well, because in explaining about all the different documents

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and how they fitted in to them ... it helped me get an overall picture for thething, that was just sort of a side benefit from the whole exercise.

Simon: Yes it was forcing me to do the same thing, because even though Iprepare that stuff and I learn it then, two years later, 4 years later you need torefresh your memory.

Judy: Well it's different too.

Simon: ... I was finding myself asking questions, well, do I remember what thesignificance of this and that was and I started engaging in some of the groupsmyself to try and solve a couple of problems. That's the kind of atmosphereI think you can get in a class that is on your side; if you've got a hostile classyou can't do much.

This sort of interchange highlights the degree of symmetry in this relationship. Simon'sstatements show that he was participating in the lesson. He was not merely an observer.They were agreeing on what they thought the value of the lesson was. Judy also had thechance to say what she thought and knew in this situation. Judy was also a knower inthis situation:

Judy: Yeah, and speaking about learning happening when it's in context, thatwas the beauty of that whole exercise that, with the drawing it together at theend they were all following it thinking oh yes OK that's how my document fitsin ... thought they were quite attentive to that whole thing, they listened reallywell, they weren't sort of switching off.

Simon acknowledged and validated Judy's ideas. The following excerpt is taken from adiscussion of the work of particular individuals in the class. He began by asking Judyfor her perspective on the work that some of the students were doing.

Simon: I wanted to talk, this might prove something to both of us, I wantedto talk about how you rate the students afterwards because I spent most of mytime just looking and seeing how they were contributing, so I found someinteresting.

Judy presented her point of view by saying:

Judy: They were more analytical about it too, rather than just looking at thedocuments, OK this is what it is. With some of the pairs I had to go up tothem and say now that you've discovered what it is, because all they'd donewas read it and thought OK this is it, we've done our work, and so I had togo up to them and say well, how does this fit into the whole perspective, thehistorical perspective and how does this clarify in your mind who started it andthis question and that question but, yeah, those three had sort of figured thatall out for themselves anyway.

Simon's response recognised Judy's knowledge:

Simon: You actually know more than me in a sense, now I could see themfrom a distance and say who was performing, but then I didn't check to see.

Toward the end of the post-lesson conference the focus shifted to the future. Thediscussion of what happened in this lesson became the starting point for what mighthappen in the next lesson.

Simon: I had a talk to them about it, they needed extra information too, thatwas their problem.

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Judy: Yes they did.

Simon: They really didn't and it took me a while to realise that the secondarysource didn't go far enough for them, so I gave them that PLO stuff.

Judy: Yeah, though they drew some stuff out of it.

Simon: You might be able to use them next time because they've read someof the propaganda—next time we might introduce the propaganda, I'm justsorting through my files and I found a few more bits of Jewish propaganda,quite simple to deal with, and your arguments about Yasser Arafat.

Judy: Yeah I want, the thing they also need to talk about is terrorism, theterrorism side of it.

Simon: And the video on terrorism, so all of those things could come togethernext double, and use, use Hamish and his group to start it off and link the two.

Judy: ... OK, that'll work.

Here a sense of partnership is obvious. Simon, interestingly, used both 'y° u ' a n d 'we'in one statement. The emphasis was on working together and reaching agreementabout the way in which their effectively joint evaluation determines the direction forfuture practice. In this context the evaluation was part of a larger cycle.

The follow-up interviews with Simon and Judy confirmed these aspects of theirrelationship. Simon provided support for Judy in the same way that he did for studentsin his class. Judy was encouraged to experiment and work by trial and error but she wasnot left to simply learn on her own. Simon said:

... [S]o while you might confuse, you might challenge, you might provoke aperson to taking risks, you're there to make sure they stay afloat and in thiscollege it is possible to spend a lot of time with individuals to give them achance to redraft and reformulate their ideas and then reinforce it as it getsbetter, to help them fix it up as it goes right. It's not enough to provoke andto upset and to get people to make these leaps of imagination without comingalong with the sort of vertical ruler and saying well we've got to put thingsback into shape a little bit, without the other side. It's probably crazy to do theprovocative bit and I think that applies as much to teacher training, thatpeople have got to have reeds to cling to before you throw them into deeperponds and say find your way out. I think that's what I'm doing, I'm neverreally sure.

Simon elaborated on this point by describing what he saw as a feature of the culture ofteaching in his particular workplace:

... [W]hen we work together as full professionals, if you like to call it that, wesee each other as equals and equals who complement each others skills. That'sespecially the case in here—we've got people in here who come from vastlydifferent backgrounds but we do a lot of sharing and we use one another'sskills, we know that each person has particular skills and we value that and Ithink that's the culture of teaching in that we are very good communicators,very good team workers and we do sort of treat each other as havingsomething to offer, and even not as equals in the sort of statistical sense, thatwe have to work together. Working alone is not going to get us far at all, soI'd encourage that culture in students so that when you're in the place you're

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a full member or an active member, even if you're the junior member in asense.

What was significant to Simon about the culture of teaching was a sense of sharing andcommunicating with other teachers. This was a culture of which Judy was a welcomepart. She was treated as an individual with particular skills and she was invited andexpected to work with the other teachers, and with Simon in particular, as a team.Simon stated quite clearly that the interaction between student teacher and associateshould be collaborative:

I really do feel that teachers teaching teachers should be, should see therelationship as much as possible as a relationship of two colleagues rather thansomeone who's the apprentice and someone who's the master.

For Simon there was a two-way flow of ideas:

I mean certainly I've got more experience and more knowledge and moretricks up my sleeve than she has but I saw us as sharing that class. I think weboth got a lot out of, got a lot of stimulation from that, the class that day ...

Also:

In fact I was getting a lot out of that session because I was in the position ofobserver which is rare for me and I was making, I thought, better qualitydecisions about the responses of those students.

Simon's position was clear. The work that he did with Judy was negotiated andreciprocal. He recognised that his experience was a resource that Judy at this stage didnot possess, but one that he shared to enable her to develop her own knowledge ofclassroom practices. It was through these shared experiences that Judy began toarticulate her own theories of teaching and her own position in a teaching culture.

Judy provided some interesting background to the lesson that was the focus for theevaluation and this typified the way in which Simon and Judy worked as a team and alsohow Simon encouraged Judy to take risks:

... The background to this lesson was that I had the lesson planned as straightgroup work and then they were going to write something or something likethat and he said ten minutes before the lesson 'Why don't we try it this way?'And I said to him 'Hmm let me think about that, I'm not sure whether thatwill work' and he said 'Oh well, let's try it and see', because he'd never trieddoing that before either. So I said OK, so I sat down for ten minutes andmadly tried to figure out what we were going to do and we went in there sothe whole thing was a bit of an experiment.

The use of 'we' in this passage again shows the degree of partnership. Judy was also ina position to negotiate the evaluative criteria. She did this by asking questions.

In Simon's case I think he was exhaustive in giving me feedback, but inanother respect I also asked him a lot of questions about what I, what I wantedto know.

Judy's comments below confirm the collaborative nature of the evaluation and therecognition of her knowledge as a part of this:

Interviewer. Did you find it interactive the way ...

Judy: Oh absolutely ... and also far less threatening than if he had come andsaid right, these are the good points about your lesson and these are the bad

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points, let's discuss them. And in saying that there was a structure to thesefeedback sessions in terms that I did receive that written sheet with, it wouldalways have positive points and negative points, we didn't actually discussthem point by point, more of a general conversation that worked.

Interviewer. Because it seemed almost as if you were working as a team.

Judy: Exactly. And less that I was the apprentice and he was the God ... [A]ndI was there to be instructed ... I'm not saying he had a lot of respect for mebut we had mutual respect for each other and he said at many points of time,yeah I'm going to learn things off you as well here, which is fantastic and it allhelped to give me confidence, the way that things were.

These are crucial to an understanding of the relationship between Judy and Simon andthe way in which they evaluated the lesson. The master/apprentice, teacher/student andknower/known dichotomies were challenged. These dualisms rest on a power relation-ship and in many ways they are an implicit part of the culture of the practicum and ofevaluations in the practicum. Simon and Judy were both thinking and doing, boththeorising and practising. The evaluations had an interactive and responsive quality inthis context. In this case there was congruence between the participants in theirunderstanding of the purpose and meaning of 'evaluate'.

In this post-lesson conference, in short, the evaluative criteria were negotiated. Whatwas talked about emerged from the interests and concerns of both participants, andJudy was considered a junior member of staff rather than an apprentice, in a way thatrecognised what she knew. The interaction between Simon and Judy was collaborativeand cooperative.

Discussion

In order to summarise the interactions I have developed two scripts which represent apragmatic meaning of 'evaluate' in each case. In so doing I have drawn on the work ofthe linguist and semanticist, Anna Wierzbicka (1987). Semantic scripts or explicationsare a way to get to the core of the meaning of an activity within a particular culture and,in this study, within a particular context. The script becomes a resource which showsthe purpose of the evaluative activity, the agency of the participants and how theyposition themselves in relation to each other and to knowledge.

Critical to the concept of 'evaluate' is the idea of perspective. What is said inevaluations involves a perspective on the value or worth of something and on theposition of the evaluator with respect to the evaluatee. The scripts presented here arewritten in the first person to represent the perspective of the evaluator, the associateteacher.

The script below is a summary of the evaluative interaction in case 1 (Matthew andDavid):

Script 1

I evaluate what you are doing

(A) You are doing something.

(B) I am thinking about what you have done.

(C) I am thinking about what I think is good practice and I think that whatI do is good practice.

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(D) I am thinking about what you have done with respect to what I think isgood practice.

(E) I want to tell you what I think about your practice.

(F) I think you should do as I do.

(G) I have the authority to tell you these things.

(H) I know more than you do.

(I) I say things to you about what I think of your practice

The following script summarises the evaluative interaction in case 2 Qudy and Simon):

Script 2

We evaluate what you are doing

(A) You have done something. Before you did it we talked about what youwere going to do.

(B) We are thinking about what you have done and we say to each other whatwe think.

(C) We are each thinking about good practice and we tell each other what wethink with respect to that.

(D) I am thinking about what you have done with respect to what I think andwhat you think is good practice.

(E) I want to tell you about what I think about your practice but I also wantto hear what you think about your practice.

(F) I would like us to agree on what we think is good practice.

(G) I have the authority to tell you these things.

(H) I know more than you do but I acknowledge you know things too.

(I) We say things to each other.

(J) What we say to each other affects what we might do in our future practice.

Each script says something about the associate teacher/student teacher relationship inthe evaluative process and in particular the degree of symmetry in the relationship. Bothrelationships rest on a knower/knowee distinction, and in each script the knower, theassociate teacher, is placing a value on something that the knowee has done. He or shedoes this because of his or her knowledge and authority. By 'knowee' I mean to signifytwo things: that the student teacher 'knows little or nothing', so to speak, and that thestudent is the 'known', an object of the associate-teacher's authority and knowledge.

In the first script the assumption made is that the knower knows everything and theknowee knows very little. What is said is based on the subjective understanding of theknower. The way that the pronoun 'I ' is positioned signifies this. In the second scriptthe dualism implicit in the meaning of 'evaluate' is not as pronounced. The pronoun'we' indicates that the evaluation is subjective and intersubjective, in that both partici-pants know something and say to each other what they know. The value placed on theteaching activity is negotiated, agreed upon and shared.

Script 2 is more productive than script one for both practical and critical reasons.

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60 J.M.Mitchell

Evaluating incorporates a dialectical quality in script 2 in a way that extends teachingand learning possibilities for the participants. I am drawing on Proppes's (1982, inSmyth, 1991) understanding of dialectical in this context. Dialectical 'is a convenientterm for the kind of thinking which takes place when human beings enter into friendly(meaning well intentioned, cooperative, genial and genuine) dialogue in order to findsynthesis, or when they engage in reflection and self reflection' (op cit., p. 32). Therelationship between the associate teacher and the student teacher represented in thisscript is based on an assumption that both of the participants are knowers and knowees,both are thinkers and doers, both are theorists and practitioners. This is importantbecause it acknowledges the knowledge of the student teacher. Knowing about teachingin the evaluative context is then constructed jointly by the associate teacher and thestudent teacher. In this sense, knowledge of teaching is not a given that is merelytransmitted. Built into this is the possibility for reflective practice of the sort advocatedby Fish (1989). For her the student should

possess the skills, ability, dispositions, understanding, and capacity to create,discover, use, and evaluate his/her own theories of action in order that in allhis/her work with pupils he/she is committed to facilitating their learning totheir highest potential, and concomitantly to learning him/herself how betterto do so. (p. 179)

Within the meaning of 'evaluate' in script 2 is the possibility for the student teacher todo some of the things that Fish suggests because the evaluative process is two-way. Thisis crucial because the student teacher is better able to learn through reflecting on his orher own practice. Here I agree with Schon (1987, p. 39), who argues that, in theteaching context, knowing that comes from reflecting is more valuable than knowingthat is technical, instrumental and rule based.

The meaning of 'evaluate' in script 2 is possibly, but not necessarily 'critical' in theway that Liston & Zeichner (1991) suggest:

During student teaching and other practice teaching experiences, studentsshould be asked to reflect on their own assumptions and beliefs with a view tofurther articulating and justifying their views, and efforts should be made tolink available knowledge about social context to their experiences in order tohighlight potential obstacles to their chosen professional orientation, (p. 87)

The 'critical' point here is the linking of personal experience to social context: thenegotiated approach to evaluation represented by script 2 may encourage self-reflection, reflection about one's own teaching experience and how it matches up tonotions of 'good practice', but it will not necessarily encourage critical consideration ofprecisely what 'good practice' is and how it came to be defined as such.

Nonetheless, I would contend that the approach represented by script 2 is eminentlypreferable to that embodied in script one, which is predicated on an oppositionalrelationship between the participants, that is, on a hierarchical distinction betweenknower and knowee. In this approach, the evaluator's conception of 'good practice' isuncritically transmitted, received and (possibly) adopted: here there is little encourage-ment of self-reflection, much less of wider, critical thought about the notion of 'goodpractice' itself. This contention is consistent with the research findings of, for example,Cameron & Wilson (1993), Dunn & Taylor (1993) and Waite (1993). The analysis oflanguage and meaning in this research not only makes a critique possible, but it alsoexemplifies how negotiated practice can be achieved in a practical way.

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Conclusion

In these two case-studies the associate teacher and the student teacher participated indifferent ways in order to evaluate what the student teacher does in the classroom.What was said in the post-lesson conferences can be read and interpreted in differentways. To develop an understanding of what was happening I drew on what was actuallysaid in the post-lesson conferences, the comments and analysis of the participants in thefollow-up interviews, different understandings of the meaning of'evaluate' and my ownexperiences. By making explicit what people actually say and do I was able to developa point of view about what constitutes good evaluation.

The relationship and nature of interaction between the participants in these twocase-studies show different conceptions of what it means to 'evaluate'. In case one thecriteria were not negotiated, the roles of the participants were hierarchical and thedominant values expressed were those of the teacher. His values were set within aconception of teaching as the transmission of knowledge. In case 2 the criteria forevaluation were negotiated, the roles were collaborative and what the participantsvalued in their teaching was based on joint understanding between the student and theteacher. The degree of distance between the participants in each case was related to themeaning of 'evaluate' in that context and the extent to which the participants had ashared understanding of that meaning. When the meaning of 'evaluate' is based ona shared understanding and when the interaction between the participants is symme-trical, there is the potential to reflect on practice and enhance learning. My concern,however, is that calls for collaborative and reflective practice may be somewhatredundant unless, the chance nature of practicum placement is addressed, the purposeand meaning of practicum evaluation is reviewed and practical ways in which partici-pants can negotiate understandings and share responsibility are explored.

Correspondence: J. M. Mitchell, Faculty of Education, Charles Sturt University, PO Box588, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia.

REFERENCES

CAMERON, R. & WILSON, S. (1993) The practicum: student teacher perceptions of teacher supervisionstyles, South Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 21, pp. 155-167.

D U N N , T.G. & TAYLOR, C.A. (1993) Co-operating teacher advice, Teaching and Teacher Education, 9,pp. 411-422.

FISH, D. (1989) Learning Through Practice in Initial Teacher Training (London, Kogan Page).LISTON, D. & ZEICHNER, K. (1991) Teacher Education and the Social Conditions of Schooling (New York,

Routledge).SCHON, D. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner (San Francisco, Jossey Bass).SMYTH, J. (1991) Teachers as Collaborative Learners (Milton Keynes, Oxford University Press).WAITE, D. (1993) Teachers in conference: a qualitative study of teacher-supervisor face-to-face

interactions, American Educational Research Journal, 30, pp. 675-702.WIERZBICKA, A. (1987) English Speech Act Verbs: semantic dictionary (Sydney, Academic Press).

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