Coteaching in science education courses: Transforming teacher education through shared responsibility

This chapter focuses on the implementation of coteaching and cogenerative dialogue as foundational components in science teacher education courses. Our use of coteaching emphasizes sharing responsibility for teaching and learning science and science pedagogy with our students1. Cogenerative dialogues are conversations between classroom participants (teachers, students, researchers, etc.) to discuss classroom interactions and focus on improving teaching and learning. Coupled with coteaching, they serve as both a method for learning how to teach, as well as a methodological approach to learn about teaching. In this chapter we present our pedagogical perspectives and explore our research into the use of coteaching and cogenerative dialogues as an approach to teacher education courses. We have implemented this approach to counter the increasing trend towards the deprofessionalization
of teachers, both at the K-12 and university levels. As we detail the development of our courses over time, we provide insights into how our epistemological understandings about teaching and learning have evolved to include sharing responsibility for teaching and learning with our students and how this practice has, in turn, informed our praxis as teacher educators.
Building from Freirian notions of dialogue and participatory education, we explore how coteaching and cogenerative dialogue can be utilized as a tool for engaging students in a theory generative pedagogical approach to learning about teaching. Specifically, we focus on how sharing responsibility with our students for the teaching and learning that occurs in our courses has the potential to not only transform science teacher education, but also K-12 science education. In the sections that follow, we describe what we characterize as the de-professionalization of teaching and introduce coteaching and cogenerative dialogue as an engaged pedagogical approach teacher educators can utilize to support new and in-service teachers to “push back” at policies and mandates that de-emphasize the decision-making
powers of professional teachers.