Abstract

Cooperating teachers, university supervisors, and student teachers often have differing, unspoken expectations when they enter the student teaching experience. Since alignment of expectations provides the basis for productive collaboration, teacher preparation programs must understand and facilitate the alignment of these expectations as they prepare to meet the new InTASC standards requiring mastery of collaboration. Based on the earlier work of Rajuan et al., this study used focus groups to collect data from cooperating teachers, student teachers, and university supervisors regarding their expectations for the role of the cooperating teacher. The data were coded based on six areas of orientation toward the role of the cooperating teacher. Using these orientations, this article compares stakeholders’ expectations of the role of cooperating teachers and explores how those expectations can serve as a foundation for collaboration.