Date of Award

2016

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Education

Department

Education

First Advisor

Patricia Cordeiro

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative, single-case study was to examine the implementation of co-teaching as an alternative student teaching method across seven elementary and early childhood classrooms to determine how it was implemented and, if differences in implementation were found, to develop substantive theories as to why those differences were present. The study was conducted at an elementary, laboratory school located on a college campus. Three sources of data were collected including interviews, observations, and documents. During data collection and throughout my analysis, I adhered closely to the methodology of grounded theory analysis as presented by the discoverers of grounded theory, Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967/2008), and as presented in subsequent texts which further detailed the methodology, as provided by Strauss and Corbin (1998), and Glaser (1978; 1992). My initial analysis aided me in establishing substantive codes relative to the data and to establish a core variable, Transitioning from Student to Teacher Alongside the Teacher, which was further separated into two-sub-categories, Becoming a Teacher While Co-Teaching and Taking the Lead While Co-Teaching. I then selected a theoretical coding family and three properties of status passage—temporality, desirability, and reversibility—to further analyze the data. My findings indicate that how co-teaching was implemented, in terms of Becoming a Teacher, occurred in much the same way as the more traditional model would have been implemented— embedded in the larger context of student teaching where temporal expectations were regularly scheduled and coordinated and key agents prevented reversals. Differences in implementation were more closely related to Taking the Lead and were due to undefined temporal expectations, the desirability or undesirability felt by participants toward the passage, and reversals in the passage relative to structural and/or personal conditions experienced by participants.

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