Exploring how coteaching impacted beginning science teachers' agency

Abstract

This study examined how three beginning science teachers' agencies were impacted by both their experiences with the coteaching model of teacher preparation and their first year teaching environments. In addition, this study sought to examine the impacts of these beginning teachers' agencies on their individual general teaching environments. Situated within the constructivist paradigm, these beginning teachers' experiences are described in individual case studies in order to describe intricacies of their individual teaching context(s), including both preservice and in-service teaching experiences. Using a grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1992), allowed Sewell's (1992) structure/agency dialectic to be used as a method to examine the relationships between the first year teachers agencies and their individual teaching environments. Teacher interviews, video observations of their classrooms, and teachers' self analysis of video observations were utilized as the data sources for this study. I concluded that the beginning teachers' coteaching experiences, as well structural motifs within their individual teaching environments impacted these beginning teachers' agencies, such that they chose to engage in collaborative teaching practices that addressed their teaching needs. In conjunction with the structure/agency dialectic, these beginning teachers' collaborative actions affected the structural composition of their general teaching environments.