Correspondence in cooperating teachers' and student teachers' interpretations of classroom events. eaching and eacher

A~traet--Using the concept of well remembered vents, we examined how members of 13 elementary school cooperating teacher/student teacher dyads interpreted the same teaching events. Members of a dyad remembered the same vents and the same "visible " students but thought about them in qualitatively different ways. These differences are discussed in terms of expert-novice studies, a conception ofteachers ' knowledge as event-structured, andrecent inquiry into personal narrative in teaching. Particular attention is given to the consequences of these differences for communication between cooperating teachers and student teachers and for understanding the process of learning to teach. The purpose of the study reported in this article was to examine cooperating teachers ' and student teachers ' interpretations of the same teaching events. The premise underlying this analysis was that cooperating teachers and their student teachers often have shared experiences but not necessarily a shared understanding of what that experience means. These differences may have powerful consequences for communication between cooperating teachers and student eachers and, ultimately, for the process of learning to teach. It has been known for some time that cooperating teachers have a substantial influence on the development of student teachers ' orientations, dispositions, conceptions, and classroom practices (see, e.g.