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Teacher educators’ in-action mentalmodels in different teaching situationsMiriam Mevorach a & Sidney Strauss ba School of Advanced Studies, Levinsky College of Education, TelAviv, Israelb Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, IsraelPublished online: 09 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Miriam Mevorach & Sidney Strauss (2012) Teacher educators’ in-action mentalmodels in different teaching situations, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 18:1, 25-41,DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.622551

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Teacher educators’ in-action mental models in different teachingsituations

Miriam Mevoracha* and Sidney Straussb

aSchool of Advanced Studies, Levinsky College of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel; bTel AvivUniversity, Tel Aviv, Israel

(Received 17 September 2009; final version received 29 October 2010)

In previous studies on teachers’ cognition, we discovered that teachers’ teachingcan be described via a general in-action mental model (IAMM) concerning thestructure of the mind and the roles of teaching in fostering children’s learning. Thepurpose of our study was to examine teacher educators’ IAMM regarding studentteachers’ minds and learning in two different teaching contexts: (1) teaching anacademic course in college; and (2) supervising student teachers in a mentorschool. The same teachers taught the course in college and gave supervision. Fourteachers taught two lessons, one in each of the kinds of teaching situations. Wefound that when the teacher educators taught an academic course, they had thesame IAMM of the mind and learning as teachers who teach children in elemen-tary and high school. This points to the generality of the IAMM. However, wealso found that the IAMM has limitations and is contextual. In the supervision sit-uation, we found three different IAMMs: open, reconstructive, and connectivemodels. These findings suggest a need for further research on the IAMMs foundwhen teacher educators supervise. Suggestions are made for ways to help teachereducators become aware of their IAMMs and that of their students.

Keywords: teacher cognition; teacher education; supervision; mental models

Our study is grounded in theory on teachers’ cognition (Clark & Peterson, 1986;de Jong, Korgthagen, & Wubbels, 1998; Feinman-Nemser & Remillard, 1996;Fernandez-Balboa & Stiehl, 1995; Knowles & Cole, 1996; Korthagen, 1999;Peterson & Comeaux, 1987; Peterson, Fennema, Carpenter, & Loef, 1989; Pintrich,1990). Our research deals with teacher educators’ mental world concerning theirstudent teachers’ mental world (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997; Tom & Valli, 1990). Morespecifically, we looked at what teacher educators understand about what learning isand how it takes place in their student teachers’ minds.

Teachers’ cognition

Some research in cognition attempts to describe cognitive entities through which peo-ple both interpret their world and act in that world. Of the possible cognitive entitieswe could have chosen to study in our research (schemata, knowledge structures, intel-lectual structures, scripts, etc.), we chose to study teachers’ mental models (MMs).

*Corresponding author. Email: miriam_mevorach@levinsky.ac.il

Teachers and Teaching: theory and practiceAquatic InsectsVol. 18, No. 1, February 2012, 25–41

ISSN 1354-0602 print/ISSN 1470-1278 online� 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2011.622551http://www.tandfonline.com

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MMs are mental representations of dynamic systems in the world (Gentner &Stevens, 1983; Norman, 1983; Vosniadou & Ioannides, 1998). Carroll and Olson(1988, p. 51) aptly heuristically defined MMs as ‘rich and elaborate structures thatreflect what the user’s understanding of what the system contains, how it works,and why it works that way’. For example, pilots learn a considerable amount aboutphysics, engineering, mathematics, geography, map-reading, and more. But whenflying a plane without computerized flight control, they do not necessarily consultthat knowledge. Instead, they use short-cut rules they mentally constructed abouthow to keep the plane flying as the flight conditions change dynamically, for exam-ple, when there is a wind sheer. The rules and their relations comprise MMs, and itis these MMs that can be used to describe pilots’ behaviors when they fly a plane.

The traditional research content of peoples’ MMs is dynamic physical systems(Moray, 1999) that exist in the world of objects and are describable with much preci-sion and agreement. Among many examples are operating a large ship (Veldhuyzen &Stassen, 1977), navigating the seas in a canoe (Hutchins, 1983), industrial processoperation (Bainbridge, 1992), and electricity (Borges & Gilbert, 1999). We made amove that changed the above somewhat, and we believe that this is an innovation forboth the areas of MMs and teacher cognition.

The innovation of our work for the area of MMs is that instead of describingpeople’s MMs of dynamic physical objects in the environment, we described teach-ers’ MMs of the dynamic workings of pupils’ minds when learning occurs there.Unlike a large ship, nobody has seen a mind. It is tacit, and there is little agreementabout its structure and workings. Nevertheless, our previous research indicates thatwe can describe teachers’ teaching in terms of MMs about minds and how learningtakes place there (Haim, Strauss, & Ravid, 2004; Strauss, 2001; Zimet, 2002).

Taking a lead from Schön (1987), we conceptualized three different kinds ofMMs: (1) espoused MMs, which can be culled from the ways teachers speak abouttheir teaching; (2) on-action MMs, which are expressed when teachers view theirown videotaped teaching and comment on it; and (3) in-action MMs (IAMMs),which can be inferred from teachers’ actual teaching. The present study addressedteacher educators’ IAMMs of their student teachers’ minds and learning.

The innovation for teachers’ cognition is based on prior research that (Haimet al., 2004; Mevorach & Zimet, 2010; Strauss, 1993, 2005; Strauss, Ravid, Zelcer,& Berliner, 1999) showed that teachers’ teaching can be described by the sameIAMM of children’s minds and learning regardless of their differing teaching expe-rience (novice, experienced), subject matter they teach (arithmetic, reading, biology,music, the plastic arts, history), and the age of the learners they teach (elementaryschool, high school, college).

One innovation for teachers’ cognition that imbues the present study was todetermine whether teacher educators have the same IAMM of the mind anddynamic learning of their student teachers’ minds and learning as do teachers ofchildren. A second innovation was to study whether the same person in two roleshas the same or different IAMMs. The two roles are: (a) teaching subject mattercontent to preservice teachers in a college setting; and (b) supervising preserviceteachers when the latter teach in schools.

The potential practical importance of this examination pertains to the nature ofthe IAMM that underlies teacher educators’ teaching and supervision. It may be thecase that they hold the same IAMM as their students, in which case, teacher educa-tors may be implicitly modeling the very IAMM that student teachers already

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possess. This could mean that innovation in student teachers’ learning might besomewhat restricted. Methods of overcoming this potential issue are presented inthe Discussion section.

Teacher educators and supervisors

Teacher educators often teach subject matter knowledge to prospective teachers incourses at colleges and universities, for example, teacher educators teach history,children’s understanding of history, etc. Supervisors are those teachers who observestudent teachers when they teach in schools and give them feedback about theirteaching often alone with the student teacher and sometimes with several studentteachers who are doing their student teaching at the same school.

Slick (1998) pointed out the complexity of the university supervisor’s roleconcerning student teachers’ field experience, as did Cochran-Smith (2005) andCochran-Smith and Fries (2008). Similarly, Blanton and Berenson (1999) andGlikman and Bey (1990) asked whether supervision is more like teacher education orwhether it has a more evaluative practical function. These two kinds of teaching, onewhere subject matter is taught and the other where teacher educators give feedback totheir preservice students, are quite different in terms of their settings (classes in a col-lege vs. in a school), methods of evaluating the students’ performances (tests vs. guid-ance), emotional character (more distant vs. more interpersonal support), and more.

In the case of Israel, where our research was conducted, supervisors are oftenfaculty members of the college where their student teachers study, and they alsoteach academic pedagogical and subject matter courses at that same college. Thedual roles of being both a college teacher and supervisor allow an opportunity toexplore the IAMMs of the same people when they are in these two roles.

The current research had two main purposes. The first was to determine whetherteacher educators who teach adult students have the same IAMM as teachers inschools, and this despite the vast differences in settings, ages of students, etc. Thesecond purpose was to determine whether teacher educators have the same IAMMof what learning is when they are in two different teaching contexts: when theyteach an academic subject and when they supervise their preservice students.

For both purposes, were we to find that we can describe their teaching with thesame IAMM as school teachers and while in their two roles, we could claim that itis even more general than what we have found to date. On the other hand, were wediscover different kinds of IAMMs among school teachers and teacher educators,and were we to find that in the different teaching situations, teacher educators havedifferent IAMMs, it would mean that these IAMMs are contextual. Either findingcould augment our understanding of teacher educators’ knowledge base.

In-action mental model

We now present the IAMM found in previous research. In those studies, as well asthe present one, we pay more attention to the teachers’ teaching and less to the stu-dents’ behaviors in response to that teaching. Stated simply, all that is observable inteaching are teachers’ behaviors. They are the visible part of teaching. But most ofteaching is invisible. Among the invisible parts of teaching are teachers’ mental con-structions of children’s minds and learning. This concerns the assumptions teachershave about the mind and learning and the decisions (often non-reflective) they makeas their lesson unfolds (Bransford, Derry, Berliner, Hammerness, & Beckett, 2005).

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We infer teachers’ implicit IAMMs from the ways they teach, and we believethat it is these very same IAMMs that give rise to teachers’ behaviors. Inferringthem from the ways they teach is legitimate, in our view, because the primary goalof teaching is to cause learning in their students’ minds. The ways teachers teach,then, can be described by what we believe is their implicit IAMM of how the mindis structured and how the dynamics of learning occur in it.

As stated, the IAMM (see Figure 1) is implicit and inferred. It gives rise to teach-ers’ observable behaviors, which are the product of the IAMM. The units of teachers’teaching (Episodes and Events) describe teachers’ observable teaching behaviors.The units of the IAMM are mental and not observable and, hence, are interpretive.The units of the IAMM and their relations are what comprise the IAMM.

We begin our description with the teachers’ behaviors that, we reiterate, are notthe IAMM but do result from it. Cazden (1988) was among the first to observe thatclassroom teaching often has a triarchic structure: the teacher asks a question, achild answers and the teacher responds. We term this triangle an ‘Episode’.Episodes cascade as they follow each other and are structured as Events. An exam-ple of an Event that is comprised of several Episodes is found in Appendix A. Itinvolves a teacher who is getting the students to recall previously learned material.Notice that each episode has the triarchic structure and that as one views theircascading directionality, one can get the impression that something is guiding them.Our claim is that this cascading directionality can be described by the IAMM.

The second tier, which is the IAMM, has four units: Cognitive Goals the teacherwants to achieve in their students’ minds, Cognitive Processes that help achieve the

Figure 1. Teachers’ IAMM of children’s minds and learning as a guide for teachers’behaviors.

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Cognitive Goals, Basic Assumptions about the relations between teaching and theactivation of Cognitive Processes, and Meta-Assumptions, which are deep assump-tions about the structure of the mind and its dynamic workings when learningoccurs. In the example provided in Appendix A, each of these units is present whena teacher turns to the class and asks what, at first blush, appears to be a rather sim-ple question: ‘Where did we leave off in the last lesson’? This question is at thelevel of observed behaviors that, we claim, are the product of teachers’ IAMM. Webelieve that this question suggests that she wants the students to recall the last les-son’s content in order to begin the present class from that point. The CognitiveGoal is to Recall the material. The Cognitive Process that could achieve that goal isSearching for and Retrieving the knowledge of the last class’ content. The BasicAssumption, which connects teaching to the Cognitive Goals, is that by asking thechildren the question, they will search for and retrieve the material, thus recalling it,which is the Cognitive Goal of the question. And the Meta-Assumption is that chil-dren have stored knowledge and that it can be searched for and retrieved.

For the potentially skeptical reader, we ask the following: If the teacher believedthat students do not store knowledge (the Meta-Assumption that knowledge isstored in the mind), or that they have stored knowledge but it cannot be accessedor retrieved (Cognitive Processes of search and retrieval), or that asking the ques-tion will not lead to them search for and retrieve their knowledge (the BasicAssumption that teaching leads to Cognitive Goals through Cognitive Processes),would she ask that question? We believe that she would not. Stated otherwise,because she does have these units of the IAMM, she can ask that question.

The Meta-Assumption unit plays a major role in the construction of the IAMMbecause it represents teachers’ deep understanding of children’s learning. Otherunits of the IAMM (Basic Assumptions about the kind of teaching strategy thatevokes Cognitive Processes in order to achieve the Cognitive Goal) are derivedfrom the Meta-Assumption. For example, from our mini-analysis of the seeminglytrivial question that the teacher asked about where they left off in the last class, wesee that without the Meta-Assumption that knowledge is stored and can be searchedfor and retrieved, none of the other units would ensue. For instance, if the teacherdid not have the Meta-Assumptions just mentioned, the Basic Assumption thatteaching (asking where they left off in the last class) can evoke Cognitive Processes(search retrieval) would be irrelevant.

To reiterate, our research goals were to determine whether teacher educatorshave the same or different implicit general IAMMs as teachers who teach children,and whether or not they have the same IAMM in different teaching contexts. Weexamined the same teacher educators in two teaching situations: (1) when they wereteaching academic courses about pedagogy in college; and (2) in the post-lessonfeedback sessions that took place while they were supervising student teachers inelementary schools.

Method

Participants

We videotaped eight teacher educators’ pedagogy lessons in college: four teachereducators from a Department of Elementary School Education and four from anEarly Childhood Department in a college of education. All of them were experi-enced teachers with between 10 and 25 years of teaching experience. We videotaped

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these same teachers while they were giving feedback sessions. We analyzed fourteachers’ videotapes from those sessions. Altogether, we analyzed eight lessonsfrom four teachers: each teacher taught twice – once on subject matter given at thecollege and once in a supervisory session at a school. They taught student teacherswho were studying early childhood (preschool, first and second grades) and elemen-tary school student teachers (third grade and up).

The four teacher educators we chose were those who gave feedback individuallyand not in groups (two from each department). The remaining four teacher educa-tors, whose data were not used in our study, taught preservice teachers where feed-back was given to at least two student teachers together.

The reason for our choice to analyze only those supervisors who supervised inone-on-one tutoring sessions was that we believed it was best to concentrate on themost basic unit of interaction, that which is between two people: the teacher educa-tor and the student teacher. We reasoned that after we could describe the teachers’IAMM in this basic (but hardly simple) unit of interaction, we could then betterunderstand more complex interactions between the teacher educator and two ormore student teachers. All of the teachers and student teachers agreed to participatein the study and, although they were given the opportunity, none dropped out.

Procedure

The research is based on the methodology developed in previous research (Haimet al., 2004; Strauss, 2005; Strauss et al., 1999), and on the mixed methodsapproach (Maxwell & Loomis, 2003) that includes qualitative-interpretive and quan-titative methods. The length of each set of college lessons was 1.5 h, and the lengthof the feedback sessions ranged from 36 to 60min.

Data analysis methods

We analyzed the data obtained from the videotaped lessons in the college and thefeedback sessions in the elementary schools using a category analysis system wehad previously devised (Haim et al., 2004; Strauss et al., 1999; Strauss, 2005). Weadapted the content of the category system we had developed (for the content ofarithmetic, reading comprehension, and English as a second language) to the peda-gogical content in the present study. The teaching behavior units (Episodes andEvents) and the IAMM units (Cognitive Goals, Cognitive Processes, Basic Assump-tions, and Meta-Assumptions) remained the same. So did the content of these units,for example, the Cognitive Processes to search for and to retrieve.

We verified the content and ecological validity for teaching adult students bymeans of two expert judges. The level of reliability was established by these experi-enced researchers who, when they coded lessons independently, attained a highlevel of agreement with regard to the analyzed data for one pedagogy class and onefeedback session. The value of the inter-rater reliability using the Cohen Kappacoefficient measure was 0.85. Cases of discrepancy were resolved by discussion.

Results

In general terms, our major findings showed that: (1) when teachers taught the col-lege lessons, their teaching could be described by the same IAMM as that held by

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teachers in schools; and (2) most of the feedback sessions did not include the origi-nal IAMM. Instead, we found three different kinds of in-action quasi-MMs.

We now present the findings from the college lessons and then turn to the find-ings from the supervisory feedback sessions.

College lessons

First, we present data from the units of observed teaching behaviors (Episodes andEvents) and then turn to the IAMM’s units.

Episodes

An Episode unit is based on a triarchic interaction (teacher–student–teacher). Wefound a total of six kinds of Episodes and the total number of times that theyappeared was 1229, that is, each time a certain episode appeared, it was counted.The data are found in Table 1. The Episode that occurred most frequently was acti-vating pedagogical knowledge (35%). This occurred when the teacher educatorwanted the students to activate pedagogical knowledge they had already acquired.

Events

Events comprise chains of Episodes. Overall, we found 11 kinds of Events, andthey appeared 71 times. Relevant data are found in Table 2, which presents fiveEvents, each of which constituted more than 1% of the total Events. The dominantone was recall (42%). The recall of already-known pedagogical knowledge occurredwhen the teacher educator tried to remind the students of the pedagogical knowl-edge they had already acquired.

In partial summary, data from the explicit teaching behaviors indicate that theteacher educators in our study, when teaching pedagogical subject matter in the col-lege, have the same units in their IAMM as those found among school teachers.

Table 1. Frequencies and percentages (>2%) of Episodes across teachers and lessons.

Episodes Frequency Percent

Operation 428 35Leading 260 21Clarification 175 14Explanation 164 13Product checking 135 11Demonstration 23 2

Table 2. Frequencies and percentages (>2%) of Events across teachers and lessons.

Events Frequency Percent

Recall 17 42Control 7 17Reconstruction 5 12Summary 5 12Guidance 3 7

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This attests to an even greater generality of the teaching behaviors than had beenfound prior to the present study. We qualify this conclusion in the Discussion sec-tion because our study included only four teachers.

We now present data about the IAMM, whose four units are: Basic Assump-tions, Cognitive Processes, Cognitive Goals, and Meta-Assumptions.

The first unit, Basic Assumptions, relates to our interpretation of what the tea-cher educators in our study assume about the role of the teaching strategy thatevokes Cognitive Processes in students’ minds in order to achieve the CognitiveGoals the teacher set for her pupils. It is interpreted from the ‘Episode’ unit of theteachers’ behaviors. The relevant data are found in Table 3.

We found a total of 18 kinds of Basic Assumptions. Altogether, 2847 BasicAssumptions appeared throughout the teaching. Table 3, which presents the sevenmost frequent ones, indicates that the dominant Basic Assumption was: Guidanceleads to the activation of pedagogical knowledge (35%). It occurred when a teachersupervisor provided detailed instruction in directing the student to recall existingpedagogical knowledge.

The second unit, Cognitive Processes, refers to what the teacher educatorwants to evoke in the students’ minds in order to achieve a Cognitive Goal.Cognitive Processes are interpreted from the ‘Episode’ unit of the teachers’behaviors. Relevant data are found in Table 4. Overall, we found nine types ofCognitive Processes that, it turns out, were the same as those we had found inour previous research. They appeared 3858 times in the present study. The dom-inant Cognitive Process in the teacher educators’ instruction was: to operate(29%). The teacher believes that demonstrating and dividing the task into itscomponents will enable the student to operate (Cognitive Process) on the rele-vant knowledge.

The third unit the teacher educator wanted her students to achieve, CognitiveGoals, was also interpreted from the ‘Episode’ of teachers’ behaviors. Relevant dataare found in Table 5. Overall, we identified seven Cognitive Goals, and our teachereducators produced them 1181 times. The dominant one was ‘To activate a peda-gogical concept’ (54%), which occurs when the teacher educator wants her studentto use the suitable pedagogical concept for the specific task at hand.

Table 3. Frequencies and percentages of main Basic Assumptions across teachers andlessons.

Basic Assumption Frequency Percentage

Guidance leads to activation of pedagogical knowledge 986 35Teacher’s explanation enables identification and location of relevantpedagogical knowledge

352 12

Repetition/details/deconstruction/demonstration lead toidentification/operation of relevant pedagogical knowledge

335 11

Feedback directed toward continuing/changing the operation/preserving the operation

284 10

Repetition of answers/students’ comments, verification and directedtoward preserving

259 9

Presenting material by visual and auditory means directed atidentifying/preserving pedagogic knowledge

218 7

Reconstruction of the route to the solution by the student enablesidentification/reconstruction

168 6

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The fourth and final unit is Meta-Assumptions, which pertain to our teachereducators’ deepest understanding of the student teacher’s cognitive world. It dealswith how our four teacher educators understand the ways students learn and howthat learning can be promoted. Relevant data are found in Table 6. Overall, wefound five Meta-Assumptions, and the teacher educators produced them 31 times.The dominant Meta-Assumption was Existing pedagogical knowledge can beevoked and activated (52%).

To sum up this part of our findings, we found all four units of the IAMM thatwe found in our previous research. That is, we found the same IAMM when teachereducators taught subject matter in college as that which was found in our previousstudies with teachers in elementary and high schools. These findings point to thegenerality of the IAMM.

Table 6. Frequencies and percentages of Meta-Assumptions across teachers and lessons.

Meta-Assumptions Frequency Percentage

Existing pedagogical knowledge can be activated 16 52Organizing and stating the connection between the different aspectsof the material facilitates and preservation of the knowledge

7 23

Reconstruction of processes, situations, concepts leads topreservation of pedagogical knowledge

6 19

Different way of pedagogical presentation leads to generalization 1 3Demonstration may lead to identification and activation of apedagogical concept

1 3

Table 4. Frequencies and percentages of Cognitive Processes across teachers and lessons.

Cognitive Processes Frequency Percentage

To operate 1108 29To identify 716 19To preserve 686 18To link 450 12To reconstruct 345 9To activate 299 8To generalize 188 5To locate 51 2To attend 15 4

Table 5. Frequencies and percentages of Cognitive Goals across teachers and lessons.

Cognitive Goals Frequency Percentage

Activate a pedagogical concept 642 45Reconstruct a pedagogical concept 217 18Arrange and connect a certain pedagogical concept 212 18Generalize a pedagogical concept/law/principal 87 7Activate pedagogical knowledge 10 0.8Elaborate on a pedagogical concept 7 0.6Focus attention 6 0.5

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Supervisory feedback sessions

We analyzed the supervision feedback session’s data and found it difficult to locatethem within the framework of the IAMM we just presented. We found that only30% of the feedback sessions lent themselves to analysis via the general IAMMand even those teaching behaviors were not the tightly knit triarchic interaction: tea-cher asks–student answers–teacher responds.

This led us to search for IAMMs that constituted an alternative to the generalIAMM we had identified heretofore. The search for new IAMMs was done in aqualitative, interpretive manner. We do not have quantitative data for them. In previ-ous research, when we first studied teachers’ IAMMs, we did not have quantitativedata either. We analyzed our data qualitatively, determining the units of the IAMM,and it was only then that we quantified data in later studies. This is the state of theart in the present study. We followed the same process in this study where we deter-mined the kinds of IAMMs and their units qualitatively.

We now present the results regarding the places where the general IAMM couldnot account for our data. We found three alternative IAMMs: the open, reconstruc-tive, and connective models. In all three, we present the structure of the observedbehaviors of the feedback situation, an example of the model, its units and then anexplanation of each model.

The open model

Structure

The supervisor speaks with the student teacher in an open-ended fashion. The inter-action does not have a triarchic structure, as was found when the same teacherstaught an academic lesson in college. The interaction between the teacher educatorand the student was based predominantly on the student’s monologue.

Example

The supervisory session began with an open question: ‘How do you feel about youractivities?’ ‘What can you tell me about the lesson?’ The student spoke reflectivelywithout the teacher’s interruption. The only questions the supervisory teacher occa-sionally asked were various kinds of requests for clarification, such as questionsabout the children’s names or where they sat, or questions that imply giving legiti-mization to the student’s feelings.

Model’s units

A Meta-Assumption was that pedagogical knowledge can be Activated and Recon-structed. Cognitive Goals were to Activate and Reconstruct pedagogical knowledge.A Basic Assumption is that Self-Reconstruction of one’s own teaching enables theIdentification (Cognitive Process) of pedagogical knowledge. All of the content ofthe model’s units were different from those of any IAMM found to date.

Explanation

This is a student monologue in which the supervisor listens to and documents whatthe student says and hardly intervenes with questions, comments, etc. This kind ofinteraction usually occurred at the beginning of the feedback session.

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In our interpretation of the Open Model, we believe the supervisor attempts toenable the student teacher to evoke her intuitive, professional feelings and knowledge.The monologue can help the student become aware of her understanding of her pro-fessional behavior and make her more comfortable regarding her points of view.

The reconstructive model

Structure

The supervisor asks questions that help the student reconstruct events and notesweaknesses of the lesson. It does not have a clear triarchic structure. The interactionbetween the supervisor and the student teacher is based primarily on the student tea-cher’s reflection and the supervisor’s clarification. It is a dialogue in which thedominant speaker is the student teacher. It often occurred several times during thefeedback session. An example of such a dialogue is found in Appendix B.

Model’s units

We found two Meta-Assumptions. The first is that Encouragement and supportenable the continuation of the description of pedagogical strategies. The second isIntuitive analysis of teaching enables the uncovering of knowledge, capabilities, andpedagogical strategies.

There were three Basic Assumptions: (1) when a student teacher describes herteaching behaviors, she uncovers pedagogical knowledge she used; (2) raising theinitial question enables the student teacher to uncover her pedagogical assumptions;and (3) questions of clarification enable the student teacher to focus her descriptionof teaching behaviors in connection to her pedagogical goals.

The Cognitive Goal was to identify the pedagogical aims of the student tea-cher’s lesson.

The Cognitive Processes were to Remember, Connect the different teachingbehaviors and to Clarify the different teaching behaviors.

Explanation

This is a student teacher–supervisor dialogue where emphasis is placed on the stu-dent teacher’s side. In the Reconstructive Model, the supervisor helps by scaffoldingthe student in order to provide a professional analysis of her teaching behavior. Itenables the student teacher to reflect on her teaching, where the dialogue promotesthe student’s reflective, critical and implicit thinking about her teaching.

The connective model

Structure

The supervisor speaks about theory and encourages the student to locate and linkrelevant parts of their discussion to that theory. It does not have a clear triarchicstructure. The interaction between the supervisor and the student teacher is basedmostly on the teacher educator’s bringing up the theories that were part of the theo-retical course in college and her request that the student teacher make connectionsand clarifications between the theory and the lesson being discussed in the feedbacksession. It occurred several times during the feedback session.

An example of a Connective Model is found in Appendix C.

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Model’s units

The Meta-Assumption is that Description of theory on the part of the student tea-cher enables connections between teaching behaviors and theory.

There are two Basic Assumptions. One is that Activating memory of a specifictheory enables the connection of teaching strategies to theory. The second is thatAnalyzing a lesson plan enables locating specific pedagogical knowledge.

We found one Cognitive Goal, which was to Connect teaching to theory. Andwe found three Cognitive Processes: to Locate, Activate, and Connect.

Explanation

This is a kind of supervisor–student teacher discussion where the supervisor initi-ates a topic and the student teacher makes the connection between practice and the-ory. The discussion involves the recall of a theory that was part of the pedagogycourse (in college), and the manner in which it was connected to the students tea-cher’s teaching. We believe that in the Connective Model, the supervisor enablesthe student both to recall the theories and to see how they can be used to describetheir own teaching.

Overall, we found three IAMMs that supervisors used in supervision dialogues.These supervisory IAMMs had the same units as the general IAMM (Meta-Assumptions, Basic Assumptions, Cognitive Goals, and Cognitive Processes), buttheir content was different, and they were not derived from canonical triarchicteacher–student–teacher interactions.

Since we conducted our research with only a small sample, we cannot makegeneral claims, of course. But we found here that the general IAMM, found in pre-vious studies and in the present study when college teachers taught subject matterto preservice teachers, has limitations. The general IAMM did not fit the essence ofthe supervising teacher’s interactions with student teachers in feedback sessions.

Discussion

We asked ourselves whether the teaching of teacher educators when they teach sub-ject matter and pedagogy courses in college and when they supervise (as they givestudent teachers feedback after their teaching lessons in schools) can be describedby the same IAMM as teachers who teach children. We found the general IAMMwhen the teacher educators taught subject matter and theory courses at college.These findings increase the generality of the IAMM found to date.

We note a caveat here. Our claim that the IAMM is the same (or different in thecase of supervision) rests on an assumption that we now clarify. There are twoviews about how to determine whether the IAMMs are the same or different. Thefirst is that it is enough that a teacher’s behaviors occurred even once via a particu-lar unit for us to claim that that unit is part of her IAMM. We explain this by anal-ogy to Piaget. If a child showed even one instance of having an intellectualstructure, Piaget claimed that that was evidence of its existence for that child. Thenumber of times he used that intellectual structure played a minor role in Piaget’stheory. This is the position we took in our study. A second view is that in order toclaim that two IAMMs are the same, it is not enough to show that the two IAMMshave the same units. Instead, one should also show that the proportion of scores in

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the content categories for the lessons in the two contexts should be similar. We donot agree with this view because the content of the lessons is contextual and variesconsiderably. One lesson can emphasize some content while another lesson by thesame teacher could emphasize other content. We believe that were this contextualityof content categories to be the basis of deciding whether IAMMs are similar or dif-ferent, we would lose the big picture of the IAMMs’ fundamental units. Despiteour disagreement with the second view, we thought it best to present it as an alter-native to the first view.

Even given the first view, however, we found that this general IAMM, found inschool teaching and college teaching of subject matter content, has its limitations.We found that large parts of supervisory feedback sessions could be described bythe Open, Reconstructive, and Connective models. This finding points to the con-textual nature of IAMMs. These three MMs are different from the general IAMMfound to date in both structure and essence.

The differences in structure represent the observable professional teaching behav-ior that occurs in the first-tier analysis. We hardly found triarchic interactions in thesupervisory feedback dialogue. These triarchic interactions stand at the core of thegeneral IAMM. Instead, we found different kinds of interactions (monologue, dia-logue, and discussion) that enabled us to describe supervisors’ behaviors via three newIAMMs. In essence, the differences may be part of the idea of nurturing the studentteacher as an autonomous learner, thus enabling her to reflect upon her professionalbehavior and professional thoughts. This nurturing role has been found in several stud-ies (Antil, Jenkins, Wayne, & Vadasy, 1998; de Jong, Korgthagen, & Wubbels, 1998;Korthagen, 1999; Sockett, 2008) that argue for the importance of helping studentteachers gain competency as self-regulating learners and establishing a link betweenacademic theories and teachers’ implicit, naïve theories.

Our findings allow us to propose the notion that we can describe the same per-son’s teaching via several IAMMs of learning (Norman, 1983, 1998; Schön, 1987)and that it these IAMMs that inform and guide one’s actual teaching. The differentkinds of interactions (Bruner, 1996; Strauss, in press) enable the student teachers tobuild their professional understanding through various kinds of implicit interventionby the teacher educators (Kennedy, 2008). These new IAMMs are grounded in thespecial context that is unique to supervisory roles. These roles are of a tutorial nat-ure: they are located out of college classrooms, involve practical aspects of teach-ing, are not intended to teach new academic knowledge, and are evaluateddifferently than in academic courses.

At the practical level, it is likely that teacher educators are unaware of theirIAMMs. The IAMM reflects their implicit understanding of their students’ mindsand learning. By uncovering their hidden IAMMs, we might be able to help teachereducators and supervisors be reflective practitioners of what once was tacit. In thesame fashion, they can use similar techniques to help their student teachers uncovertheir own IAMMs.

Having found the three new IAMMs, further research is in order. There are twomain reasons for such research. One is that our study had only four teacher/supervi-sors. Clearly, the generality of our findings is limited, and further research could beconducted to test whether our findings could be replicated. If so, there would beconfirming evidence of the three new IAMMs, suggesting that they might be moregeneral than our limited study suggests. A second reason for additional research isthat need a quantification of these units.

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Were more studies conducted with these purposes in mind, we may eventuallyhave a deeper understanding of what supervisors think their student teachers’ mindsand learning are like in a supervisory situation.

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Appendix A. An example of Episodes guided by an Event (Recollection)

Episode 1 (Setting terms of reference):

(T)eacher supervisor: Remember that two weeks ago, we started a conversation andan exercise about differences in society. . .

(Ss)tudents: Right.T: About differences in society.

Episode 2 (Clarification):

T: I taught you a lesson about society, and asked you to look at itindividually and then in groups. I asked you to find what youreally have to look for. What criticisms I have. I was very gladto find that most of your criticisms were constructive. Then Iasked you to tell what seems appropriate to you and what not.We wrote it on the board, trying to present your ideas as a listof criteria.

Ss: Criteria, yes.T: Now, what was the purpose of all that? I wanted to show you

how I look at the lesson. What I look at. I wanted to seewhat you saw. I wanted some reflection. I wanted to showyou that you learn on different levels. In the first year, youlearned to construct a lesson according to goals, in the secondyear you focused on strategies, and in the third year we addclassroom management.

Episode 3 (Guidance):

T: Some of you already know how I build on strategies. Doesanybody notice the issue of classroom management?

(S)tudent: Yes.T: Yes.

Episode 4 (Guidance):

T: Give me an example.S: You mentioned the difference between management and what

is desired.T: (Looks around).

Episode 5 (Guidance):

T: Can you give a small example where I showed you how wego on based on the strategy?

S: When I did an activity, basically the management was okay,but the strategy wasn’t appropriate.

T: Right, the strategy didn’t fit.

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Episode 6 (Clarification):

T: But do you remember what happened after we finished work-ing in groups and you wanted attention? What happened? Doyou remember what I told you to do? How to bring thegroups together?

S: Oh yes. (Begins to reconstruct what happened in detail.)

Appendix B. An example of a reconstructive model interaction

(T)eacher: What else can you tell in order to separate the general feel-ings that you felt for . . .? What did you feel?

(S)tudent: I felt that I was losing them . . .T: Where? Try to locate those places. What can you learn from

that?S: I didn’t teach them the whole poem in a sequence. But I

meant for them to find the next phase. I wanted them tothink and predict what would come next. I should have readit once and then asked them. But they were happy to guesswhat was coming . . .

The student continued to describe her feelings in detail as well as the events inwhich she had difficulties.

Appendix C. An example of a connective model interaction

(T)eacher: I want to connect you to the material we learned in class. Wehad seven types of knowledge (Shulman’s types of teacher’sknowledge base), remember? Which of them did we discusstoday?

(S)tudent: Literature.T: We had several other kinds of knowledge . . .S: The means I used . . . pedagogical knowledge and . . . (look-

ing at the teacher’s documentation lists) I started with thebook and then I gave them . . .

The student then begins to locate and clarify relevant parts of their discussion.

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