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This study explored how six preservice teachers who participated as interns in a Professional Development School (PDS) program experienced learning to teach in the PDS context. The paper explores the scholarship of learning to teaching, highlighting the disjuncture between the complexity and contexts of school-based practicums, restructuring of teacher preparation programs, and current research. It proposes a grounded theory methodology for studying interns' experiences. Data were collected through individual interviews, participant observation in the field, and document analysis. Findings resulted in a model of learning to teach that involves learning about teaching and how to teach and learning about how to be a teacher (context-appropriation theory). The paper illustrates these two central categories, strategies, and stages of intern development with specific examples. It offers a model of learning to teach illuminated by newly emerging understandings portrayed by participating preservice teachers. Assertations include: at the end of the internship, PDS interns attain a stage of preservice teacher development that is beyond mastery; PDS interns learn about teaching and how to teach primarily through mentoring from a designated mentor and university supervisor; and PDS interns understand how a school functions as an organization. (Contains 53 references.) (SM)

The purpose of this study was to describe and assess the collaborative process of curriculum design and implementation that evolved in the context of a school-university partnership. Research questions driving this study were: (1) why do mentor teachers and university faculty in a school-university partnership choose to become involved in a process of developing a classroom learning environment syllabus?; (2) how does this process emerge and become modified?; and (3) what impact does this evolving process have on children, preservice teachers, mentor teachers, and university faculty? The Professional Development School (PDS) classroom learning environment team consisted of 14 members: 2 teacher educators, 11 elementary school mentor teachers from 4 PDS school sites, and a curriculum coordinator. The first part of the paper portrays the contexts of this PDS community. Included in this section are descriptions of the campus-based classroom management syllabus that was taught by a faculty member, and the PDS classroom learning environments syllabus as taught by a team of mentor teachers and university faculty. The second part of the paper describes the process that developed as the university faculty and mentor teachers engaged in curriculum design, co-teaching, and assessment. The final section draws a set of assertions concerning the process and impact of such curriculum generation by a team of university faculty and elementary school teachers. Findings and assertions from this study highlight the contributions that a collaboratively planned and implemented syllabus can make towards the professional development of PDS interns, mentor teachers, and university faculty. The paper also points out important attributes that must be present in the process of curriculum planning to make the collaborative process successful. Appendixes contain syllabi for two PDS intern classes. (Contains 32 references.) (Author/SLD)

This phenomenological case study explored how preservice teachers in a Professional Development School (PDS) internship program experienced supervision. It examined how the interns portrayed and interpreted practices that emerged from the PDS context, how they understood supervision, what the process looked like from their perspective, and what impact this had on their individual and collective sense making of learning to teach within a PDS. Data came from participant observation, field notes, document analysis, and six semi-structured individual interviews. The image of multiple mentoring was used as a heuristic for presenting the interns' understanding of both their formal and informal supervisory practices. There were multiple mentors with whom the PDS interns developed mentoring relationships, including mentor teachers, PDS associates (a restructured role that replaced the traditional university supervisor), children, peer interns, administrators, other school professionals, and parents. Through the year-long internship, interns experienced multifarious supervisory practices which included reflective journaling, guided observations, classroom data collection, supervisory conferences, goal setting plans, triad evaluative conferences, informal intern building gatherings, weekly intern seminar meetings, teacher research projects, and development of Web-based intern portfolios. (Contains 56 references.) (SM)

This study explored the experiences of six preservice teachers who participated as interns in a Professional Development School (PDS), examining how they understood and made sense of their experience of learning teach in a PDS context. Researchers used a phenomenological case study with narrative inquiry, collecting data from interviews, field notes, documents, journals, and Web-based portfolios over 12 months. Analysis of the data indicated that interns portrayed learning to teach as two distinct yet connected processes: (1) learning about teaching and learning how to teach and (2) learning about how to be a teacher. Within these two processes, there were three main themes: unlocking practitioners' knowledge and skills, thinking and doing, and understanding how children think and learn. As respondents learned about how to be a teacher, six themes emerged: shaping a transitory teacher identity, negotiating the college student role and PDS intern role in the school-university partnership, building teacher expectations, establishing community relationships, fostering home and school relationships, and exploring ownership of the curriculum. (Contains 75 references.) (SM)

Embedded in the framework of a Professional Development School (PDS) culture, this paper explores how interns in a learning community experienced collegial interactions, conversations, and collaborative reflection. The PDS intern community was a transformative learning forum in which empowered novice teachers articulated and examined their beliefs and analyzed their classroom practice. Within the confines of a safe and nonthreatening peer environment, interns created personal meanings of their experiences, posed further wonderings about children's thinking and ideas, and reflected on how to make "better problems." Fostering "best" teaching practices, contemplating theory-practice issues, understanding the political and social culture of the schooling context, and building natural interdependencies provided stimuli for these preservice teachers to raise their voices and consider multiple perspectives. Within the learning community, interns created spaces as they individually and collectively began making sense of learning to teach and teaching to learn in a PDS culture. (Contains 47 references.) (Author/SM)

This study explored how interns in an elementary Professional Development School (PDS) learning community experienced supervision through collegial interactions, conversations, co-teaching, and collaborative reflection with multiple mentors. Each intern was supervised by a Professional Development Associate who provided supervisory support for the professional development of the interns and mentor teachers during the internship. Data collection involved participant observation, field notes, document analysis, and four semi-structured individual interviews. Data analysis revealed that multiple mentor teachers directly shaped the supervisory experience of the interns over the course of the year. Diverse mentors offered interns different ways and differing perspectives on learning to teach. In response, interns filtered, interpreted, and negotiated these complex interactions. The synergistic power of emerging supervisory relationships between the PDS community members afforded interns spaces to shape and reshape their provisional understanding of learning to teach. Findings depicted a supervisory process that entailed multiple opportunities for collaborative relationships between those who were planning to teach and those inducted into the profession. Participants' deep commitments enabled interns to feel connected and cared for. (Contains 70 references.) (SM)