Classroom Management Instruction in the Context of a School-University Partnership: A Case Study of Team-Based Curriculum Deliberation, Design, and Delivery

This case study explored a process of team-based curriculum deliberation, design, and delivery, used to teach a classroom management course in the context of a school university partnership. A team of university and school-based teacher educators negotiated how best to prepare preservice teachers with effective classroom management knowledge and skills during a yearlong student teaching internship. The research questions driving this study were as follows: How does a team-based approach toward the design and implementation of a classroom management curriculum evolve in a school-university partnership? What are the outcomes of this process for preservice teachers, mentor teachers, students, and teacher educators? In the first section, a review of the existing scholarship highlights a sustained research agenda that has drawn attention to effectual classroom management and its relationship to environments for teaching and learning. The next section portrays the context of a school-university partnership and offers a description of a classroom management course as taught by a team of mentor teachers and university faculty members. The following section describes the process that emerged as the partnership's teacher educators designed, cotaught, and assessed the classroom management curriculum. Then, the article describes the themes that emerged from the study. The last section draws a set of assertions from the study's overarching finding--namely, a course that was designed, taught, and evaluated during a yearlong practicum in a school-university partnership enhanced elementary preservice teachers' understanding about how to establish, maintain, and sustain effective classroom management.