Copyright Kelvin Seifert & David Mandzuk, 2004. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 25th Forum for Ethnography in Education, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, February 27-28, 2004. Do not quote or reprint without permission of at least one of the authors.
How
Helpful Are Cohorts in Teacher Education? Abstract
Introduction: Are Cohorts Helpful? Recently, some teacher education programs have experimented with organizing students into cohorts, or groups of peers who do much or all of their academic work and practice teaching together (Mather & Hanley, 1999; Shapon-Shevin & Chandler-Olcott, 2001). They have justified the cohort models on three grounds. First, it is hoped that cohorts create mutual intellectual and academic stimulation, including the sharing and critiquing of ideas, materials, and other resources. Second, it is hoped that cohorts facilitate the forming of supportive social ties among students, and that the ties will become lasting professional contacts after graduation. Third, it is hoped that cohort programs will be easier to easier to organize and administer, since cohort students, by definition, take a single set of classes that occur at common times. Systematic evaluations of these goals have not usually been made, and the few that have been published have taken the perspective of instructors and professors of teacher education more than of students in cohort programs. The published evaluations are cautiously positive, but also express ambivalence. Radencich and her colleagues (1998), for example, found that team cultures of cohorts were not uniformly positive, but bimodal, with teams either highly supportive of each other or markedly dysfunctional and negative. Mather and Hanley (1999) found that while the hoped-for support often does develop among cohort peers, so does competitiveness, and even the occasional scapegoating of individual students or professors. Such research suggests a need to distinguish program organizers' hopes and intentions from students’ actual experiences as members of cohorts, and a need to assess cohorts from the point of view of the participants themselves—the preservice education students. The study described here was an effort in this direction. In it, sixteen preservice education students were invited to describe and assess their experiences in a cohort program. Participants commented on their satisfactions and frustrations with the cohort. Each interview lasted one hour and was fully transcribed. The printed transcripts were combined with information from program documents and from conversations with instructors about the nature and goals of the program. Altogether, the transcripts and associated program documents constituted about 400 pages of material, and provided the basis for the analysis and interpretations summarized later in this paper. General Organization of the Cohort Program Studied Participants were enrolled in a Bachelor of Education program offered by Midwestern State University (a pseudonym), a medium-sized comprehensive university located in a city of less than one million inhabitants. Most students at Midwestern lived at home or in apartments in the city and commuted to campus each day. The majority also held part-time jobs even when enrolled full-time as students. Both of these facts may have limited the degree to which a "naturally occurring community" was possible at Midwestern, and may therefore be relevant to interpreting the comments about cohorts that students made in the interviews. But this possibility was not studied directly. Midwestern’s B.Ed. program admitted about 280 students per year to a two-year program; normal attrition plus a large number of part-time students mean that there are about 450 full-time students enrolled at any one time. To be admitted, students in the program were required already to have earned a Bachelor’s degree in a "teachable" subject (i.e. one normally taught in the public schools). As a result, B.Ed. students on average were several years older—and presumably a bit more "mature"—than undergraduates in the faculties of arts or sciences. The age difference was increased further by the tendency of many students to take time off from university studies before, during, or after earning their first degree. The resulting additional maturity probably influenced participants’ responses to their cohort experiences, as indicated later in this paper, though comparisons with students in other faculties were not part of this study. Midwestern’s B.Ed. program was organized into three streams according to the age or grade-level of school teaching to which the B.Ed. students aspired. Early years (EY) focused on teaching kindergarten through fourth grade, middle years (MY) on fifth grade through eighth grade, and senior years (SY) on ninth grade through twelfth grade. In the EY and MY streams, students’ immersion in a single, lasting cohort was relatively thorough and permanent. In these streams students attended classes and other program activities with the same 30-35 peers about 90% of the time throughout the first year of the program, and about 67% of the time during the second year. Activities that were not organized according to cohort included certain specialized, curriculum electives, some of the practice teaching placements, and a small number of program-wide special events. Activities that were organized by cohort included most classes and—because of the common timetable—the bulk of students’ break times between classes. As it happened, the SY stream was about twice as large as each of the other two streams (140 vs. 70 new students per year). As noted below, this fact combined with its more numerous and specialized curriculum studies to complicate its organization so that "total immersion" in a single, lasting cohort was less feasible than for the other two streams, though not totally impossible. In both years of the SY stream, students spent about 67% of their time with one cohort of 30-35 students, and the remainder with various combinations of other students mainly from other sections of the SY program. Non-cohort activities were of the same general sort as for the EY and MY streams: a mixture of specialized curriculum electives, practice teaching placements, and program-wide special events. At Midwestern, then, cohort organization was clearly important in the professional landscape of the Bachelor of Education program. In addition to its structural prominence, however, cohorts played a part in the public ideology of the program. The existence and benefits of the cohorts were mentioned in various program documents and informal conversations among faculty, administrators, and other staff. Many instructors, in addition, reminded students of the importance of forming ties among peers by emphasizing the importance of class attendance. The implied message was clear, even when its connection to cohort organization was left unstated: availability to peers, sharing ideas, and sheer physical presence all mattered. The Participating Students All students in the second year of the B.Ed. program were invited to be interviewed for the study, and the first sixteen of the resulting volunteers were selected as participants: five from the early-years stream, six from the middle-years, and five from the senior-years. No effort was made to screen potential interviewees; they were simply the first individuals willing to take the time to describe their experiences and reactions to the cohort B.Ed. program. The findings therefore do not constitute a statistically representative sample of students, but they do shed light on the range of responses students felt about their cohort experiences. Participants ranged in age from about 22 to 45 years. Partly because admission to the program had required a previous university degree, most participants were also old enough to have accumulated at least some prior work experience, including substantial amounts in a few cases. Three participants had worked previously as instructional aides in schools, but in most cases prior work had not been related directly to school teaching. Many participants had continuing work and family obligations during their two years in the B.Ed. program, obligations that often competed with time for their peer cohort, academic courses, and even their practice teaching. Four lived outside the metropolitan area of Midwestern University. Three of these four commuted to classes and practice teaching placements, and one lived away from her primary home during the week and commuted home on weekends. Interviewers’ Relationship to the Participants The authors (Seifert and Mandzuk) divided the interviewing of the participants, each person talking with eight of the individuals for one hour. Seifert and Mandzuk were both instructors in the B.Ed. program of Midwestern University, and therefore their general identity as faculty members was known to most of the participants (though not to all!). As much as possible, however, interviews were divided so that the interviewer neither taught nor expected to teach the student being interviewed. Exceptions to this policy occurred, however, for three students because of scheduling constraints. Because of
their roles in the faculty, the interviewers had a lot of prior general
knowledge about Midwestern’s B.Ed. program and were already familiar with
the official general or ideological reasons for using cohorts. The introduction
to this article summarized these. Mandzuk, in addition, had already initiated
and partially analyzed two separate studies of students’ reactions to
cohort experiences (see Mandzuk, Hasinoff, & Seifert, in submission;
or Hasinoff & Mandzuk, in submission), and he had shared the preliminary
results with Seifert. This information, along with the authors’ general
experience as teacher educators, meant that the interviewers had already
begun forming tentative impressions about the impact of the cohorts on
students. Both Seifert and Mandzuk felt, however, that the earlier survey
results were inconclusive: they gathered information from many students,
but not in great depth. Hence their decision to interview selected individual
students in greater detail, even though time constraints limited how many
students could be interviewed. Analysis and Findings from the Interviews Each author studied and reviewed the transcripts three times, and did so independently of the other author. During the analysis they identified issues and themes related to students’ cohort experiences, focusing both on diversity and commonality among individuals. Results of the analyses were written down as field notes, annotations on the transcripts, and self-directed interpretive "memos." Periodically the authors met to share their emerging interpretations of participants’ comments and experiences, and to seek consensus about them as a way of guiding further analysis. The outcome of this process is reflected in the discussion below and centered on the following three themes: 1. the degree to which participants liked the cohort experience in general and the personal factors influencing individuals’ enjoyment,2. the impairment of individual social relationships because of the presence of the cohort, and 3. the gap between emotional support and intellectual stimulation in the cohort. The discussion
in the next section is organized around these themes, and offers examples
of how participants expressed each of them. Following the examples from
the transcripts, we discuss what the findings suggest about the organization
of preservice teacher education and about teacher educators’ relationships
with students. Approval of "the" Cohort in General All participants liked their cohort to some extent, though many also felt misgivings about it. An early-years student named Susan K (a pseudonym), for example, expressed her liking for her cohort repeatedly and explicitly:
Susan’s support for the cohort was unusually complete and unqualified; she had virtually nothing critical or cautious to say. She explained her support by pointing to the fact that her parents had moved frequently during her childhood because of the nature of their work. The result, she felt, was a desire for stability and depth in relationships, and she had found some of that in her cohort. But other participants often expressed concerns about whether the comprehensiveness and permanence of the cohort also limited social contacts in some way. Typical of this caution was Giselle P., a senior years student who was 10-15 years older than most of her classmates. Giselle felt that relationships within the cohort, and relationships between her and cohort members were basically friendly, though not very close socially, intellectually, or professionally:
From Giselle’s point of view, collaboration among peers—a primary goal of the program planners—did not really happen a lot. Several others shared her opinion, though Giselle expressed it more bluntly than did the others. In Giselle’s case, one reason that relationships were distant had to do with Giselle’s age; she and her younger classmates did not prefer the same recreations:
The result, according to Giselle, was a maturity gap: she felt willing to reach out to her cohort peers, but also believed that they were not prepared to reciprocate:
Another result was that Giselle formed her most important relationships only with selected individuals, and she often found these outside of her faculty-based cohort:
In spite of Giselle’s criticism of her cohort members, however, she did
not object to the cohort model as a way of organizing the B.Ed. program.
In fact, she expressed mild approval for it. She just did not feel that
in practice, the cohort was essential to her survival or well-being as
a student. In this regard she resembled a number of other participants,
although her reasons relating to the maturity gap were not necessarily
shared by them. Downplaying Individual Relationships Consistent with their liking of "the" cohort in general, most participants downplayed the importance of unique or individual friendships within the cohort, or even denied their existence altogether. The implied message was often that "everyone liked everyone else," and that any classmate would be equally helpful or supportive to any other classmate in need. A senior-years participant named Martha B., for example, expressed this view when describing how cohort members coped with group work, a widespread teaching practice in the B.Ed. program:
Some participants acknowledged the existence of special or favorite friendships within the group, or of special groups of friends. But they tended to describe these relationships as non-exclusive, as added on to their generalized attachment to the cohort. To make this point, they often contrasted their special, more intimate relationships with "cliques"—the latter being exclusionary, elitist, and divisive, and of course undesirable. Not one interviewee believed that cliques developed in the cohorts, though many described friendships or groups of friends that seemed rather inward-looking. Here is what Tania S. said about her early-years cohort:
Evidence of inclusiveness in relationships focused on selected special or unusual events to which every cohort member was invited or involved, even though many did participate. In all three streams, for example, participants pointed to the cohort-sponsored "socials" (or parties) held twice each year as evidence that everyone was welcome and truly belonged to the cohort. In fact, however, socials never drew more than half the potential cohort members, and sometimes even fewer. Several examples of inclusion—ranging from positive to neutral and negative—were more dramatic, though even more unusual as events than the cohort-wide socials. A positive example concerned an early-years student who lost a parent part way through the first year of the program. According to Caitlin R., one of the early-years interviewees, "everyone" helped this student to cope:
Caitlin goes on to describe how classmates helped this student to get homework assignments on time, and to give emotional support in general. More neutral examples involved cohort members assuaging the anxiety of particular classmates. Several senior-years participants described efforts of cohort members to assuage the anxiety of one particular classmate, who was worried about whether she could do the work of program while also raising a family. Marilyn C. described it like this:
In the middle years group, Rick K. recounted how fellow cohort members responded when he was having serious difficulties with his faculty advisor during practice teaching:
Even though both examples are meant to imply widespread inclusion, but a close reading suggests that the job of creating inclusion feel to selected individuals, not to the whole cohort. A more negative example of inclusion and its limits happened in the early years stream. Several early-years participants commented on one particular classmate whose work habits and sense of involvement were dramatically below par. Usually she was described with a tone of anger or frustration, much the way that Terri N. does:
Interestingly, although participants had serious complaints about this classmate’s laziness and lack of involvement, no one reported having actually talked with her about their concerns. Presumably at some early point in the program she was socially included and not yet "shunned." But by the time of the interviews, exclusion had already occurred and no participant was able to describe how, or precisely why, the transition had occurred. It also did not occur to any participant that the exclusion of this student had any bearing on the ideology of inclusiveness that pervaded the rest of the cohort. Altogether, these examples seemed to have lasting, symbolic meanings for participants, and presumably also for cohort members in general. Apparently they proved to many cohort members that their group was caring and socially inclusive. For us as interviewers and authors, however, the examples did not prove as convincing. In every example, the relevant events or relationships were infrequent, did not involve all students, or even was unknown to some students. The basis for skepticism is especially clear regarding the most frequently cited and public sign of inclusion, the cohort-wide parties. Only certain students, not "everyone," actually attended these events, even when some cohort members believed that "everyone" attended. Interviews of the less socially minded participants suggested that in reality, some students did not even know when they occurred, or even that they existed. The senior-years participant named David S., for example, was among the less informed cohort members; he pointed out that he actually did very few activities with cohort peers, and tended not to hear about cohort-wide activities in time to do them:
Whether for David or for other more socially-minded participants, therefore, belief in inclusion often seemed to be more ideological than realistic and reflective. In fairness to participants’ assessments of their cohorts, some did express skepticism about the extent of inclusiveness in their peer groups. Instead of presenting their cohort as a single "family," these participants described it as consisting of distinct subgroups within an overall group. Whether these participants considered subgroups to be a problem, however, depended on the participant. The middle-years student Dan M., for example, did not see special friendships as a problem, and even called them by the usually pejorative term cliques:
Similarly, Lynn L., an early years student, noted many special friendships within the cohort, but did not feel that they prevented inclusiveness within the cohort in general:
Like a number of participants, Lynn and Dan believed that there was plenty of time and emotional energy to be sociable with everybody, even though they (and many other) clearly reported scarcity of social time and energy elsewhere during their interviews. More commonly, however, participants simply showed little awareness of the simultaneous presence of whole-group and individual relationships. Instead they usually described life in the cohort in terms of whole-group relationships, as if special individual friendships or friendship groups did not even occur. Terri N., an early-years student, was one who saw the cohort as a single large group. This perspective was reflected in her readiness to stereotype cohort sections as a whole--a tendency also found in a separate study by Mandzuk, Hasinoff, & Seifert (in submission):
A: …Not really, really segregated. But based on some of the people that I know from the other section of early years (i.e. the other early-years cohort), it [the other section] is way more cliquey than our section is. (TN, p. 2) Martha, the senior-years student quoted earlier, also described her experience in whole-group terms. Like Terri, she did not differentiate strongly among classmates: I think everyone sort of felt accepted,…and there was never anyone who was like, "Oh, I don’t have a group" or didn’t feel like they belonged…. I’m generally a pretty shy and quiet person, but I still felt very comfortable in that class. (MB, p. 4) Nonetheless, the fact that a "whole-group" perspective dominated cohort members’ thinking was noticeable to some participants, who found the perspective frustrating because it rendered individual friendships awkward. Nancy S., a middle-years student, put it this way:
But difficulty with being selective was not the only problem caused by a whole-group perspective. Orientation to "everyone" (i.e. to the entire cohort) made individuals vulnerable to rumors and bouts of mass hysteria, especially about academic matters. Tania S., a student quoted before, described the problem this way:
In a sense Tania (and a number of other participants) argued that cohort members in the EY stream had too much contact with each other; hence the tendency to mass hysteria. Consistent with this interpretation, Tania also expressed a desire to meet members of the other cohort in her early years stream:
Like most of the participants in the study, however, Tania stopped short
of advocating truly strong measures to bridge the gaps among cohorts,
because she wanted to protect the emotional support she had already had
developed with her own cohort. Other participants who criticized the cohort
also pulled back from outright opposition to the cohort model, but instead
described their reason for favoring the status quo as "personal laziness":
it took effort to meet new peers, and they felt busy enough as it was. Social and Emotional Support More Than Intellectual Challenge When participants emphasized and praised the support they received from fellow cohort members, they were generally referring to social and emotional support rather than to intellectual support. Peers were, first and foremost, stress relievers. They were valued because they offered empathy when a student encountered difficulties with university courses, practice teaching, or their personal lives. They were not especially relevant actually to solving any of these personal problems, nor to stimulating new ways of thinking about educational issues. Terri N., the early-years participant who was quoted earlier, was typical of the others in her focus on the social side of the cohort:
When participants did have academic or intellectual concerns, they usually focused only on the perceived ambiguity of an assignment, not on its content as such. The majority of "academic" sharing that occurred, therefore, consisted simply of seeking classmates’ help in clarifying assignments. Even this sort of discussion was limited because individuals sometimes "delegated" the clarification task to one cohort member. Nancy S. described what happened:
Another sort of "academic" exchange consisted of dividing assignments in order to reduce the workload for individuals. Sharon M., from the middle-years cohort, described this strategy candidly:
Although the cohort program as a whole tended to use and support many forms of cooperative group work, this example fell into a gray area slightly beyond legitimate cooperation; it was definitely not the instructor’s intention for students to cut corners in this way. Their willingness to do so was probably related to their lack of respect for at least some of the assignments. Academic work, in other words, was sometimes not truly intellectual, and therefore not worth discussing. It just needed to get done as effortlessly as possible. Sharon described another example of this attitude like this:
The tendency to discuss only the procedures and form of academic work, rather than its substance was especially pronounced during the first year of the program. In addition to its origins in lack of respect for certain assignments, it also was rooted in the priority given to positive social relationships. In the example above, Sharon went on to say that it was a "prime example of how our class maybe had pulled together" (p. 4, SM). But others also described to fostering positive relationships with classmates as a priority. CR, an early-years student quoted earlier, put it like this:
Becoming more intellectually candid took time, in other words, and confidence
at it was still not complete during the students’ second year. Factors Affecting Attachment to the Cohort The participants varied in how much they supported the cohort experience, ranging from zealous enthusiasm to lukewarm, cautious endorsement. As authors and interviewers, we wondered about the possible reasons for the differences, but were able to draw only tentative hypotheses on the basis of these sixteen interviews. The preliminary interpretations below, however, may help to guide additional research about individual differences in response to cohort experiences. Among the sixteen individuals interviewed in this study, support for cohort organization seemed higher among the younger students than among the older, more "mature" students. The difference was revealed, for example, in students’ responses to an administrative issue that had arisen during the previous year in the middle-years and early-years streams. At one point, coordinators of these two streams had considered deliberately "mixing up" the two sections within each stream in order to create new links and relationships among students, and to develop a broader rather than a more narrow professional focus. Under the plan, the cohort sections in the second year would each contain half of the "familiar" students from the first year’s cohort, and half of the new or unfamiliar students from the other cohort section of the stream. Students reacted to the proposal in ways that were complex, but mostly negative, and their reactions appeared partly to reflect individuals’ age or maturity. As a rule of thumb, younger individuals were more committed to the cohort experience than were older individuals. Among the younger, for example, was Lynn L.; she was an early-years student who had completed her first bachelor’s degree immediately before beginning the B.Ed. program. Lynn opposed the proposed mixing of cohort sections vehemently because she regarded the cohort as essential to her emotional well-being during the program.
At the other end of the maturity/age continuum was Tania S., another early-years student who had worked several years after completing her first degree. Like every other interviewee, Tania favored keeping the cohort intact for the entire two years of the program. But she also acknowledged the value of deliberately mixing the cohort sections part of the way through the program.
Tania’s opinion was affected by her work experience—something that older students were more likely to have had. Recently as a summer camp counselor, Tania had worked with different groups of children during each week of the summer camp. She felt that the high turnover had helped her to learn more about children’s individuality and behavior, and that a single, constant cohort would have taught her less. But the cohort-mixing issue was not the only way that maturity influenced individuals’ commitment to the cohort. Perhaps not surprisingly, the older students tended to have more pre-existing personal commitments—including spouses, children, and ongoing jobs—that competed with the cohort for time and emotional energy. While these alternate contacts created an element of distance between the student and the cohort, it also gave the student perspective on many aspects of the cohort experience. The additional life experience seemed to help when working with peers on group assignments, for example, with understanding peers’ motives and unstated needs, and with using personal contacts to develop "bridge" or make focused contacts with other professionals. Nancy S., a relatively mature middle-years student, pointed out some of the difference in social perspective:
Later in her interview, she also described how her information sources about teaching went well beyond her contacts with cohort peers.
As with most of the other relatively mature students, Nancy’s relationship to the cohort was somewhat paradoxical. She got along well with them, but both said and implied that she did not really need them very much, emotionally or academically, and that she lacked the time and energy to invest in peer relationships. It is unclear, however, whether the cohort model therefore actually impeded the education of students like Nancy, or merely amounted to a sort of diverting "side show" while they focused on their real interest, gaining teacher certification. The latter seems the more likely interpretation, since even the mature students expressed support for the cohort experience. Maturity was not the only factor influencing individuals’ support for the cohort. Four students also cited their geographic distance from the university as influencing their involvement with cohort peers—though in inconsistent ways. Three of the out-of-town students said that because they lived farther away, they often needed to begin driving home just when local classmates might begin driving to a local pub or coffee shop. The fourth (Marni G., from middle-years), however, reached the opposite conclusion: because she lived out of town, she had more time to socialize with cohort members. Two students also cited religious differences as a limitation on involvement with peers, a finding noted previously by Mandzuk, Hasinoff, & Seifert (in submission). In one case the student (Wilma M., from middle-years) did not want, for religious reasons, to "go drinking" (e.g. have a beer at a local pub or bar). In the other case the student (Carolyn H., from early-years) was so involved with her church community that she simply lacked time to socialize with cohort members. The comparative impacts of maturity, geographic distance, and religion remain inconclusive, however, because the interviews were limited to participants’ self-perceptions about their cohorts. We used no objective metric by which to compare individuals with each other, and for ethical and diplomatic reasons, we never asked any person to evaluate himself or herself directly against others in the program. In some cases, however, individuals offered this sort of information anyway without being asked. The "findings" about differential commitment discussed in this section are based on such unsolicited comments, along with our own unsolicited comparisons of individual participants. Future research on cohort effects might therefore explore factors affecting
students’ responses more directly and thoroughly. Given the ideology of
inclusiveness noted earlier, it seems likely that participants sometimes
minimized or even concealed the individuality of their opinions when praising
or defending the idea of preservice cohorts. To some extent, that is,
they were giving a "party line for public consumption," so to
speak. Published literature in teacher education, however, and indeed
in social science as a whole, suggests that individual diversity should
be expected. It might be displayed more candidly and comfortably after
longer contact with students, in the form of more numerous interviews
and of classroom participant observation (see, for example, Marsh, 2003,
or Evans, 2002). As one of the authors (Seifert, in submission-a; Seifert,
in submission-b) has indicated elsewhere, the profession of teaching is
somewhat public, and for some individuals it therefore requires careful
self-presentation. To the extent that a teacher (or preservice education
student) does not hold conventional opinions, therefore, he or she may
limit honest self-expression to situations that seem very safe. Implications for Teacher Education and Teacher Educators Judging by these sixteen interviews, then, a cohort model of teacher education has indeed been a positive experience for preservice education students, though not in every way hoped for by program planners, nor to the same degree for every student. The most important and widespread benefit was emotional support; virtually everyone gave this as a reason for liking his or her cohort. Peers relieved the stress of academic work and of practice teaching, offered a listening ear when problems developed, and occasionally even offered a shoulder on which to cry. Contrary to the original goals of the program, however, peers did not usually provide intellectual stimulation for each other. Intellectual or professional discussions outside of class discussions apparently were rare, especially during the first year of the program. The closest approximations were focused on clarifying procedural details of academic assignments, delegating to a peer the job of communicating with professors, or (in one case) to dividing tasks for group assignments so as to reduce students’ individual workloads. Unintended Effects of Cohorts Like most forms of social organization, cohorts also had unintended side effects. One positive, but unexpected effect was the establishment of an "ethic of generalized goodwill" within many of the cohorts. Mutual friendliness often went beyond the casual to include deep concern for the welfare of fellow students (e.g. when one student’s parent died midyear). Some friendships became so strong that some participants claimed, rightly or wrongly, that the friendships had been crucial to their emotional survival. On the negative side, however, were several problems that were rooted in the very intensity and long duration of cohort relationships. The generalized goodwill that developed also made it harder to form friendships selectively; individuals sometimes found it awkward not to include everyone in an activity or invitation. The continual communication among peers made some cohort groups vulnerable to "mass hysteria" when problems occurred about assignments or other program plans. And the emphasis on getting along with everyone did not promote greater comfort in intellectual exchange during class discussions. On the contrary, it had a dampening effect on intellectual engagement, at least during the first year of the program, in order to protect students’ higher priority, encouraging emotional support among peers.. On balance, it seemed to us that the cohort organization was successful in fostering two important qualities of future educators, cooperation and connection among peers. But it was less successful at fostering students’ individuality and personal development. Several interviewees pointed to factors (e.g. age, religion, family responsibilities) that mattered immensely to themselves as individuals, but that found relatively little place in conversations and activities among cohort members. We suspect that the personal factors mentioned to us were not the only ones: additional unique circumstances, commitments, and beliefs may not have been given a voice even in the privacy of our interviews. Such silence may in general be a problem. To the extent that individuals choose not to make important features of themselves public to their peers, they may reduce their commitment to the teacher education program, and develop less self-confidence about themselves as future teachers. How To Encourage Individuality? What to do about the limited voice for individuality, however, is another matter. Possibly structural modifications to the cohort organization might help to a modest extent. One possibility, for example, would be to decrease the amount of time that cohort members actually spend together. Judging by the interviews we have reported, maybe the cohorts in the early-years and middle-years streams, in particular, actually see too much of each other. In contrast to those two program streams, the senior-years cohort spent only about two thirds of its time together, and interviewees from that stream seemed just as satisfied with their arrangement as did those from the other two streams. More to the point, it may be that the organization of the senior-years stream made students a bit less dependent on each other. But this possibility is still only speculation. A related structural change might be to create cohorts for certain courses (e.g. those in educational foundations) that deliberately draw students from all three streams. The intent would be to mix together a wider range of personalities, beliefs, and attitudes, while still preserving the constancy of a cohort—a strategy that might, for example, reduce tendencies to mass hysteria mentioned earlier. As with other structural changes, however, this one might have unintended consequences, such as creating disharmony if truly incompatible people had to work together closely for extended periods. A strategy that is more personal, but perhaps also more challenging, would involve raising instructors’ and professors’ awareness of how to deal with cohort-related behaviors and relationships. Are there ways for these gatekeepers to make students more aware of students’ own diversity, and to facilitate and reward mutual respect for the diversity? Can instructors and professors call attention to the hazards or costs of too much "togetherness" while still respecting students’ desire for ample amounts of it? In very general ways, of course, every teacher educator already seeks such balance. The interviews, however, suggest that more needs to be done, and that doing it might require rethinking teacher educators’ usual ways of developing students’ professionalism. Common pedagogical strategies in teacher education, such as journal writing, group assignments, or ample class discussion, in particular, may not be as effective at promoting individuality as we would like to believe (Seifert, in submission-b). While remedies are devised and tried, however, it is important to remember
two ideas from this study in the meantime. The first is that the problems
with cohorts identified here happened side by side with the benefits.
The second is that for most students, the benefits were widespread and
substantial. If we can now discover just how widespread they were, and
how substantial, then we may get further clues about how to remedy the
limitations of cohorts. References Evans, K. (2002). Negotiating the self: Identity, sexuality, and emotion in learning to teach. New York: Routledge Falmer. Hasinoff, S. & Mandzuk, D. (in submission). Bonding, bridging, and becoming a teacher: Student cohorts and teacher identity. Author: Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba. Mandzuk, D., Hasinoff, S., & Seifert, K. (in submission). Learning to teach in student cohorts: A social capital perspective. Author: Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba. Marsh, M. (2003). The social fashioning of teacher identities. New York: Peter Lang. Mather, D. & Hanley, B. (1999). Cohort grouping and preservice teachers' education: Effects on pedagogical development. Canadian Journal of Education, 24(3), 235-250. Radencich, M., Thompson, T., Anderson, N., Oropallo, K., Fleege, P. Harrison, M. & Hanley, P. (1998). The culture of cohorts: Preservice teacher education teams at a southeastern university in the United States. Journal of Education for Teaching, 24(2), 109-127. Seifert, K. (in submission-a). The challenge of being ourselves in early childhood teaching. Author: Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba. Seifert, K. (in submission-b). Identity development in teacher education. Author: Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba. Shapon-Shevin, M. & Chandler-Olcott, M. (2001). Student cohorts: Communities of critique or dysfunctional families? Journal of Teacher Education, 52(5), 350-364. |