Lived Experiences of Cooperating Teachers and Student Teachers in Their Clinical Year

Many aspects of a student teacher’s clinical year help determine their success in the future. Understanding the lived experiences of both cooperating teachers and student teachers is essential to understanding the dynamics of that relationship and how district-university partnerships foster an environment of mentoring and support. This study aims to understand and evaluate the lived experiences of cooperating teachers and their student teachers during the clinical year. This study focuses on understanding the cooperating teacher-student-teacher relationship and how mentoring does or does not happen in that relationship. For this study, the problem is selecting cooperating teachers and the lack of mentor training offered to cooperating teachers before hosting a student teacher in their clinical year. This study’s research questions include: 1. What is the expectation of cooperating teachers in clinical year? 2. What is the expectation of student teachers in clinical year? 3. What is the process for selecting and training cooperating teachers for clinical year? The method employed for this study is phenomenology, a rigorous approach that delves into the lived experiences of the participants. Purposive selection, a method that relies on the researcher's sound judgment to choose participants based on a specific criterion, is used for this study. The participants for this study comprise nine cooperating teachers and their student teachers, each representing elementary, middle, and high school. The cooperating teachers are from over five districts in a southeast state, while the student teachers are from a small private university in a southeast state. Key Terms: Cooperating teacher; student teacher; mentor; clinical; district-university partnership; training; phenomenology; lived experiences.