Teacher candidates rely on mentors working in their college-based teacher education programs and mentors working in the college’s partner schools to support their development as future teachers as well as their Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) preparations. This study describes a semester-long collaboration between a clinical professor, teacher candidates from her college, and teachers from the college’s partner schools, as they engage in shared readings and study group sessions focused on the topic of academic language, a topic that is central to national learning standards, the edTPA, and teaching in an urban context. The main goal of this collaboration was to provide teacher candidates an opportunity to study a relevant topic in depth with inservice professionals to enrich their clinical experiences. The objective of the study was to determine the ways in which inservice and preservice teachers’ conceptualize the topic of academic language and connect this thinking to their attempts to address the Common Core Learning Standards.
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