The Development of Tandem Teaching Placements

The article reports upon a three-year action research programme intended to provide student teachers with peer-support in planning and carrying out class teaching. It was hoped that this would provide encouragement for student teachers to broaden their teaching repertoire, together with better opportunities to reflect and evaluate the successes and failures of their teaching ventures. Subsequent monitoring identified the need to develop better pairing strategies and stronger guidance for students and mentors in the form of role-descriptors. Student teachers reported favourably on the extra support that the paired placement provided. An unexpected benefit was that the student teachers found that a paired placement often provided them with opportunities to learn from the vicarious experience of watching their partner teach. This learning was often reported as being easier than learning from the observation of more highly skilled practice.