Ownership of Learning in Teacher Education

Abstract

This article describes two teacher educators' efforts to understand ownership, a core concept in a learner-centered program. The context for this self-study is a collaborative master's program guided by constructivist theory. Participants included 20 kindergarten through fifth grade teachers and two faculty guides. One faculty worked with the teachers in mathematics and the other worked with the teachers in literacy. To understand what ownership is in a graduate teacher education program, the two teacher educators gathered information from several sources. From their analysis of the information, they (a) identified strategies they used to encourage ownership, (b) gained insights into classroom Teachers' perceptions of ownership, and (c) identified ways classroom teachers encourage ownership in their classrooms. From this information, they developed a framework to represent how to encourage ownership in teacher education.