University within School Model: Affordances for Teacher Education

Abstract

As a six-dimensional system, University within School model is designed to include all the components of education as well as academics’ experiencing the K-12 classroom teaching at schools (Özcan, 2013). The model has been implemented by teacher educators at two universities, MEF University and Boğaziçi University, in a disadvantaged public school. In this study, we examine three different implementation processes: the gains of first year prospective middle school mathematics teachers enrolled in an introduction to mathematics teaching course, of a mathematics teacher educator as a teacher teaching mathematics to middle school students and of prospective English teachers and supervisor’s teaching English to primary school students. In these experiences, we depict the difficulties experienced in this process and discuss how we cope with these challenges. Finally, we discuss the affordances of university within School model for teacher education in Turkey.