Complexity Science and Cohorts in Teacher Education

In this paper we examine the nature of our self-study practices in an elementary teacher education cohort called CITE (Community and Inquiry in Teacher Education). We argue that self-study is not only important to our continued work in CITE but also a critical feature of professional practice in general. Two general questions frame our analysis: (1) What is significant about cohorts in teacher education? (2) Howmight complexity science inform our understanding of cohorts in particular and of teacher education programs in general? We argue in the paper that the use of a cohort-type structure in a teacher education program provided us with flexibility and potential for improvisation to address the perennial problems of program fragmentation. To better understand our own teaching and learning practices in this community setting, we sought an analytic framework that emphasized the importance of the learning potential of the collective as opposed to just the learning potential of the individual. We argue that complexity science, with its ecological emphasis on learning systems, is such an analytical framework. We generate six propositions about the role and value of cohorts in teacher education that arise from self-study of our own practice.