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Linda
Yes, you gain a sense that together the participants are creating something com-
pletely different as process and product; so their joint work continues to unfold
rather than there being an end point. In other words, cogenerativity refers to ongo-
ing dialectical ways of thinking and operating with a focus on the future in that, for
as long as those involved want to cogenerate, their work as a community will con-
tinue to expand and transform – potentially indefinitely. At this point in our metal-
ogue, it might be worthwhile to provide a specific example from our professional
experience projects to further probe the notion of cogenerativity and to illustrate its
nature and potential in initial teacher education school-university partnerships.
Metalogue Part Two
The Role of Cogenerativity in Initial Teacher Education
Partnerships
Example 1: Linda
I spoke earlier about my professional experience project example to explore cogen-
erativity beginning 3 years ago when I was coordinator, teacher educator and
researcher in the first year of a new MTeach program at an Australian university. My
various roles afforded me different opportunities to investigate cogenerativity as a
conceptual lens for developing a new school-university partnership. The MTeach
was an intense four-semester program that comprised 17 courses offered over
18 months. When thinking about it, the seeds for cogenerativity were probably sown
initially by the program’s existing structure which saw aspects of the first semester
professional experience course delivered in situ by the principal, head of curriculum
and mentor teachers at what was then the sole MTeach partner school. This con-
trasted with the usual arrangement where professional experience courses were
delivered at the university by teacher educators. However, I recognised a possible
opportunity to purposefully enable the work of cogenerativity in the context of a
second semester social education course that I coordinated. The course had been
co-taught since 2011, and I invited the head of curriculum at the partner school,
Estelle, to join the co-teaching team (see Willis et al., 2014 ).
The course took place at the university for 9 weeks and involved a 2-h co-taught
workshop followed by 1-h tutorials with individual teacher educators. There were
102 preservice teachers in the course – 7 from the MTeach and 95 from the Bachelor
of Education (Primary) (BEd) programs – as the workshops for the MTeach and
BEd equivalent course were taught together. During the semester, Estelle co-taught
with me and another teacher educator four times. However, cogenerative dialoguing
about what happened during co-teaching, co-planning and discussing the preservice
teachers’ coursework occurred throughout the 9 weeks during face-to-face and
L.-D. Willis et al.