Assistant teacher course/Organization

Coopetition
Should assistant teachers form several groups and allow coopetition between groups? What aspects could be competitive and what aspects could be cooperative? To try out the effect the group should be split into two independent groups, each developing its own model for coopetition. Each group has its own instructor and can work alone but the groups should be encouraged to exchange ideas.

Some observations that can be made are that competition can make the work more interesting and challenging and thus provide motivation. Cooperation can allow the assistant teachers to learn from each other and to join forces, if necessary. The relation between teachers and assistant teachers can benefit because assistant teachers are free to join the group that best represents their attitude, the teachers can react more specific to the written program and code of conduct of a group.

Allowing new assistant teachers to form their own groups can help to avoid reactance and other forms of rejection. This way new assistant teachers can both rebel against the established order of things and follow the assistant teacher role model as they choose to understand it.

Coopetition means that the assistant teachers can join different groups, for instance one group per class, groups with slightly different concepts, groups that represent subjects or departments, groups with eponymous role models or a combination thereof.

Governance
The ideas for governance the participants develop can help them to improve their system later on. After the participants have understood what can be done and how a good assistant teacher effort should work the goal is, however, to develop a much less perfect system in order to allow later assistant teachers or pupils to reform the system.

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Committees
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Code of conduct
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