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The purpose of this study was to examine how participants experienced and perceived an M.Ed. program that had a school-based design. In particular, the authors sought to understand: (1) how participants experienced being in a school-based cohort and (2) whether and how participants experienced the three designated tenets of the M.Ed. program: teacher inquiry, social justice and student engagement and motivation.

This qualitative study used semi-structured focus group interviews (n = 7) to examine teachers’ perceptions, using a constant comparative method (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) of open coding to analyze the data and determine emergent themes.

The findings indicate the design of this school-based M.Ed. program provided both social and academic benefits including strengthening teachers’ working relationships and their understanding of students outside their own classroom and a transfer from individual learning to organizational benefit. Teachers positively perceived the three tenets that guided the first year of the program, especially the ability to study social justice and student motivation in depth.

This study has implications for teacher education and retention as well as how boundary spanning roles in PDS schools can impact graduate students’ experiences in schools. Given the current teacher shortage concerns, it is important to understand how M.Ed. programs can be designed with teacher needs at the forefront so learning is relevant and rewarding, both to the individual and the school.

While there are many studies that examine the use of cohorts in education, particularly in doctoral programs, few, if any, studies examine a school-based cohort M.Ed. program for practicing teachers. This study also puts a unique spotlight on how boundary-spanning roles can benefit not only teacher candidates but also practicing teachers in their M.Ed. programs.

IT IS EASY to make glib generalisations about the student situation in this country, and its associated problems, but a recondite analysis of student mores is much more difficult. Commentators tend to be extreme, varying from those who declaim ‘All for youth and the world well lost’ to those crying ‘Stop their grants, make them do a day's work’, and more in similar vein. An understanding of student attitudes to work and society is one thing, the cause and effect of their attitudes is quite another. What is certain is that there has been a radical change, and the full effects of this change are yet to be felt. Behind each new generation rise those ever ready to decry the follies of youth, but today there is a widespread and differing view held that youth is king, and can do no wrong. Both of these points of view are extreme, and both, in totality, are unjustified.