Association between prospective elementary school teachers’ year of study and their type of conception of intelligence

Abstract

Even though it has been recognized that prospective teachers’ conceptions of intelligence and its development shape their teaching decisions, and, thereby, students’ engagement and achievement, to date no research has examined these conceptions from a person-centered perspective taking into account year of training. This quantitative, questionnaire-based, cross-sectional research (N = 904) aimed to characterize differences in pre-service elementary school teachers’ conceptions of intelligence in relation to where they were in their teacher education program. Cluster analysis revealed three distinct profiles: those giving predominant importance to innateness and inter-individual variability (fixist); those associating the development of intelligence with the accumulation of knowledge (cumulative); and those considering the development of intelligence as dependent on interactions with the environment (socio-constructivist). Although the same driving dimensions were present at the different stages of the training, adoption of the associated views fluctuated across the three years of training, in tandem with the process of construction of a professional identity and increasing field experience, with the cumulative perspective more likely in the first year, and the fixist profile more likely in the final year.