Becoming a Teacher in the United States: Are Attitudes of Incoming Candidates Malleable?

Abstract

In the United States over the course of the last few decades, teacher education programs have been intentionally truncated. This often leaves teacher educators somewhat discouraged as to whether they are able to make any differences in teacher candidates during this relatively short period of time. Research seems to say that while we can teach prospective teachers specific knowledge and skills, we will find it much more difficult to change teacher attitudes or dispositions. The study reported in this article examines whether beliefs about teaching change during a two and one-half year undergraduate teacher education program. The study recorded the beliefs and attitudes of students as they entered a teacher education program and compared these with their attitudes upon graduation five semesters later, using a semantic differential instrument that demonstrates differences in perceptions of certain words. The results of this study are presented, and then this study is compared to a similar study undertaken with students in a one-year teacher education program. Finally, implications of the study for teacher education programs are discussed. In the United States, the teaching profession and teacher preparation programs have been the perennial targets of wide-ranging but largely illinformed criticism. At least beginning with the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education), teachers have borne the brunt of all the evils of the United States from economic woes to global warming. Through it all, generation after generation of teachers have kept right on. We find them meeting their classes, honing their craft, and shielding their students to the best of their abilities against the worst excesses of United States educational policies. Teacher preparation programs, especially those traditional programs housed in universities, have also been routinely criticized for failing to produce more able teachers. The same distrust and lack of respect that is unthinkingly heaped upon teachers themselves is also extended to the programs which educate these teachers. This has resulted in increasing governmental intervention and control in teacher education. The simplest area to target for this has turned out to be the curriculum of teacher education. Because the