Campus caring from the lens of preservice teachers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Caring is an important disposition of effective teachers and studies on care at the primary level have been abundantly researched. However, studies from preservice teachers’ points of view relating to lecturers’ caring behaviour are limited. This mixed-method study aims to determine the level of care exhibited by the lecturers and to inquire how lecturers display care from the lens of the preservice teachers. In this sequential explanatory design, data were collected in two phases. In phase one, a survey instrument which was adopted from Garza and Van Overschelde’s Faculty Caring Survey was administered to 250 preservice teachers of an institution of teacher education. In phase two, a focus group discussion was carried out to discover the lecturers’ caring behaviour. The outcome of the survey displayed that the overall mean of care was high, with a Cronbach Alpha of 0.94. The study also revealed that ‘emotional caring’ and ‘academic caring’ emerged as central themes from the focus group discussion. Findings also suggested that caring should be one of the disposition traits of lecturers as it would make an impact on the professional development of preservice teachers as future educators.