Do Student Teachers and Supervising Teachers Communicate with Each Other?

Abstract

IN THIS SURVEY, the authors' purpose was to determine to what extent student teachers in ele mentary education and classroom supervisory teachers in public schools agree on students' of greatest and least success. Upon completion of a nine-week student teaching experience, 113 students in elementary education were asked to list five in which they felt they had experienced greatest success and five in which they felt they had experienced least success. Examples of areas given by the authors in the questionnaire were: teaching of reading, art, mu sic; discipline; lesson planning; small group activi ties. Students were not limited to these areas, however. From these returns, approximately 38% (37) were selected at random. Each of the clas s r o o m supervising teachers who had worked with these 37 students was then asked to list the individual stu dent's five of greatest success and five of least success. All 37 teachers responded. In no cases was there one hundred percent agree ment. The highest percentage of agreement reach ed concerned student failure rather than student success. However, there was only one such case. It seems significant, though not altogether unex pected, that success or failure regarding the hand ling of discipline problems in the class r oom was most frequently agreed upon by students and teach ers. However, agreement involving student failure was appreciably less than that involving success, in fact, seven in the case of student failure or least success as opposed to twelve in the success cate gory. Problems of discipline are obviously a key concern in elementary school teaching and a stu dent's success or failure in dealing with them can be determined, to some extent, readily enough. While planning lessons and other activities are of equal, if not of superior, importance in the class room, only ten cases of agreement were reported; five success and five failure. In four cases, stu dents and teachers reached agreement with respect to the students' success in teaching art; in one case, there was student and teacher agreement regarding student failure. In all, cases of agreement totaled 79 out of a possible 370. The findings reported in Table II i n d i c a te that students and teachers agree more frequently on of greatest success, though the difference when compared to of least success (less than four per cent) seems negligible. Whether consid ered individually or together, the percentage of agreement must be interpreted as an indication of poor communication. Secondly, and tremendous 1 y significant, is the fact that little or no attention was given to the student success or failure in teaching content. Certainly one should expect to see some comment about how poorly or how well a student teaches arithmetic, social studies, or any content area.