Insights into first year pre-service teachers’ views and confidence about teaching literacy

Abstract

This study presents a snapshot of pre-service teachers’ self-reported views about teaching literacy. It is part of a larger study to investigate how pre-service teachers develop as literacy teachers and how pre-service teacher education courses for teaching literacy can be improved. The overall purpose is to ensure graduates have the pedagogical skills and knowledge for teaching literacy. There is increased pressure on educators today to be able to ensure children’s effective literacy learning for them to cope in today’s diverse, information-demanding, globalised world. Sixty-seven pre-service teachers from one large foundation course on language and literacy completed a survey of their views on literacy. This was the first stage of data collection to explore their growth in the acquisition of knowledge and skills to teach literacy and their personal views and confidence about teaching literacy. The survey considered their level of confidence to teach literacy, what they believed was important to be effective teachers of literacy, what they needed to improve with regards to their own literacy knowledge and skills and what they expected their lecturers to provide to support the development of their competence and confidence as teachers of literacy. The findings showed that in spite of most participants being first year pre-service teachers the majority reported they felt they had sufficient knowledge of the English language to teach literacy. However, as it would be expected they acknowledged the importance of knowing how to explicitly teach literacy and engage the learner. When asked about their pedagogical skills they requested that lecturers provide ongoing feedback, encouragement and real-life demonstrations of explicit literacy teaching.