Abstract
When it comes to teacher attitudes towards teaching and learning, research relies heavily on explicit measures (e.g., questionnaires). These attitudes are generally conceptualized as constructivist and transmissive views on teaching and learning with constructivism often considered to be more desirable. In explicit measures, this can have drawbacks like socially desirable responding. It is for this reason that, in this study, we investigated implicit attitudes as well as explicit attitudes towards constructivism and transmission. N = 100 preservice teachers worked on a questionnaire and two Single-Target Implicit Association Tests (ST-IAT constructivism and ST-IAT transmission) before (T1) and after (T2) a single master’s semester. One group (n = 50) did student teaching while a second group (n = 50) took master’s courses. We evaluated preservice teachers’ views on teaching at the end of their masters’ studies. Participants agreed with transmission and constructivism (T1) on both an explicit and implicit level. Implicit measures seem to exceed explicit measures in differentially assessing constructivist and transmissive views on teaching and learning. After student teaching (T2), there was no overall effect of attitude development but changes in rank indicate that participants’ implicit attitudes towards constructivism and transmission developed differently for each individual.
Highlights
When it comes to the question of what makes a good teacher, theory and research agree that it is more than just teachers’ knowledge of pedagogical content
In a pre-post design, we investigated the potential development of the preservice teachers’ explicit and implicit attitudes on teaching and learning during a semester of student teaching
We found that preservice teachers’ implicit constructivist attitudes remained largely stable across time with temporal stabilities ranging from rtt 0.50 for transmissive attitudes to rtt 0.52 for constructivist attitudes over a period of four months
Summary
When it comes to the question of what makes a good teacher, theory and research agree that it is more than just teachers’ knowledge of pedagogical content. From the beginning of a teacher’s career, attitudes can influence their interpretation of classroom situations (Gregoire, 2003), the quality of their instruction (Voss et al, 2013), and potentially the achievement of their students (Staub and Stern, 2002; but see Leuchter et al, 2006). Fostering those attitudes that may be beneficial for teachers’ instructional quality at an early stage should, be an essential goal of teacher education (Levin, 2015). Learning opportunities that encompass both experience and reflection are an increasingly common element of a teacher’s professional preparation, during student teaching in preservice training programs (Zeichner, 2012; Rothland and Boecker, 2015)
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