The Student Teacher as an Agent of Instructional Reform: Effects of Student Teachers on Supervising Teachers

Abstract

The researchers conducted two studies to investigate whether supervising teachers occasionally learned current teaching methods from their student teachers. In the first study one hundred and sixty-three supervising teachers were surveyed about how they came to learn about 24 common teaching methods and instructional innovations. While the results showed that student teachers were not as influential a source of learning, as a teacher education program, for example, teaching methods that were frequently cited as having been learned from student teachers included process writing, manipulatives, individualized instruction, and cooperative learning. A qualitative follow-up study was conducted with 18 of the 107 teachers who had cited the student teacher as a source of their knowledge of an innovation. It supported the findings of the first study and added an overlooked element in the discussions of systemic reform, i.e., that student teachers are themselves agents of change in classroom practice.