Pre-student Teaching Research Articles

CSPAP Implementation During Student Teaching: Lessons Learned From the Field

In the United States, less than half of adolescents meet national recommendations for daily physical activity (PA). Schools are an integral intervention point for achievement of national PA youth guidelines. To help schools achieve PA guidelines, multicomponent Comprehensive School Physical Activity Programs (CSPAP) were developed. Each CSPAP component works synergistically to help students achieve 60 min of PA per school day. Physical educators are expected to implement CSPAP components in their schools, but little is known about the preservice physical education teacher (PPET) perception of CSPAP training experiences in teacher education. The purpose of this research study was to understand PPET perceptions of implementing a component of CSPAP at the elementary and secondary level during a student teaching course. Undergraduate (n = 5) and graduate (n = 4) physical education majors enrolled in a semester of student teaching were recruited. Data collection encompassed individual semistructured interviews at three distinct phases (N = 25): (a) pre–student teaching, (b) between student teaching school placements, and (c) post–student teaching. Data coding first revealed codes, then categories, and eventually four themes emerged, each with its own subthemes: (a) preparedness, (b) perceived challenges, (c) implementation, and (d) moving forward. Findings indicate PPETs developed confidence, achieved personal growth and self-actualization, perceived career benefit, and gained a desire for implementing CSPAP in the future. Additionally, implementing CSPAP components during student teaching can increase confidence and desire to implement CSPAP in the future. Further research needs to explore if CSPAP experiences during preservice training influence in-service teachers’ CSPAP involvement.

Preparing Middle Grades Candidates for edTPA in Uncertain Times

Teacher candidates in North Carolina must earn a passing score on the edTPA assessment to get certified. The middle grades education program at Western Carolina University integrates aspects of the edTPA assessment throughout pre-student teaching coursework and field experiences to prepare candidates for this high-stakes assessment. Some of the edTPA practice assignments serve as key assessments that help the middle grades program faculty evaluate the program and make decisions about curriculum. The pivot to remote and blended learning formats on campus and in partner middle level schools affected the implementation of the edTPA-related assignments. The authors share some of the challenges of implementing edTPA practice portfolios during the pandemic as well as insights gleaned from their assessment of the data.

Preservice music teachers’ self-efficacy and concerns before and during student teaching

The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences and contextual factors that influenced preservice music teachers’ self-efficacy and concerns from pre-student teaching to student teaching. Data were collected for this case study through an open-response questionnaire about participants’ ( N = 4) efficacious teaching experiences, 10 weekly e-journal reflections written during pre-student teaching ( n = 5 weeks) and student teaching placements ( n = 5 weeks at 1 placement), interviews ( n = 4), and my own researcher journal ( n = 31 entries). Preservice teachers’ self-efficacy and concerns were most impacted by teaching experiences in familiar settings. Results indicated that participants made more comments about student-impact and self-survival concerns during student teaching than pre-student teaching. Further investigation revealed that participants consistently expressed concerns for classroom management during pre-student teaching and student teaching placements. Finding ways to expedite the developmental process could reduce the amount of time that preservice teachers focus on early contextual factors and instead identify ways to improve students’ music and academic performance.

A Communities of Practice Approach to Field Experiences in Teacher Education

This article argues that prospective teachers who have the most productive experiences withinpre-student teaching field experiences are those whose field sites allow them to become membersof communities of practice, the conditions of which, according to Wenger (1998) include jointenterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire. Employing interviews and contentanalysis of documents, the researchers explored the experiences of a cohort of teacher candidatesin a pre-student teaching practicum to better understand elements of field experience that mightinfluence identity development. We highlight the cases of two prospective teachers as illustrativeand contrasting experiences of the cohort as a whole. We conclude by offering recommendationsfor how teacher education programs might assist prospective teachers with negotiating forconditions within field sites that allow for productive participation and growth.

Does student teaching matter? Investigating pre-service teachers’ sense of efficacy and preparedness

The purpose of this study was to investigate how student teaching experiences impact the sense of teaching efficacy and feelings of preparedness of pre-service teachers in a nearly and elementary teacher education program (EC-6). The study used an action research, mixed-methods design. Seventy-one pre-service teachers at a large public university in the southwest completed surveys about their preparedness to teach and teaching efficacy pre and post the student teaching semester. Findings indicate that pre-service teachers’ perceptions of preparedness and sense of teaching efficacy both increased significantly (p < .5) from pre-student teaching to post-student teaching. In addition, three themes emerged from the answers to open-ended questions on learning components of student teaching experiences: opportunity for hands-on teaching, the opportunity to observe experienced teachers, and the relationship with their cooperating teacher.

It takes a village: investigating the critical role clinical faculty play in mathematics teacher education

The dispositions of preservice elementary education teachers toward reform-oriented mathematics education were surveyed before and after an extended pre-student teaching practicum. During the practicum, university and school-based personnel served as ‘clinical faculty’ as they supported the preservice teachers’ practicum experiences. The preservice teachers’ perceptions of the clinical faculty’s dispositions were also surveyed. Relationships between changes in the dispositions of the preservice teachers and their perceptions of the clinical faculty were discovered, thus highlighting the important influence clinical faculty wield as mathematics teacher educators.

Shifting the reflective focus: encouraging student teacher learning in video-framed and peer-sharing contexts

Since many studies that use video to support teacher learning are situated in strongly guided contexts and encourage particular kinds of thinking, we still know very little about how more loosely guided contexts can support teachers to think about the dilemmas of practice associated with their own goals by reflecting about video. This study explores how video-based and peer-based reflections about one’s own and others’ practices both indicate and guide the development of teachers’ change-directed thinking when they are sequenced before supervisor feedback. Six secondary preservice teachers reflected about peer-evaluated mini-teaching and videotaped field-based teaching in the prestudent teaching term and then about videotaped teaching alone, with peers, and alone again with supervisor feedback in the student teaching term. These reflections were coded by their subject, degree of reform-mindedness, and tendency toward three foci (player, stance, and source). Patterns in their ‘higher focus’ codes across the three reflective resources during student teaching showed how teachers were developing the goals they espoused in the fall term. Teachers situated their learning in contexts where the degree of scaffolding matched their degree of readiness for change, which was better characterized by their tendency toward subjects and foci that were less ‘one-sided’ than by their tendency toward only reform-minded (standards-based) thinking. While teachers whose reflections were intermediately different from the peer group were better supported by it, most teachers found direct support from the self-video and/or peer-video contexts to advance change-directed thinking associated with their own goals for teaching. The findings reveal not only how goal-related teacher learning can be powerfully supported with loosely guided video-framed contexts, but also how the diversification and/or expansion of teachers’ reflections across the categories used in this study provide robust indicators of both the content and efficacy of their change-directed thinking.

Land, sea and sky: mapmaking as reflection in pre-service teacher education

The practice of reflection is highly valued in the field of pre-service teacher education. One of the roles of the teacher educator is to provide pre-service teachers with ongoing opportunities to reflect on the relationships between self, society, educational theory and practice throughout their program. The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service science teachers’ beliefs about science education during a pre-student teaching field experience. Pre-service science teachers reflected on their beliefs about science education through the creation of written similes and visual maps. The themes that emerged from these linguistic and visual reflections provided insights into their beliefs about science education, their abilities to reflect on teaching and learning, and the potential of multimodal approaches toward reflection in teacher education. The findings suggested that most of the pre-service teachers compartmentalized various components of teaching and learning, while one was able to conceptualize it more holistically.

Voices From the Classroom: Literacy Beliefs and Practices of Two Novice Elementary Teachers

As political mandates in the United States continue to demand increasing levels of literacy by all young children, the importance of identifying factors that influence novice teachers' development over time become more critical. In this article, we explore Phase I of a longitudinal study, which describes the evolving literacy beliefs and practices of two early childhood teachers as they progress from pre-student teaching through the end of their first year as professional teachers. Interview and observational data indicated that external factors such as teacher preparation and teaching context, as well as dispositions, were key factors across time. As professional teachers, the participants' demonstrated beliefs and practices associated with effective teachers. Their literacy practices reflected their expressed beliefs and broadened over time.

Development of Knowledge, Attitudes, and Commitment to Teach Diverse Student Populations

Student populations are becoming increasingly diverse as the teaching force remains essentially homogeneous; 31.5% of students are minorities, and only 13.5% of teachers are minorities (National Center for Education Statistics, 1996). In city schools, 54% of the students are minority and 25% of the teachers are minority. Vigorous recruitment and incentives for minority teachers may improve these ratios somewhat, but current evidence indicates that the limited presence of African American teachers is a current challenge displaying little promise of solution in this country (King, 1993, p. 115). The Carnegie Forum (1986) and the Education Commission on the States (1990) earlier documented the relatively few teachers of color in the teaching profession. A long-term solution may result from a better understanding of what it means to be a successful teacher in a culturally diverse classroom. Successful teachers are those able to provide what Ladson-Billings (1994) calls culturally relevant instruction (p. 17). She sees this requiring a sensitivity to cultural differences and, for a vast majority of the teachers, a deep understanding of cultural norms other than their own. Oakland University has included components of diversity awareness and experience in its teacher education program for many years. Students must complete pre-student teaching field placements in at least two urban settings. There is no specific undergraduate course in multicultural education, but students study the knowledge and skills necessary to teach in diverse settings in a variety of courses. In addition, faculty in the department have been engaged in research on diversity issues (Eckart & Tracy, 1993; Gibson & Follo, 1998; Hoerr, 1998; Pickard, 1994). Despite feedback that program graduates are successful teaching in culturally diverse settings, we recently raised questions about whether the teacher preparation programs adequately develop the abilities and the desire to teach in these settings. We decided to assess our program to determine its impact in this area. In this article, we report the results of a study investigating the preparation and commitment of preservice teachers to teach in culturally diverse settings. In the sections that follow, we provide a brief literature review, describe the methodology and data analysis of our assessment efforts, and present a discussion of our findings and suggest conclusions and implications for both our program and future research. Literature Review Understanding concepts of diversity and their implications is difficult for beginning teachers. An important issue in the field of multicultural education is the potential cultural mismatch between teachers and students from increasingly diverse cultures (Boyer, 1996). Hollins (1995) posits that similarities between school culture and home culture facilitate communication whereas differences interfere in communication and learning. Because of Oakland University's proximity to two major urban environments, preparing students to teach in diverse school settings is an important program goal. However, most of the prospective elementary teachers are White females in their 20s who have spent the majority of their lives in suburban communities. Improving our program depends on a better understanding of preservice teachers' perspectives on cultural diversity and our attempts to influence those perspectives (Marshall, 1996; Nel, 1993; Paine, 1990). Scholars recommend multiple approaches to prepare students to teach in culturally diverse settings. Some advocate an emphasis on pedagogical techniques (Au & Kawakami, 1991; Erickson & Mohatt, 1977; Garibaldi, 1992); others stress field experiences (Coballes-Vega, 1992; Heinemann, Obi, Pagano, & Weiner, 1992; Sleeter, 1995). Wlodkowski (1995) insists that student teachers must acquire experience with students from backgrounds different from theirs, but this alone may not be enough. …

Reflective Pedagogical Thinking: How Can We Promote It and Measure It?

The Collaboration for the Improvement of Teacher Education (CITE) is a pre-student teaching program that promotes students' reflective thinking about curriculum, methods, and sociopolitical issues through blocked classes and structured field experiences. The Framework for Reflective Thinking, a coding scheme, was developed to evaluate students' ability to reflect on pedagogical principles underlying teaching decisions, contextual factors affecting the application of the princi ples, and moral, ethical, or political issues surrounding a teaching experience. The initial evalua tion indicated that CITE students were beginning to apply pedagogical principles in making teach ing decisions. Above average students were able to adapt these principles to a specific context. Two additional studies indicated that CITE students showed significantly greater gains in reflection than other methods students not in the CITE program and that the Framework for Reflective Thinking could be used with experienced teachers to note changes in reflective thinking in a year- long staff development effort.

Technology-Mediated Laboratory Experiences and the Development of Clinical Reasoning in Novice Teachers

Copeland presents a proposal forthe de velopment of a genre of pre-student teaching laboratory experiences in tended to assist novice teachers in the development of their clinical reasoning. These experiences would be composed of highly interactive, technology- mediated simulations and a set of ac tivities intended to encourage reflection on the student teacher's experience with the simulations. Contributions to this de velopment, such as experiences from the cognitive sciences, artificial intelli gence, research on teacher cognition, re search on classroom teaching, and learning and computer simulations, are explored.

Problems of early field experience students of teaching

Field experiences provide a time for professional growth and for practicing pedagogical skills. This research investigates two questions related to pre-student teaching field experiences: First, what problems do preservice teachers confront during field placements? Second, what underlying constructs can be inferred from the problem statements of field experience students? Data were collected from 272 early field experience students in a midwestern state. Using factor analysis, the researchers identified and described seven factors that characterize pre-student teacher problems during early field experiences.

Perceptions of the Quality of Student Teaching Supervision

Sixty-three recent graduates and 171 university supervisors of special education teacher preparation programs served as a sample in a survey determining perceptions of the quality of student teaching supervision. A questionnaire was completed by all randomly selected subjects from across the nation. The results indicated that slight differences of opinion were found between the perceptions of the recent graduates and the university supervisors related to the quality and nature of student teaching supervision. It is suggested that in some instances greater emphasis is placed on the prestudent teaching knowledge base than on the development of teaching competencies acquired by the student teaching experiences.

Mathematics Methods: Pre-Student Teaching Model

Mathematics Methods: Pre-Student Teaching Model

A study of the effectiveness of a pre‐student teaching experience in promoting positive attitudes toward teaching

Does an early experience in the classroom succeed in positively changing interpersonal skills of future teachers? To begin to answer this question, students enrolled in an introductory education course were compared with other students who, in addition to the course, were enrolled in a pre-student teaching field experience at a four-year liberal arts residential college for women. This study sought to examine the effects of a pre-student teaching experience on interpersonal skills, since for classroom teachers this variable was found to possess a significant and positive correlation with student achievement, creativity, problem-solving ability, and attitudes toward learning and other individuals.1 There is a scarcity of research studies examining the effectiveness of pre-student teaching experiences. To a large extent, teacher education programs in the United States have been built more on common-sense generalizations than on results of empirical research.2 Many teacher education models including a pre-student teaching experience component are advocated by educators in this country, even though many decisions concerning pre-student teaching experiences are made on the basis of intuition or tradition.3 One study specifically concerning pre-student teaching experiences, conducted by Haddad in a large, coeducational university system, involved a course covering a fourteen-week pre-student teaching experience. He found that this experience improved the prospective teachers' ability to interact with students and increased their concern for teaching. Haddad

Effects of Early Field Experience on Student Teachers’ Self-Concepts and Performance

This research was designed to determine whether (1) selecting a pre-student teaching field-based experience brought about significant differences in secondary student teachers’ self-concepts and performance; and (2) whether self-concept scores were predictors of performance ratings. Student teachers who had selected Project Interaction (PI) and those who had no early field experience (NF) were pre-and posttested on four self-concept variables, and rated on performance by cooperating teachers, supervisors, and by self-ratings. Pretest self-concept scores were correlated with performance ratings. Results indicated the PI group had significantly more conflict on the pretest, which was reversed on the posttest to produce a trend toward significantly less conflict. The PI group had significantly higher self-esteem than the NF group on the posttest. No significant differences were found on performance ratings, but cooperating teachers’ ratings did correlate with pretest self-concept scores. It was concluded that early field experience appeared to have latent positive effects on self-concept.

The Prestudent Teaching Project

The Prestudent Teaching Project

Effects of Pre-Student Teaching Laboratory Experiences in Changing Student Concepts of an Ideal Teacher

Dr. Wright's research suggests that pre-student teaching experiences tend to make students more empirical and less dependent upon theory and scientific reasoning.

Mutual benefit program between university and mental hospital

velopment class drove to the nearby hospital and, on an individual basis, tutored patients. The Tutoring Program, stemming from the hospital's need for educational service for its young patients and Dr. Woronoff's need for laboratory experience for the students of his educational psychology class, has developed, under the guidance of Miss Louise Marshall, Staff Clinical Psychologist at the hospital into a non-official but highly approved hospital program with hospital personnel serving in an advisory and supervisory capacity. The program not only began informally but also by chance. Three Eastern students, the year before, had contacted Miss Marshall about possible service work that they could do at the hospital to fulfil requirements for a Pre-Student Teaching Orientation Program which was under the direction of Miss Margaret Robinson, Associate Professor of Library Science. At that time, a reading research project was in progress at the hospital. This project consisted of testing a group of patients, giving them individual tutoring, and then retesting them. The Eastern students served as tutors in this project, and finding the work enjoyable, thought other students might be interested in this type of service work. After the project was completed, the students questioned Miss Marshall about the possibility of other students doing tutoring at the hospital.