Student Teaching Seminar Research Articles

The Investigation of a Nelsonian Approach to Socratic Dialogue with Student-Teachers at a Midwestern Private University

Student-teachers must be afforded opportunities to seek guidance on challenges that arise during teaching experiences, such as addressing student behavior, creating meaningful lessons, and fostering open and welcoming learning environments. Student-teachers can undergo negative experiences, which can lead to frustration, anger, and lack of interest in the profession. One way to address these challenges is through dialogue (Kumar & Downey, 2018). In this qualitative study, the researcher investigated whether a nuanced version of the Socratic method, developed by Leonard Nelson (1882-1927), can be an efficacious instructional strategy for finding solutions to student-teachers’ classroom challenges. The research study consisted of five undergraduate students enrolled in a student teaching seminar at a private midwestern university. The course prepared students for roles as new teachers by reading, discussing, and sharing challenges about teaching. Both the researcher and research participants worked together to faithfully follow the essential steps of a Nelsonian Socratic method approach. Once the preparation was settled, the researcher, as the external analyst, facilitated a Nelsonian Socratic dialogue with the student-teachers on a specific challenge a student teacher within the group was facing. After the dialogue, participants were assembled in a focus group and asked several questions about their experiences participating in a Nelsonian Socratic dialogue. Descriptive, categorical, and analytical coding of data indicated that participants reached consensus on a solution for the student-teacher’s challenge and perceived the Nelsonian Socratic method approach as an effective dialogic strategy that generated feelings of belongingness and empowerment as a group, a shared understanding about the challenge, and a healthy respect for dialogue.

An online community of interns: Examining the music student teaching seminar in a virtual setting

Communities of Practice are integral as a network for engaging in regular interactions, sharing resources, and offering support. As online collegiate communities continue to expand, exploration of virtual courses—specifically, the music student teaching seminar—seems necessary. The purpose of this instrumental case study was to describe music student teachers’ (MSTs, N = 20) and instructors’ experiences in a virtual music student teaching seminar in the United States. Data collection included (a) observations of weekly seminar meetings; (b) focus group interviews with MSTs and seminar instructors; (c) text chat transcripts from virtual meetings and the class Facebook® group; and (d) course documents. Findings highlight the successes and challenges of developing, instructing, and facilitating the seminar in a virtual space, the perceived impact of online chat platforms/functions as an instructional and reflective tool, the benefits of regular seminar meetings, and participants’ perceived purpose of the music student teaching seminar.

Mindful preparation: An exploration of the effects of mindfulness and SEL training on pre-service teacher efficacy and empathy

This multiple methods pilot study aimed to determine the effects of brief mindfulness and SEL training during student teaching seminars for pre-service educators. Participants completed quantitative measures of efficacy and empathy (n = 13), contributed qualitative journal (n = 12) and session response (n = 48) data. Significant increases in teacher efficacy were found. Qualitative findings supporting this increase along with additional themes are discussed. Findings suggest that brief training in mindfulness and SEL should be included in preservice teacher training and may be a cost effective way to promote teacher well-being. Additional recommendations for practice and research are included.

Struggling to-be or not-to-be a bilingual teacher: Identity formation in a Change Laboratory intervention

While the methodology of formative intervention research has long been established, the aspect of new instrumentality of Change Laboratory is fragmentally documented. Therefore, in this study, we modified two major Change Laboratory mediating tools used in bilingual student-teaching seminars, namely the disturbance diary and four-field model. These two empirically investigated Change Laboratory tools have mediated transformative agency within the collective movement toward identity formation as the Change Laboratory participants (bilingual preservice teachers) conveyed their dilemma of to-be or not-to-be a bilingual teacher. We provide evidence on the relationship between the bilingual preservice teachers’ identity formation and their participation in the Change Laboratory intervention. The analysis made salient the role of two new Change Laboratory mediating tools, the adapted disturbance diary and individually generated four-field models, for the bilingual preservice teachers’ collective transformation in bilingual teaching. It also crystallized the importance of deepening the bilingual preservice teachers’ analysis of multiple languages and pedagogy as understood in the new bilingual teaching model in the Change Laboratory intervention.

Music Student Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Seminar Experience: An Exploratory Study

The purpose of this study was to examine music student teachers’ (MST) perceptions of their student teaching seminar. MSTs immersed in their P -12 placements and the accompanying seminar at three state universities in the Midwest served as focus group participants. Through analysis of focus group interviews and course documents, we focused on MSTs’ perceptions of seminar purpose, structure, content, and assessment methods. Overwhelmingly, MSTs perceived the seminar as a professional learning community and a “safe place,” and they appeared to prefer frequent seminar meetings. While some MSTs felt more time per seminar was needed, others expressed difficulty in focusing after a full day of teaching. High-stakes teacher performance and portfolio assessments were a major focus of seminar content. We recommend incorporating activities into the seminar that support continued pedagogical growth and socialization into the profession.

ICTを活用した教育実習事前・事後指導 : NetMeetingによる遠隔講義の実践と課題

ICTを活用した教育実習事前・事後指導 : NetMeetingによる遠隔講義の実践と課題

A Disability Studies in Education Analysis of the edTPA Through Teacher Candidate Perspectives

This analysis of the Special Education edTPA is written by two professors who co-taught a student teaching seminar at one institution and supported the first groups of teacher candidates required to submit the edTPA for certification in New York State. Data were gathered over three semesters and included open-ended student surveys, student journals, and public documents. Findings describe (a) how the edTPA requirements impacted teacher candidate learning, (b) the emphasis on one focus learner in the exam, (c) the discourse and language demands in the edTPA, and (d) how the edTPA and videotaping impacted fieldwork. We describe these findings and discuss their implications for inclusive and Special Education as understood through a disability studies in education perspective.

Student Teaching Seminars: Ideas for a Collaborative and Meaningful Culminating Experience

The student teaching seminar is a crucial component in the final course work of the music education curriculum, though research that examines the structure and content of this important course is minimal. In this article, we provide in-depth descriptions of sample seminar activities, assessments, resources, and suggestions for creating a meaningful experience through collaboration with cooperating teachers.

Multiple Perspectives on the State-Mandated Implementation of a High-Stakes Performance Assessment for Preservice English Teacher Candidates

ABSTRACTDrawing on situated learning and communities of practice, this teacher-research study examined multiple stakeholders’ perspectives about the purpose, design, and inaugural implementation of the edTPA, a teacher performance assessment mandated for state certification. Participants included teacher candidates, mentor teachers, a field placement supervisor, and a teacher educator involved with one English education program. Data included edTPA-related documents, artifacts from a student-teaching seminar, and interviews. Findings indicated differences in perspective. Mentors had the most negative views and the least information about the assessment, as well as the most skepticism about its positioning within the state’s reform agenda. Candidates and the field supervisor identified benefits and concerns about the impact on student teaching. The teacher educator expressed anger and fear related to the new mandate but, over time, identified some aspects of the assessment aligning with past practice. Implications for research and practice are suggested.

AHA Moments of Science and Mathematics Pre-service Teachers

ABSTRACTThis research study explored pre-service teachers' (PST) reflections of their student teaching experiences through AHA moments. Participants included 37 pre-service teachers enrolled in mathematics and science student teaching seminars. Qualitative methods were used to analyze PSTs' written and verbal responses to questions regarding AHA experiences. Four themes emerged related to PSTs' AHA moments: a greater awareness of PSTs' identity as teachers, the importance of knowing their students, the realization of inconsistencies in their own and their students' beliefs, and the importance of anticipating students' misconceptions. The potential for using an AHA moment assignment, as presented here, appears to support reflection among PSTs; however, it is not clear these PSTs used judgments and analysis, both integral elements of the reflective process.

Beyond the student teaching seminar: examining transformative learning through arts-based approaches

This qualitative study examined the question: How can arts-based approaches facilitate transformative learning in a student teaching seminar? Two teacher educators facilitated a supplemental and voluntary arts-based ST seminar that comprised six, two-hour sessions. Thirty-four student teachers participated over five semesters making use of Theater of the Oppressed and other arts-based activities to process dilemmas they faced in their student teaching contexts. Data included video recordings, photographs, journal reflection, participant artwork, and transcribed focus group interviews. Data analysis employed line-by-line coding to identify critical incidents. We offer examples where pre-service student teachers worked with a dilemma, examined their assumptions, engaged in perspective-taking, and in the process explored new possibilities. Engaging in embodied reflections, naming, imagining, and critically reflecting provided rich opportunity for constructing new ways of thinking and feeling, which could lead to transformative learning. Issues relating to the seminar environment like safety, starting with participants’ dilemmas, and willingness to take risks and ownership in the learning process supported transformative learning in an arts-based student teaching seminar.

Music Student Teaching Seminars

The purpose of this study was to examine the structure and content of music student teaching seminars at 4-year, degree-granting institutions accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music across the United States. A secondary purpose was to determine how these seminars (a) addressed perceived needs of student teachers and beginning teachers when reflecting on their student teaching experience and (b) met those needs through course structure and content. Though variability existed in frequency and length, most seminars ( n = 95, 77.86%) were taught in the music department. Participants ( N = 205; 42.71% overall response rate) indicated that teacher responsibilities, job searching, and behavior management were the most frequently addressed topics in their seminars; creating résumés, lesson planning, and peer discussions represented the most common activities. Data suggest variability in both structure and content of seminars, as well as a discrepancy between perceived student teacher needs and seminar content.

Layering Sel(f)ves: Finding Acceptance, Community and Praxis through Collage

The student teaching experience, for many, can prove to be both a time of great learning, as well as isolation and disconnection. As teacher educators, we often spend a lot of time focusing on the intellectual side of the student teaching experience, while rarely even acknowledging the emotional aspects of this experience. For example, we ask what went well in the lesson and why, what did not go well and why, but rarely do we ask do you feel about your experience teaching the lesson;; rarely do we ask students how they feel about the student teaching process as a whole. The student teachers we have worked with, over the years, often voice concerns about feeling isolated and disconnected as they leave the comfort of the college classroom for the uncertainty of the public school classroom. However all too often these expressions are drowned out by the academic side of things, requirements that need to be met, outcomes that need to be demonstrated. As teacher educators, we have come to believe that it is important, in fact necessary to embrace the whole experience with regard to our student teaching seminars and the kind of mentorship we offer. Learning to teach is not simply about method, rather it is about self and other, engaged in a complex pedagogical relationship where theory and practice intertwine with the emotional. It is important to recognize that the emotional and intellectual are not binaries; rather, they are complementary realities that shape one's ways of seeing self and other. So, How can educational institutions sustain and deepen the selfhood from which good teaching comes (Palmer, 1998, p. 4)? More specifically, how can we, as teacher educators introduce student teachers to this selfhood? This became our research question. We further contemplated, how can we do so while acknowledging our own experiences as artists/teachers/researchers and those of our student teachers? This would require an arts-based methodology that would allow both ourselves and our student teachers the opportunity to visually and verbally explore self in relation to teaching student teachers/being student teachers, and in relation to each other as individuals within the context of community. As artists and arts-informed researchers, we have both worked with collage before in our own inquiry, artwork, and pedagogy. Knowing the process would lend itself to deconstruction and analysis as well as re-construction and synthesis we sought to use collage (both visual and poetic) to further explore what might happen when teacher educators explicitly acknowledge the concepts of isolation and connection that so often remain unspoken within the context of the student teaching experience. We wanted to know what pedagogical practices might engage students in the work of vulnerable reflection, those which might better create space for dialogue and reflexivity amongst ourselves and the student teachers we worked with. Finally we wanted to better understand the possibilities of arts-informed epistemology as a pedagogy of discomfort (Boler, 1999, 2004), a libratory pedagogy that might create more opportunities for students to collectively, within the space of the unfamiliar, reflect upon multiple aspects of their student teaching experience, moving through active engagement with art as text--beyond the often silenced emotional experience. Drawing on a/r/tography (Irwin & de Cosson, 2004; Springgay, Irwin, Leggo, & Gouzouasis, 2008) as method, we began our inquiry within the context of our student teaching seminars seeking create a space where both ourselves and our students might enter into the work of knowing (theoria), doing (praxis), and making (poeisis) (Irwin, 2004, p. 27) through the process of art-making in a communal context where as Irwin and Springgay (2008) remark, encounters between subjects, thoughts, and actions propose new assemblages and situations (p. xxxi). As they engaged in this process, we wondered if students would move from an outward, individualistic, classroom performance toward relational reflexivity and theorizing (Britzman, 2003), carefully planning their representations, reflecting upon and discussing with their peers, the meaning behind the images and words they chose to deconstruct and reconstruct through the process of collage. …

“I did not think it was an effective use of questioning”: Collective critical observation and reflection of social studies pedagogy

This study examines how one student teaching seminar employed collective critical observation and reflection of an experienced high school social studies teacher׳s pedagogy using a multimedia representation of teaching. Pre-service teachers watched this teacher implement two full class lessons and reflections on teaching about freedom of speech. This study׳s pre-service social studies teachers exhibited a developing ability, through collective observation, to critically reflect on their individual methodological and philosophical goals, social studies teaching and learning, and professional and curricular visions in relation to their student teaching experiences and future practice. The study׳s findings offer implications for how pre-service social studies teachers critically reflect on their practice, while also developing knowledge of learners, subject matter, and teaching social studies.

Blogging through the music student teaching experience: Developing virtual communities of practice

Within educational settings, well-developed web-based social networking technologies such as interactive weblogs (blogs) can serve to effectively facilitate and mediate interactions among members of a “community of practice” (Chong, 2008; Wenger, White, & Smith, 2009). The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of an interactive class blog with a group of undergraduate students ( N = 9) enrolled in an American music education student teaching seminar. Specific research questions concerned the alignment of the class blog posts with the three characteristics of the communities of practice model (Wenger, 1998). Analysis of the blog posts, comments, descriptive surveys, and a researcher journal demonstrate that the virtual community did indeed align with the community of practice model in terms of a shared focus on varied aspects of the student teaching experience, a pattern of virtual interactions that demonstrates the formation of a community, and a shared repertoire of resources.

An Examination of Music Student Teaching Seminars at Midwestern Universities

This study was designed to (a) provide teacher educators and researchers with information about the structure and content of music student teaching seminars by gathering data on current practices and (b) examine whether the perceived needs of music student teachers were being met through the content and structure of the student teaching seminars. Music education professors ( N = 45) participated in a researcher-designed survey that included questions pertaining to the student teaching internship and accompanying seminar course. Results indicated that seminar instructors addressed student teacher responsibilities and preparation, classroom management, and employment more extensively than any other areas. Professional portfolios, résumé writing, and mock interviews represented the most common seminar activities. Findings suggest that with the exception of classroom management, the topics that instructors addressed most extensively in the music student teaching seminar did not align with the perceived needs of music student teachers, as reported in extant research.

Negotiating accountability during student teaching: the influence of an inquiry-based student teaching seminar

Drawing on the work of Russian literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, this article explores how an inquiry-based social studies student teaching seminar helped three preservice teachers negotiate the pressures of standards-based reforms during student teaching. The author first examines how initial perceptions of standardization and high-stakes testing corroded images of powerful teaching and created an ex post facto relationship with teaching social studies. The author then explores how an inquiry-based seminar mitigated these initial impressions by (1) suspending the authority of accountability; (2) creating contact through collaborative inquiry; and (3) refracting practice.

A National Video Library for Teacher Preparation in Visual Impairments

The 44 institutions of higher education that prepare teachers of students with visual impairments in North America are deeply committed to providing the best possible education for their candidates. Whether undergraduate, graduate, or certificate programs, core courses for preparing teachers of students with visual impairments are similar among these institutions (Ambrose-Zaken & Bozeman, 2010). Each program offers educational foundations courses, methods courses, and student teaching or practicum seminars, along with courses about assistive technology, and mobility, assessment, and classroom management. Although preparation programs for teachers of students with visual impairments share common curricula and goals, these programs also share a common challenge--the lack of readily available models of exemplary teaching practice that can be readily viewed and linked to course curricula. In addition, because 42 of the 44 programs incorporate distance learning models, the majority must use multimedia, such as video cases, to communicate course content. To address this national challenge, good-quality videos of best teaching practices in the field are needed. This Research Report presents the findings of the first phase of a multiyear funded project whose ultimate purpose is to clearly define and then create a video clip library of 8- to 10-minute video clips that demonstrate exemplary teaching practices for working with students who are visually impaired (that is, those who are blind or have low vision). These videos would represent elementary to high school settings in the areas of literacy, braille reading and writing, mathematics, the Nemeth Code and abacus, technology, science, and social studies, as well as for working with students with severe and multiple disabilities. The research questions that guided this phase of the project included, What teaching practices are of greatest importance to personnel preparation programs for teachers of students with visual impairments to be included in this video clip library? and How do faculty plan to use these video clips in the preparation of teachers? VIDEO AS A TOOL IN A TEACHER'S DEVELOPMENT As digital video has become more portable, accessible, and affordable than ever, its application to teachers' learning has flourished over the past 10 years. Brouwer's (2011) review of video as a tool in a teacher's development organized its uses into three approaches: orientation, support, and assessment. Support and assessment involve teachers in viewing and reflecting upon their practice either through video records of their own teaching or by observing videos of others (Baecher & Connor, 2010; Gale, Trief, & Lengel, 2010; Sherin & van Es, 2005; Tripp & Rich, 2012). For this project, Brouwer's (2011) use of orientation is relevant because the video clips to be housed in the online library described in this report are intended to be used to illustrate techniques, methods, and practices as a component of a preservice course or an in-service training initiative. The use of video cases in addition to text has been shown to be an effective tool for teacher educators as an introduction to classroom practices that their candidates will later attempt (Copeland & Decker, 1996; Koc, Peker, & Osmanoglu, 2009; Sherin, 2004; Wang & Hartley, 2003; Welsch & Devlin, 2007). By studying specific dimensions of practice through specially designed video cases, teacher candidates gain an enhanced understanding of concepts that are presented in their courses (Skiera & Stirling, 2004). Masingila and Doerr (2002) reported that multimedia cases guide teacher candidates' instructional practices and help connect the candidates' practice with that of the teacher in the video case. METHOD To provide a rich array of video examples of best practices in teaching students who are visually impaired for teacher educators and candidates across the United States, the goal of the funded initiative described here is to provide all candidates who are studying to be teachers of students with visual impairments free access to the video clip library through a password-protected Internet-based site. …

Creating a “third space” in student teaching: Implications for the university supervisor’s status as outsider

The work of teacher education during student teaching typically takes place in two distinct “spaces”: placement sites and college/university settings. The program featured in this article is structured in ways that clearly mark out those two spaces. Yet this configuration led our university supervisors, whose work primarily took place in the field, to feel like “outsiders.” To redress this concern, a third learning space was incorporated into our student teaching seminar. We suggest that “third spaces” in combination with return-to-campus courses not only mitigates the peripherality of university supervisors, but also amplifies the influence of a teacher preparation program.

Action Research In Teacher Preparation: An Inclusive Seminar

The article focuses on a teacher education program at a Carnegie I Research Institution in the southwestern part of the United States; also, classified as a minority-serving institution. Teacher candidates in elementary, special, and bilingual education were enrolled in a combined student teaching seminar which is a collaborative initiative between the Departments of Special Education/Communication Disorders and Curriculum and Instruction. The authors of this manuscript are the researchers, seminar instructors, and directors of their student teaching components. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of action research with teacher candidates during the student teaching semester. The research question that guided this research is: How effective is the use of action research with teacher candidates to determine evidence of student learning in the K-12 classroom?