Knocking on the door to the teaching profession? Modeling the entry of prospective teachers into the workforce

We use a unique longitudinal sample of student teachers (“interns”) from six Washington state teacher training institutions to investigate patterns of entry into the teaching workforce. We estimate split population models that simultaneously estimate the impact of individual characteristics and student teaching experiences on the timing and probability of initial hiring as a public school teacher. Not surprisingly, we find that interns endorsed to teach in “difficult-to-staff” areas are more likely to find employment as public school teachers than interns endorsed in other areas. Younger interns, white interns, and interns who completed their student teaching in suburban schools are also more likely to find a teaching job, all else equal. Prospective teachers who do their internships at schools that have more teacher turnover are more likely to find employment, often at those schools. On the other hand, few of the characteristics of an intern's cooperating teacher are predictive of workforce entry. Finally, interns with higher credential exam scores are more likely to be hired by the school where they did their student teaching.     

Recruiting Science Majors into Secondary Science Teaching: Paid Internships in Informal Science Settings

Despite the importance of recruiting highly qualified individuals into the science teaching profession, little is known about the effectiveness of particular recruitment strategies. Over 3 years, 34 college science majors and undecided students were recruited into paid internships in informal science settings to consider secondary science teaching as a career. Analysis of interns’ subsequent career plans revealed the internships were not effective in recruiting the interns into the secondary science teacher education program, although many interns thought they might consider becoming teachers later in their lives. Reasons for not pursuing teaching included continued indecisiveness, inflexibility of required plans of study, and concerns about teachers’ pay and classroom management.     

THE TEACHER INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCES OF PROSPECTIVE HIGH SCHOOL MATHEMATICS TEACHERS

Nine prospective secondary mathematics teachers were interviewed about their teaching internship experience. The results of these interviews revealed that 7 of the 9 participants professed to value reform-oriented teaching and conceptual understanding in mathematics, yet all were paired with cooperating teachers who seemed to value traditional instruction and procedural understanding in mathematics. We explored the reasons that some of these student interns had positive experiences with their cooperating teachers and university supervisors while others had negative experiences. We found that the participants valued (a) critical feedback that was constructive and contained concrete recommendations for improvement, (b) freedom to use their own teaching methods, and (c) a friendly and supportive relationship with their mentors. The differing teaching philosophies of student teachers and their cooperating teachers contributed to negative experiences only when student teachers were not allowed freedom in their teaching methods.     

The internship component of a teacher education program: Opportunities for learning

Abstract

Many preservice teacher education programs in recent years have increased the amount of time student teachers spend in field placements by adding an “internship “ component. An internship is typically longer than a practice teaching session and is designed as a bridge between being a student teacher and having full teaching responsibilities. This study explored the effect of an internship that had three key features: the interns were free to choose the nature of their field experience, no formal evaluation was involved, and the interns were attached to the school (or other institution) as a whole rather than a particular staff member. Under these conditions, the interns could (a) go more deeply into a specific teaching area; (b) gain greater knowledge of school culture; (c) become more familiar with school‐wide programs and activities; and (d) learn more about their distinctive interests and abilities as teachers.     

Two Preservice Teachers' Growth in Self-Efficacy While Teaching in an Inner-City School

Jillian and Mia, African-American preservice teachers, experienced culture shock when they student taught in an inner-city school. This was revealed by a qualitative analysis of 4 interviews, 12 written reflections, and 7 transcribed group discussions. Their self-efficacy grew stronger as they interacted with mentoring teachers and students and learned to cope with doubts about their abilities. As they worked through their conflicts, they changed the way they thought about teaching in the inner city and improved their personal and practical knowledge.     

Revealing Student Teachers’ Thinking through Dilemma Analysis

We explore the potential of dilemma analysis as an assessment tool to reveal student teachers’ thinking and concerns about their practice. For this purpose we analyze the dilemma analyses completed by 22 student teachers enrolled in our science teacher preparation program over a period of four semesters. Student teachers’ dilemmas fall into two main groups: dilemmas about student performance and dilemmas associated with instructional decisions. These dilemmas reveal a variety of concerns that student teachers have about their work. In particular, concerns about lack of student motivation and its consequences on performance and instruction play a central role in student teachers’ thinking. The recognition of common patterns of thought in our student teacher thinking has made us reflect on and re-evaluate important components of the curriculum in our science teacher preparation program.     

实习教师成长特性考察及理念探析

实习是教师专业成长的第一个"关键时期",通过跟踪观察一组实习生8周的实习生活,发现实习教师专业成长具有阶段性、差异性、启蒙性、双重角色性等特性。关键个人、关键事件、同伴群体、反思机制是实习生社会化过程的关键要素。提高教育实习的质量就要根据实习教师成长特点,确定指导实习教师的方法,促进实习教师观念的自我建构。     

A problem solving model for use in science student teacher supervision

Conclusion The period of time student teachers have to receive feedback from their supervisors and cooperating teachers is relatively short. Techniques and ideas suggested by university supervisors and cooperating teachers are clearly beneficial to beginning teachers, but the students also need direct experience in addressing classroom concerns themselves. Student teachers need to develop techniques for evaluating their own teaching and for solving instructional problems autonomously such as suggested through the use of this model. The problem solving model forces student teachers to take responsibility for their learning about teaching. It forces them to analyze and reflect on their own lessons and to deal with their own problems. Importantly, the model may serve as a tool for self-evaluation that can be used during students’ first few years of teaching and throughout their science teaching career. Student teachers will still undergo the complex and sometimes overwhelming experience of teaching for the first time. However, by addressing each problem they face in a systematic, organized way, the experience may become more manageable, and success may seem more attainable for them.     

学前教育实习生实习前后心理健康状况调查研究

教育实习是学前教育学生第一次承担幼儿教师职责,角色的转换会造成较大的心理压力。及时了解、掌握实习生的心理健康状况,进行有针对性的培训、辅导是使实习生顺利渡过实习期的关键。本研究采用症状自评量表对学前教育专业实习生的心理健康水平进行测查,发现:(1)与国内大学生常模相比,我院学前教育专业实习生的心理健康水平偏低,其中人际关系敏感、抑郁、焦虑、恐怖等4个因子得分显著高于常模;(2)学前实习生的症状自评量表中各因子得分在实习前与实习后未出现显著差异,这与其他专业实习生有所区别,究其原因主要是实习工作适应难度大及从业前景不乐观所致。     

The reflection on the blackboard: student teacher self‐evaluation

A common aim of teacher education is to encourage prospective teachers to analyze carefully their instructional performance. Yet, research on teacher cognition heretofore has concentrated primarily on experienced teachers’ planning and instructional thinking. We need more information on how student teachers think about and engage in the evaluation of their teaching performance. This study used data from initial structured interviews to elicit student teachers’ self‐evaluation concerns and examined the student teachers’ journals, a final written self‐evalution, and tapes from post‐teaching interviews to create a profile of each student teacher's responses about self‐evaluation. In this paper I analyze the student teachers’ pre‐conceptions about success, examine their processes of self‐evaluation, and explore a conception of “interactive self‐evaluation.” I offer suggestions about the conditions that may enable student teachers to enhance their analytical processes.     

From lesson plan to new comprehension: exploring student teachers’ pedagogical reasoning in learning about teaching

The research reported in this paper is based on an exploration of the ways in which student teachers learn about the issues and concerns that shape their own professional learning. Shulman’s process of pedagogical reasoning and action was used as a conceptual framework to systematically elucidate different critical incidents that student teachers experienced and to then apply it as an analytic framework for developing deeper understandings of the complex task of learning to teach primary science. Primary science student teacher participants (n = 22) were stimulated to reflect upon critical incidents in order to facilitate identifying their teaching concerns and teaching needs. The results indicate that by helping student teachers to focus on critical incidents in their learning to teach, they come to question their practice more deeply and, through such reflection, gain new insights into teaching as being problematic.     

Houston Teaching Academy: Partnership in developing teachers

The need for excellent teachers to teach at-risk inner-city children is well documented. Too often new teachers who have received their field experience in the suburbs are hired to teach in multicultural inner-city schools with little preparation to serve this population of children and families. Changing the history of failure for this population of teachers and their students to an experience of success was the primary goal of the partnership between the Houston Independent School District and the University of Houston's College of Education.The structure of the Houston Teaching Academy (HTA) includes four collaborative decision-making councils. Representatives from the school and college serve on each of the councils. Shared weekly seminars for supervising teachers, student teachers, and college supervisors are led by school teachers or college supervisors. Methods courses are taught at the HTA, and the students serve as tutors in the classrooms. Several graduate college courses requested by teachers are offered at the HTA.Concurrent with the development of the HTA, a formative and summative evaluation has monitored the progress of the HTA toward its goals. The HTA graduates have been followed into their first years of teaching. Interviews with their principals indicate that 77% are effectively teaching in inner-city and multicultural settings.     

Assessment of counselling needs: A comparative study of the perceptions of primary school teachers in Lesotho and Malaysia

In this paper the results of a study conducted to determine the perception of counselling needs by primary school teachers in Malaysia and Lesotho are reported. To this end, teachers were asked about the special needs of students they teach, how they cope with these students, what assistance they would like to have in teaching, and the best approach for dealing with student concerns. Teachers in Lesotho are dealing with larger numbers of special needs students and thus are having more difficulties than Malaysian teachers. Malaysian teachers appeared to be more interested in improving their teaching effectiveness. There was some variation in the perceptions of how to best deal with student concerns.     

Using case discussion on the web to develop student teacher problem solving skills

To help student teachers solve real world problems during their internships, support from multiple sources is needed. In this study, a website was developed to provide support for student teachers by sharing cases and personal experiences. Student teachers exchanged comments about posted cases with both peer student teachers and experienced teachers. After 2 months of using the web for case discussion, questionnaires were distributed and interviews were conducted with a group of 20 student teachers. The results suggested that such an exchange helped them to increase their understanding of problems, to obtain knowledge and skills to solve problems, and to gain positive attitudes towards teaching as a profession.     

The Influences of University-Based Coursework on Field Experience

This study explored the influence of university-based teacher education courses on preservice teachers as they engaged in the field-based portion of their preparation. Forty-two preservice teachers contributed reflective writings about the successes and challenges they faced during field experiences in light of knowledge and skills learned during their university-based coursework. Participants’ self-reflective writings were coded and analyzed for emerging themes that cut across all responses. The results indicated a shift from concerns about performance of teaching tasks in the classroom to concerns about the performance of students in terms of learning. This shift was consistent with a goal of the preservice program, namely, helping preservice teachers focus on student learning.     

Communicating How Water Works: Results From a Community Water Education Program

Based on feedback from attendees at an environmental summit who requested information about regional water sources, a team comprised of a local nonprofit, a state university, and a cooperative extension office created a community water education program. Undergraduate student interns worked with the author to develop a 20-minute science-based presentation that was delivered in 14 different venues in a three-county region of northwestern North Carolina. Following each presentation there was a discussion session that highlighted questions about how water works and community concerns about water availability and management. Program evaluations reflect that people believed they better understood the science related to water quantity and that the key messages in the program were important to their communities.     

Understanding When Teachers Disagree about Student Disability

The persistent racial and ethnic disparities in special education in the United States raise concerns about the potential misidentification of students. While previous studies have focused on how various student and school factors influence teacher decisions, there is less attention on when teachers disagree about student disability or special education. The current study uses national data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 to examine when teachers disagreed in their perception of student disability for more than 10,000 high school students. A unique feature of the data is each student is observed in two different subject classrooms, providing an opportunity to examine how differences in student achievement, behavior, and teacher characteristics influence when teachers disagreed in their judgment of student disability. The results indicate that teachers were more likely to disagree when student behavior varied across classrooms, while differences in student achievement and teacher characteristics were not related to disagreement. The study also found that teachers disagreed more for students who were Black, male, and from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The main findings highlight how disability is often a context-dependent social construct and have implications for how students are identified for special education.     

Linking Teacher Assessment to Student Performance: A Benchmarking, Generalizability, and Validity Study of the Use of Teacher Work Samples*

This study examined the validity and generalizability of the use of Teacher Work Samples to assess preservice and inservice teachers' abilities to meet national and state teaching standards and to impact the learning of their students. Our approach built upon the Teacher Work Sample Methodology of Western Oregon University (Schalock, 1998; Schalock, Cowart, & Staebler, 1993). To assess the ability of work sample assessments to differentiate performances along the full developmental continuum from beginning to expert teaching, we recruited junior-level candidates, student teaching interns, experienced teachers, and National Board Certified teachers to complete teacher work samples. We also examined whether work samples could be feasibly and equitably administered and scored with sufficient reliability to warrant their use for high-stakes decisions about the effectiveness of teaching performance. Results of the study show initial support for teacher work sample assessment as a way to provide valid and credible evidence connecting teaching performance to student learning.     

“Pupils should have respect for you,although I have no idea how to achieve this?”: The ideals and experiences shaping a teacher’s professional identity

The aim of the study was to understand the development of professional identity of prospective teachers, their ideals and experiences during interactions with their surrounding learning environment, including university studies and pedagogical placement during their 5-year studies. We also aimed at understanding how students with different motivational pathways to teacher education may be supported to explore teaching as a possible career choice. The findings reported in this article emerged primarily from interviews with 13 student teachers at the end of their teacher education programme. Survey responses collected during earlier stages of the study were utilised to provide data about the student teachers’ professional development prior to the point of the interviews. The findings of the study point to various concerns and dilemmas, which in turn suggest that student teachers take different identity development routes. The study identified four possible “identity routes” to becoming a teacher. The implications of different identity routes on teacher education are discussed.