The influence of student teachers on the perspectives of early childhood cooperating teachers regarding early reading instruction

Much attention has been given to the impact of cooperative teachers on the pedagogical behaviour of student teachers. In many cases, however, cooperating teachers gain as much from the student teacher as the student teacher acquires from them. This study was designed to elicit answers to the following two questions: (1) What are the perspectives of early childhood cooperating teachers regarding early reading instruction in the Jordanian context? and (2) Does the perspectives of early childhood cooperating teachers engaging in early reading instruction change as a result of working with student teachers? The study targeted a sample of 25 cooperating teachers and 28 student teachers who participated in the study by completing a questionnaire, and follow-up interviews were also conducted with 13 cooperating teachers. Results of this study indicate that cooperating teachers endorse the phonics method more than the whole language (WL) approach. Unlike past research, the results of this study revealed that (1) the student teaching experience had no effect on the perspective of cooperating teachers regarding early reading instruction and (b) the perspectives of cooperating teachers do not become similar to those of their student teachers who were WL-oriented. The results have implications for early childhood teacher education programmes and professional development for kindergarten teachers.     

The efficacy of training cooperating teachers

This study investigated outcomes of a clinical faculty training program designed to prepare cooperating teachers for supervising pre-service teachers. Drawing on multiple data sources from more than a decade of implementation, researchers investigated initial outcomes of the program for cooperating teachers, student teachers, and new teachers. Findings suggest that the training resulted in a greater sense of efficacy for aspects of the role and may lead to more effective evaluation practices by clinical faculty and to stronger performances by student teachers. The lack of other significant results may have implications for policies related to the evaluation of teacher preparation programs.     

What student teachers learn about multicultural education from their cooperating teachers

Teacher education has struggled to better prepare beginning teachers for an increasingly diverse student population. This research examines the role that cooperating teachers play in developing multicultural/equity pedagogy knowledge and skills among student teachers. Five cooperating teachers working in California, USA, each of whom had extensive and successful experiences teaching multicultural/equity pedagogy curricula, were asked to describe how they encourage their student teachers to engage in the materials and strategies they promote. Generally, the cooperating teachers reported that their most successful student teachers were those who came to understand the difference between expecting high-quality work from their students and sympathizing and identifying with their students’ plight as low-income Latino children. More specifically, they noted that student teachers had difficulty leading instructional conversations in small groups of students.     

Investigating the decision-making skills of cooperating teachers and student teachers of English in a Turkish context

Research on decision-making skills of teachers has indicated the importance of experience. Also, occupational culture has been found significantly related to teachers’ thinking and behavior in the class. This study investigates in what aspects experienced teachers (cooperating teachers) and less experienced teachers) (student teachers) differ when making instant decisions on diverting from their lesson plans as they teach, and what cultural/institutional influences can be related to these differences. The data for this qualitative study came from four cooperating teachers and seven student teachers through several research instruments: video-taping the participant teachers’ lessons, the interviews held at post-teaching meetings, the written retrospectives, and the questionnaire. The findings indicate that while ‘timing’ and ‘classroom management’ were major motives for student teachers to make changes in their plans, cooperating teachers were more concerned about discipline problems. Both groups of teachers were equally affected by ‘motivation’, ‘physical conditions’ and ‘language skills’ in making instant decisions. The paper ends with the implications of the study for teacher training and education.     

Understanding student behavioral engagement: Importance of student interaction with peers and teachers

Recent theoretical conceptualizations of student engagement have raised questions about how to measure student engagement and how engagement varies not only across schools, but also within school and within classrooms. The authors build on existing research on student behavioral engagement and extend this research to emphasize a continuum of disengagement, active engagement, and passive engagement. They review common approaches to measuring engagement and highlight areas where new theoretical conceptualizations of engagement require new approaches to measurement. The authors analyze how student behavioral engagement changed depending on the context and demonstrate the need of a finer scale of engagement. They find there was not a uniform association of higher behavioral engagement and student interaction with peers, but it was the interaction with other students and the teacher that was predictive of increased engagement. Their work suggests that disaggregating behavioral engagement into disengagement, active engagement, and passive engagement has important research and conceptual implications.     

Opening the black box of field experiences: How cooperating teachers' beliefs and practices shape student teachers' beliefs and practices

This study employed ethnographic methods to describe and explain changes to beginning science teachers' (n = 6) practices and beliefs during a year long internship. Teaching practices were strongly influenced by the cooperating teachers. Initially, all six interns attempted to re-enact lessons they witnessed their cooperating teachers teach, including following lesson structures and borrowing representations, anecdotes, and jokes. Later, they independently implemented instruction that emphasized similar strategies as their mentors, regardless of whether or not they were experiencing success. Interns who were successful also shifted their beliefs to match their mentors.     

Becoming a history teacher: observations on the beliefs and growth of student teachers

This article reports on history student teachers’ development and their beliefs about teaching and good teachers. The data consist of several essays of 18 respondents written during their education, and interviews with five students. Most respondents had become interested in the subject very early, and independently of formal school education. Models adopted during early school years, however, did influence their attitudes towards teaching and teacher's role. Typically the student teachers’ concentration was self-centred or focused on their own classroom behaviour. They tended to overestimate lesson content and resorted to content expertise and minute lesson plans as a reaction to teaching problems.     

Classroom practices of cooperating teachers and their relationship to collaboration quality and time: perceptions of student teachers

This study examined the complexities of the collaborative relationship between student teachers and cooperating teachers in secondary mathematics from the perspectives of the student teachers. Four cohorts of student teachers (N = 170) in secondary mathematics were surveyed using a questionnaire that measured their perceptions of two dimensions of their student teaching experience: collaboration with their cooperating teachers and the classroom practices of their cooperating teachers. Although analysis of the responses revealed that student teachers were generally satisfied with the amount and quality of the collaboration, two important results were revealed. First, about half of the respondents reported spending less than an hour collaborating weekly with their cooperating teacher in various contexts. Second, certain classroom practices of the cooperating teachers were found to be significantly associated with whether they spent more or less than an hour collaborating with their student teachers, and were significantly correlated in most cases. This explicit linkage suggests that the classroom practices of cooperating teachers may extend to the mentoring approach they take when working with student teachers. Suggestions for teacher education programs and cooperating teacher support are shared.     

The influence of experience on student teachers' beliefs about inclusion

Abstract

Teacher beliefs influence the implementation of inclusion practices in the classroom. Therefore, the importance of developing positive beliefs during the preservice years cannot be overstated. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of professional experiences on students’ beliefs about inclusion. This qualitative study was comprised of a series of interviews (group and individual) and analysis of reflective writings for six student teachers. Findings indicated that experiences both professional and personal contribute to the development of the students’ beliefs about inclusion. If these experiences were positive, the preservice teachers were more positively disposed to the concept of inclusion. Therefore, teacher training programs are afforded the opportunity to influence preservice teachers’ development of positive beliefs about inclusion which may ultimately affect the inclusion process.     

Exploring the educational beliefs of primary education student teachers in the Chinese context

Teacher educational beliefs may be largely shaped by culturally shared learning experiences and social values. The main purpose of this study is to explore educational beliefs of Chinese student teachers. An adapted version of the Teacher Beliefs Scale (TBS)??developed in a Western context (Woolley et al. in Educational and Psychological Measurement, 64: 319?C331, 2004)??was validated in this study, and the profiles of student teacher educational beliefs were analyzed. The research participants consisted of 727 Chinese student teachers from four different teacher education universities. A factor analysis of the Chinese version of the TBS supported the dimensions of the original instrument, but some items had to be discarded to less consistent factor loading. The ANOVA results showed that there were significant differences in constructivist teaching beliefs with respect to gender, study year, and majoring subjects. But no significant differences in the adherence to traditional teaching beliefs were observed. The results also show that the first year student teachers hold stronger constructivist beliefs as compared to senior student teachers. This can be linked to the latter larger teaching and learning experiences in real classroom settings. Implications are drawn for further research in teacher education contexts.     

The impact of student characteristics and teacher efficacy on teachers’ predictions of student success

This study examined how the interaction between student and teacher characteristics affects teachers’ predictions of students’ academic and social success. Three hundred and eighty-four general education teachers responded to (a) one of 32 possible case studies describing a student, in which gender, reading achievement, social behavior, and attentiveness were manipulated experimentally and (b) to a 16-item teacher-efficacy scale. Results showed that (1) teachers with high efficacy make less negative predictions about students, and seem to adjust their predictions when student characteristics change, while low efficacy teachers seem to be paying attention to a single characteristic when making their predictions. (2) All teachers respond similarly to students who exhibit a combination of aggressive and inattentive behaviors, that is, if students are friendly, inattentiveness is tolerated more than if they are aggressive. (3) All teachers make higher predictions of academic success for students reading on grade level even when they are aggressive, than for students reading below grade level even when they are friendly. The authors discuss the importance of attending to the complexity of characteristics each student brings in to the classroom.     

Pedagogical content beliefs about reading instruction and their relation to gains in student achievement

Teachers’ pedagogical content beliefs about reading instruction are likely to predict progress in student achievement. Thus, in this study, 15 pre-service teachers gave reading promotion to low-performing sixth- and seventh-graders over a time period of 6 months. The pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content beliefs were then related to their students’ reading achievement gains. In contradiction to previous findings, the results demonstrate direct-transmissive beliefs to be positively related with student achievement. Finally, whether there is an influence of practical teaching experiences on the development of pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content beliefs was examined. For that reason, the belief development during the 6-month period was compared between pre-service teachers with and without teaching experience. Results show teaching pre-service teachers’ beliefs to have developed away from constructivistic positions and toward a direct-transmissive direction. The beliefs of student teachers without teaching experience, on the contrary, tended to slightly develop in diametrically opposed directions. Implications of the results are discussed.     

The influence of self-efficacy beliefs for student parents attending university

Student parents (i.e. students who have their own dependent children) are a specific subpopulation of adult learners. This study investigated the impact of self-efficacy beliefs on student parents’ perceived capacity to manage multiple roles and their satisfaction with family, school and life. Survey data collected from 398 student parents enroled at four Canadian universities were analysed. Latent variable analysis was conducted using maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors using Mplus. Self-efficacy beliefs were found to influence student parents’ perceptions of satisfaction at school, in the family and with life in general. Perceptions of one’s capacity to manage multiple roles (i.e. school–family balance) were found to mediate the relationship between academic self-efficacy and school satisfaction as well as parental self-efficacy and family satisfaction. Furthermore, preliminary evidence is provided of unique subgroups within the student parent population based on children’s ages, partner status and enrolment status (i.e. full/part-time studies).     

Rural,suburban, and urban schools: The impact of school setting on the efficacy beliefs and attributions of student teachers

This study investigated student teachers' efficacy beliefs, to determine if school setting (i.e., rural, suburban, and urban) impacted teachers' sense of efficacy. Each setting group exhibited significant increases in teachers' sense of efficacy following student teaching. The urban student teachers exhibited significantly lower teachers' sense of efficacy. We also examined the attributions (external or internal) the student teachers made following student teaching. The urban student teachers did not make more external attributions than the rural and suburban student teachers, and the patterns of the self-serving attributional bias as well as the fundamental attribution error were apparent.     

Patterns of interaction in the processes of joint reflection by student teachers

Although some research results indicate that joint reflection can improve student-teachers’ reflection, it is not clear how the interaction between student-teachers during a joint reflection process helps this to happen. The aim of this paper is to explore how the organisation of joint activity in processes of joint reflection assists students’ reflection, by identifying patterns of joint reflection (considering all the participants rather than only tutor–student dyads) and by discussing the functional role of these patterns within the students’ processes of reflection and internalisation. Two cases of joint reflection processes between a group of student teachers (15 and 13) and their tutors were examined. In each case, five seminars lasting around one-and-a-half hours each were videotaped and analysed, and individual written reflections after each seminar were gathered and scored. Results showed that joint reflection developed in each case according to different interaction patterns, and that individual written students’ reflections improved from seminar 1 to seminar 5 in one of the cases, but not in the others. These results suggest a relationship between interaction patterns of joint reflection and progress in students’ individual reflection.     

A time utilization study of cooperating teachers

The following analysis of the supervisory activities of cooperating teachers should provide some useful suggestions as well as the opportunity for comparisons between the teachers surveyed and the reader's own situation.     

生物教学中学生合作学习的困惑及对策

新课程理念倡导的是自主探究、合作交流的学习方式,这种方式已普遍应用于生物教学实践中,并取得了较好的教学业绩。然而在实施过程中,根据学生身心发展的特点,剖析当前课堂教学中运用合作学习方式而出现的一些现象,还存在着令人困惑的问题,特别是合作学习方式的运用始终不能达到预想的课堂效果。     

Teaching in inclusive classrooms: efficacy and beliefs of Canadian preservice teachers

This study provides a Canada-wide snapshot of the self-efficacy and beliefs of 1490 preservice teachers in relation to inclusive teaching using the Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practice and the Beliefs about Learning and Teaching Questionnaire. At the time of data collection, these preservice teachers were in the final stages of their teacher education programmes. Based on the results of surveys in 11 Faculties of Education, men have higher self-efficacy than women for managing behaviour in the classroom, elementary preservice teachers have higher self-efficacy in collaboration than those teaching in secondary schools, those enrolled in the 1-year post-degree programme show lower self-efficacy than those enrolled in programmes of other durations, and those who have experience with people with special education needs show higher self-efficacy than those who do not. Differences illustrated that women were more inclusive than men, 1-year post-degree preservice teachers were less inclusive than others, and those who have experience with people with special education needs are more inclusive than those who do not. Recommendations for teacher education and limitations surrounding the practical significance of the findings are discussed.