Generalists vs. specialists in the supervision of student teachers

Reichart, Sandford. Change and the Teacher. New York: Thomas Crowell Company, 1969, paper, 151 pages.     

Positive aspects of the teacher training supervision: The student teachers’ perspective

This paper explores the student teachers’ perceptions about the most positive aspects of the supervision provided during their teaching practice. The authors developed a study based on the reflections of a group of 224 student teachers about their cooperating teacher’s and university supervisor’s performance. Student teacher’s appraisals regarding their supervisors, the learning and progress perceived as resulting from their co-working with more experienced teachers, and the emotional aspects of this relationship are among the main aspects analysed in the study. Results show the importance attributed to the supervisors’ personal features and to the quality of the interactions established with their student teachers. These aspects were clearly regarded as an essential aspect of the student teachers’ emotional balance and resistance to the difficulties emerged during their entrance in the teaching profession. Some differences were perceived in terms of the students teachers’ evaluations regarding the moment of the practicum (beginning versus end) and the type of supervisor (university versus school). Some enquiry and suggestions for future research emerge as final contributions.     

Examining the supervision of mathematics student teachers through analysis of conference communications

Student teaching is often a capstone experience in the preparation of mathematics teachers. Thus, it is essential to better understand key aspects of the experience. We conducted a qualitative study of post-lesson conferences led by supervisors (classroom cooperating teachers and a university supervisor) working with mathematics student teachers. Analysis of conference communications revealed differences in the types and content of communications in conferences led by the cooperating teachers and by the university supervisor. Cooperating teachers tended toward evaluative supervision that lacked a focus on the mathematics of the lessons while the university supervisor tended toward educative supervision, guiding student teachers to reflect on and learn from their own classroom experiences including the mathematics of their lessons. Differences are discussed, and suggestions concerning the supervision of student teachers are made along with recommendations for further research.     

学校教师对农民工子女内隐偏见研究

本研究采用内隐联想测试(IAT)探索教师对农民工子女的偏见状况。被试为54名小学教师(普通公办小学教师40名,农民工子弟学校教师14名),测试使用材料为农民工子女照片、城市儿童照片各四张,与学习相关的积极、消极评价词各四个。结果显示两类学校的教师均存在内隐偏见,但两类学校教师的偏见程度不存在显著差异。     

The school-based work experiences of student teachers

The increased responsibility now given to schools for initial teacher training (ITT) in partnership with training institutions has led to questions about how prepared and confident teachers are to assume their new role, and the support they provide for students to teach the arts. This research enquires into the situation and found the development of students' subject knowledge in the arts to be a matter of concern. As time on ITT courses is cut and teachers acknowledge the need to enhance their own knowledge-base in the arts, there is uncertainty about the quality and adequacy of training for student teachers in the arts.     

Teleconferencing in student teacher supervision

Demands for accountability, tighter fiscal policies and political pressures required many post-secondary institutions in the early 1980s to seek new strategies for improving their cost efficiency. Advances in communication technology were perceived by some institutions as a means of maintaining and even diversifying services at minimal cost. Although positive economic returns often appeared attractive, educational benefits were frequently less than anticipated. Misunderstanding, poor communication and insufficient information, as well as professional conservatism, resistance to change and support for traditional practices, tended to prevent contemporary communication systems from being applied extensively in higher education.     

Patterns and styles in the supervision of teachers

This paper is an edited version of ‘The patterns and styles in the supervision of teachers in individual conferences following classroom observations’, which was first presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association at Chicago in 1972. This edition of the original material has been prepared for the British Journal of Teacher Education by George Brown, University of Nottingham.     

Help-seeking behaviour of student teachers

Background

Student teachers struggle with a wide range of problems because they are lacking professional knowledge, inexperienced in dealing with colleagues and students, and unfamiliar with school environments. It is essential for the survival of student teachers to establish supportive relationships for professional and personal help. Traditional support mechanisms for student teachers, such as cooperating teachers and university supervising teachers, often fail to provide the needed help. Analysing student teachers' help-seeking behaviour provides an avenue to explore the support they received.

Purpose

The study investigates how student teachers seek assistance. Using a Help-seeking behaviour questionnaire, student teachers' critical problems and their efforts to find assistance are examined.

Sample

The participants were 40 student teachers in a secondary education teacher certificate programme at a university in Taipei, Taiwan. The participants belonged to a class of about 100 student teachers who did their internships at local junior and senior high schools. The participants were teaching in eight subjects, and about two-thirds were female. Every student teacher was assigned a supervising teacher from the university and a cooperating teacher at the placement school.

Design and methods

The questionnaire asked the student teachers to pick a critical problem that they had encountered during the previous week. They were asked to describe the problem, whom they asked for help, how many times and through which communication channel the help was provided. The questionnaire was administered during March and May 2001. Critical problems were sorted into categories. Frequencies and percentages of the help-seeking instances were accumulated for different people and problem categories.

Results

Some student teachers requested help many times; others made a limited number of requests. The number of requests ranged from 1 to 38 per problem, with an average of 12 requests per problem. Among the requests for help (n = 935), only 2% were directed to university supervisors. The student teachers sought help from the cooperating teacher 15% of the time, and 41% of the time they asked student teacher peers for assistance. About 90% of the communication was face to face, 9% was by phone and 1% was by email. The largest number of requests dealt with problems of individual students (19%). The second and third largest problem categories were administration and policy issues (16%) and lack of spare time (15%).

Conclusions

Peer support should be cultivated in teacher training programmes because peer student teachers' help was most frequently sought. Cooperating teachers and university supervising teachers' communication with student teachers can be improved. Various ways of contacting student teachers can be encouraged, but face-to-face communication must still be supported. It is important to keep finding new ways to assess the effectiveness of student teacher support. The results of the Help-seeking behaviour questionnaire can be used to examine the impact of programmes to improve student teaching.     

Between a hard place and a hard place: A study of ethical dilemmas experienced by student teachers while on practicum

Assisting student teachers to understand the ethical nature of their work and developing the moral vocabulary to deal with ethical dilemmas of practice are vital components of initial teacher education. The study explores ethical dilemmas experienced by 100 student teachers in their final year of their teaching degrees while on practicum. The data examined were written reflective statements of each of the 100 students’ ethical dilemmas. The study found that, while some types of ethical dilemmas seem universal, a more situated theory of initial teacher education ethics is required to understand the particular sociocultural factors that inform the nature of teacher practice in context-specific environments. Our study highlights the need for preservice teacher education focusing on student teachers finding their own authentic ethical voice, through the examination of ethical dilemmas via critical thinking and the wider examination of the political, historical and social contexts that led to the dilemma. The dilemmas faced by the students were likely to be, in part, identifiable with fellow student teachers in other countries, but we argue that dilemmas are strongly contextualised. Our study is useful for educators working with student teachers in the practicum environment to instil confidence in student teachers to follow their own moral compass.     

Assessing student teachers: The promise of developmental portfolios

Abstract

This article describes the results of qualitative research using portfolios in a preservice teacher education program. Our study involved participant observation of 26 portfolio review sessions, and open‐ended interviews with 13 student teachers and 13 cooperating teachers. We sought to understand how portfolios might contribute to the assessment and professional development of prospective teachers. We discuss potential benefits and identify several important practical issues that others might consider when introducing portfolio assessment into their own preparation programs.     

Service-learning and the development of student teachers in Singapore

ABSTRACT

Service-learning has been gaining traction in Singapore, with many educational institutions integrating it into their curriculum. In the National Institute of Education (NIE), the Group Endeavours in Service-Learning (GESL) is an experiential learning opportunity for all student teachers (STs) to collaborate with the community to address local needs. GESL endeavours to build character, and develop positive values and social-emotional competencies. Hence the purpose of this study is to explore how GESL enhances pre-service teacher education in relation to teacher training. Eleven GESL groups were selected, with 12 members from each group randomly recruited to participate in the focus group interviews. A total of 15 focus group interviews were held. The interview data was transcribed, coded and presented in themes by using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Overall, there seemed to be a greater level of self-awareness and understanding of the community needs. Participants reported getting to know themselves better, in terms of their strengths and weaknesses and how they can contribute to the community. There was also enhancement of collaboration, communication and people-management skills. These findings suggest that GESL may be an effective channel to imbue attributes that NIE has identified as important for teaching professionals.     

Doctoral student supervision in a managerial climate

Prevailing clinical and educational models of dyslexia have focused on effective ways of addressing the proposed core deficits such as poor phonological skills. These models have been helpful in guiding intervention and bringing about some improvements in children's literacy performance (Hatcher, 1994). From a social model of disability perspective these models have not considered sufficiently how cultural factors such as specified school literacy standards can transform the impairments that some children have into disabilities. The underlying tenet of inclusion is that the school should adapt its practice to accommodate the child (Clark et al, 1995; Jenkinson, 1997). This would suggest that an examination of the social model of disability perspective may have a role to play in future school policy and practice across Europe in respect to literacy.     

The role of formal and informal theory in the training of student teachers

In the mid‐1990s, primary teacher education is searching for an accepted theoretical underpinning of its activity and rubric for the preparation of the next generation of teachers. This paper cites four such theoretical foundations. The first three arise from formal theory and political considerations and are labelled ideological neutrality, modern progressivism and a fusion between symbolic interactionism and social constructivism. The fourth however represents a paradigm shift. This model seeks to validate informal theory generated during the practical teaching experiences of serving teachers and in particular the interaction between student teachers and teacher mentors. It proposes an adaptation of Rowland's (1987) model of teacher‐pupil interaction to the context of student teacher professional development.     

Engaging student teachers in meaningful reflective practice

This paper examines the use of peer-videoing in the classroom as a tool to promote reflective practice among student teachers. Twenty pre-service teachers from a variety of subject disciplines participating in a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education programme in an Irish university participated in the study. The practice of encouraging student teachers working in the same school to participate in structured video analysis avoids the impact of external observers whose role is largely evaluative and endorses a collaborative model that promotes dialogue and shared learning. This practice promotes a culture of observation and critical dialogue in a profession which has traditionally been characterised by isolation, while at the same time fostering and validating the voice and experience of the student teacher. Locating the discussion within the framework of the theoretical literature on reflective practice, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the international debate over best practice in supporting, encouraging and scaffolding reflective practice. It comments on the implications of reflective dialogue for the modernisation of teacher education and offers guidelines on how best to scaffold and promote reflectivity.     

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.