A pre-service reading teacher field experience.

Abstract

This study compared the efficacy beliefs of two groups of pre-service reading teachers in a state required undergraduate course in language and reading acquisition. Each group was exposed to course material through classroom discussions, interaction, and lecture. However, one class participated in the weekly tutoring of reading at a local elementary school. The Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale was given to both groups. Results showed no significant changes in pre-service teacher efficacy as a result of the field experience project.

Introduction

The current increase in elementary school student enrollment, emphasis on academic achievement, and demand for better reading education calls for an increase in the need for quality teachers in our schools. However, simultaneously attrition rates of teachers continue to grow. The National Center for Education Statistics (2001) reported that one in every five new teachers quits teaching after only three years. When this statistic is compounded with the rising number of teachers retiring and the higher numbers of student enrollment also reported, there is cause for worry. The paradox for teacher educators and educational researchers is how can programs increase the quality of new teachers while also ensuring these individuals remain in the profession. Increasing preservice teacher efficacy may be one way to do both simultaneously. Additionally, with today's increased emphasis on literacy and the national demand that all children read at grade level by third grade it is extremely important that we increase teacher efficacy with regard to the teaching of reading.

Some teacher preparation programs have begun to integrate tutoring and other field experiences as a way to allow pre-service teachers to gain hands-on experiences with students in real world situations. This experience is important, as pre-service teachers are students enrolled in education courses learning content appropriate for their future careers, but they have not yet taken on the role of a student teacher in a school setting. Thus, they usually do not have the opportunity to apply the material they learn in their undergraduate courses to a real world teaching situation. As teaching is an applied profession, it is valuable for future teachers to be given the experience of being in a classroom teaching a child and applying the content knowledge they learn in their university courses.

Research on Teacher Efficacy

Self-efficacy is a person's beliefs about their capabilities to organize and execute actions required to perform specific tasks. How people feel, think, motivate themselves, and behave is influenced by their efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 1993). Also, self-efficacy beliefs strongly determine and predict individual accomplishments (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, and Pastorelli, 2001), and individuals who feel efficacious are more likely to persist longer on a task and set challenges for themselves (Plourdes, 2002). Self-efficacy is especially important to those who mold our youth through teaching because a teacher's personal self-efficacy to motivate and encourage learning affects the type of classroom atmosphere the teacher creates and the level of student achievement (Bandura, 1993). Bandura (1993) feels the job of establishing environments conducive to learning rests heavily on the talents and self-efficacy of teachers. This notion is twofold as we consider reading teacher education. First, it is the efficacious reading teacher who will create a classroom environment conducive to student reading achievement. Second, it is the job of the teacher trainers not only to educate teachers on methodological practices but also to create experiences that increase teacher efficacy.

High teacher efficacy has been linked with a variety of positive outcomes in regard to teachers' practices. First, high efficacy is related to higher end of the year goals for students (Allinder, 1995). Furthermore, Gibson and Dembo (1984) suggested that teacher efficacy influences specific classroom behaviors known to yield achievement gains. Additionally, Gibson and Dembo stated that teachers who believed that effective teaching helps student learning and who have confidence in their own teaching abilities are more likely to persist longer in their efforts to teach and provide a greater academic focus in the classroom. Guskey (1988) found that teachers with high self-efficacy beliefs are more likely to embrace innovative techniques in the classroom, especially those linked with mastery learning goals, which are goals that individuals pursue when their aim is to develop ability (Midgley, Middleton, & Kaplan, 2001). Likewise, efficacious teachers looked forward to being active members of the school community (Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990), and efficacious teachers better serve their students in need of special education (DeForest & Hughes, 1992; Meijer & Foster, 1988; Podell & Soodak, 1993). Teacher efficacy is also one of the main determinants of job satisfaction for teachers (Caprara, Barbaranelli, Borgogni, & Steca, 2003).

The positive relationship high teacher efficacy has on these multiple facets of teachers' work have led researchers to examine pre-service teacher efficacy as well. Woolfolk and Hoy (1990) found that pre-service teachers with high efficacy are more personally humanistic and less controlling in their thoughts about dealing with students, which promotes autonomy in their students' choice of assignments. Likewise, in a study of undergraduate education majors Parameswaran (1998) found that students who participated in a field visit to a community resource center to work with local youth and interview center workers about their experiences had higher efficacy than those who did not. This field experience gave these pre-service teachers the opportunity to better understand children from various cultural backgrounds and exposed them to new situations, which positively affected their efficacy. As a result, these pre-service teachers perceived themselves to be more confident in dealing with children from diverse backgrounds than their counterparts who did not attend a field trip.

Field experience, however, has not always been found to have a positive affect on preservice teacher efficacy. Newman (1999) found that pre-service teachers were more efficacious after taking a ten-week course in educational psychology than before the course. However, the students who participated in the field trip did not differ in regard to efficacy from a comparison group of students who did not have a field experience connected to class. In addition, Plourdes (2002) found that pre-service teachers had a lower sense of confidence in their ability to make a difference in the area of science after student teaching. Thus, the literature shows contradictory findings as to the usefulness of field experience for increasing pre-service teacher efficacy.

This study, then, asks the question: Do pre-service teachers who have field experiences have higher teacher efficacy than their counterparts who do not? This current research differs from those cited above in that it focuses on the specific domain area of reading. We hypothesize that the opportunity to apply domain specific knowledge to a particular pedagogical domain will increase pre-service teacher efficacy. The present research is concerned with how to increase teacher self-efficacy, specifically in the pedagogical practice of reading, through teacher training programs. Parameswaran (1998) found that pre-service teachers who work with children from diverse backgrounds through field trips were found to be more efficacious in the classroom. Thus, integrating a real world experience into a university teacher education class could result in increased teaching efficacy.

Methods

Testing was conducted in two intact language and reading acquisition classes required for teacher certification in the area of Early Childhood and Elementary Education in a mid-Atlantic state. The participants were 53 students enrolled in two different sections of this course. As described by the university handbook, this course focuses on young children's language development and the relationship between language and reading acquisition. Students in this course learn: concepts essential to language development; language achievement appropriate at various ages; concepts of emergent literacy; models of reading acquisition and skilled reading. In addition, the students in this course learn about the major components of reading: phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Both classes were exposed to course material through readings, classroom discussions, group activities, and lectures. One section of the course, however, performed weekly one-on-one reading tutoring at a local elementary school for 30 minutes a week for ten weeks. Students in the other class were also required to do a project. For this group, the project consisted of a one hour observation of children's' language at a pre-school on university grounds. To obtain participants for this study, all students in both classes were contacted through their course instructor and asked to participate on a voluntary basis in exchange for extra credit points in the class. Questionnaires were administered to participants at the beginning and end of the semester.

The approach used in this research was based on methods used in previous research to measure how teachers' efficacy differs. Each student agreeing to participate in the study was asked to complete the Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk-Hoy (2001) 24-item Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) at both the beginning and end of the school semester. This was done prior to the beginning of tutoring for the field experience group. This survey asked participants to evaluate themselves with regard to teacher efficacy. Examples of questions on the TSES are: How much can you do to help your students think critically? How much can you do to motivate students who show a low interest in school work? Responses to each question are on a 9-point Likert scale measuring "how much can you do" from "nothing" to a "great deal." Using a pre-test, post-test design we were able to examine any changes in efficacy beliefs that occurred during the course of the semester The TSES includes subscales that measure efficacy in classroom management, student engagement, and instructional practices. Analysis of this scale have shown acceptable psychometric properties with high rates of overall reliability (Alpha = .88). This instrument has been widely used and accepted in studies of teacher efficacy. In addition, this measure has been used with pre-service teachers.

Results

Data analysis for this study consisted of a 2 x 3 repeated measures ANOVA comparing the time points (pre-test and post-test) and the TSES subscales (student engagement, instructional practices and classroom management) with the groups (tutor and non-tutors) as the between-subjects variable. The results showed no significant main effects or interactions. However, an examination of the raw means reveals that that the tutors' self-efficacy ratings increased from pre-test to post-test and that their post-test scores were higher than that of the non-tutors.

Discussion

The results of this study are somewhat surprising, as previous research found real world experiences increase teacher efficacy (Guskey, 1988; Parameswaran, 1998). One reason for the lack of differences between groups could be a lack of power, as we had a sample size of 53 students. Future research with larger sample sizes may reveal an effect that our small study was unable to capture.

Another possible reason for these findings may be that the field experience exposed these future teachers to the realities of the classroom and the difficulties of teaching. As these participants were pre-service teachers and had not yet been required to student teach, most of them had not yet taken on the role of being a teacher in a real world learning situation. Thus, their pre-test TSES scores were not based on the realities of the classroom but instead on what they envisioned teaching to be like. As such, these pre-service teachers may have had an exaggerated sense of what they could accomplish when teaching. Indeed, upon examination of participants' pre-test TSES scores we found that the means were very high (between 6.61 and 6.88) on all four subscales. As the TSES is on a 9-point Likert scale, these high scores leave little room for upward movement. In addition, these scores seem somewhat inflated when one thinks that they are based on how successful these participants feel they will be at a task they have yet to perform. Thus, it may be that exposure to the field experience did not increase these participants self-efficacy but instead gave them a more realistic sense of what teaching reading entails. Therefore, post-test TSES scores may not have increased in value but may have been based on more realistic ideas about teaching. As such, further research in this area should not only examine changes in pre-service teachers' efficacy with regard to a field experience, but should also examine changes in the ideas upon with pre-service teachers base their efficacy beliefs.

References

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Heather Rogers Haverback, University of Maryland, College Park Susan Parault, University of Maryland, College Park

Rogers-Haverback, M.A.T., is an advanced graduate student in the Department of Human Development, and Parault, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Human Development.