In the Trenches: Increasing Competency of Teachers-in Training by Having Them Conduct Individualized Interventions.

Fifty-teachers-in-training went into a classroom to work with individual students, targeting specific behavioral or academic interventions for each student. This was the experimental condition. Forty-seven students were not involved in the mentoring program (control condition). All 90 students were in an educational psychology class, with all other conditions (lectures, texts, testing, discussion) the same for both groups. All students were assessed in the area of teacher efficacy, in a pretest-posttest format. Results indicated that all students had significant gains in efficacy during the 10-week intervention period. Experimental subjects had direct and supervised experiences in goal-setting, collecting baseline data, charting and evaluating progress. Possible reasons for the gains in both groups are discussed, and qualitative data is presented to show vicarious enhancement for controls.

The current study was conducted to determine the impact of an experiential activity on teachers-in-training. The activity consisted of going into a public school classroom to work on an individual basis with targeted public school students, developing and implementing an individualized plan to improve either an academic or a behavioral status of the targeted child. The objectives of the study were as follows:

1. To assess changes in teachers' efficacy as a result of planning, implementing, and evaluating individualized behavioral and/or academic interventions.

2. To determine if measured teacher efficacy of teachers-in-training who carried out in-classroom, individualized behavioral and/or academic interventions is greater than the teacher efficacy of similar teachers-in-training who did not have in-classroom experiences.

3. To investigate the effects of implementation of behavioral and/or academic intervention programs conducted by teachers-in-training.

It was also expected that a side effect of the study would be vicarious learning by way of peer discussion and reporting among the experimental subjects.

Theoretical Perspectives

Two areas related to classroom education are tapped in this study. The first is classroom management, both in the monitoring and intervention with academic progress and the maintenance of appropriate and positive student behavior. The second is teacher efficacy, which is related to both teacher motivation and metacognition as teachers focus on the plans and serendipitous events that may create either a productive or nonproductive learning environment. More globally, the impact of these variables is assessed in the population known as teachers-in-training, a most fertile area for didactic, cognitive, and practical interventions and implications.

Kounin' s (1970) concept of "withitness" has become a vital part of instruction for both teachers-in-training and seasoned teachers. Evertson's (1982, 1988, 1989) work, along with that of Emmer (1981, 1994) and Good (1981) and Good and Brophy (1987), continue to serve as didactic models for classroom management training. In more recent years, classroom management has been further subdivided into categories such as pupil control. (Doyle, 1986; Hoy & Woolfolk, 1990), communication with students (Kagan & Tippins, 1991), teaching techniques (Ross, 1994), and keeping students motivated or on task (Woolfolk, Rosoff, & Hoy, 1990).

There is a place for individual intervention in the work of a teacher, whether the student is affecting other students, the teacher's self-perceived effectiveness, or even when his/her academic strategies or behavioral patterns are detrimental only to his/her own progress and success in the classroom (Sudzina & Gay, 1993). There is often a need to formulate and implement specific individualized student programs for a short duration. Evertson et al. (1989) suggest some very specific and practical ways to develop and implement individual programs. From isolation to individual contracts to parent involvement to check or demerit systems, there are certain elements common to all individualized plans. These include a team approach; the team minimally consists of the teacher, student, and parents, and often include other specialized administrative or resource persons. The team also includes a specific plan which is based on specific targeted statement of problem, goal clarification, steps toward remediation or solution, and plans for evaluation. The implementation period consists of gathering baseline and intervention data, as well as ongoing evaluation and possible changes in the plan. Follow-up usually includes reinforcement for goal attainment, refresher reminders, and long-term evaluation of residual effects, both positive and negative.

Most behavioral plans are derivatives of the original work of B. F. Skinner (1971), in what has come to be known as behavior modification. In recent years, cognitive interventions are added, so that the student is trained to process options, decisions, consequences, or other outcomes effecting behavior. Academic interventions cover a gamut of methods, from process remediation to tutoring to changes in work load or placement. The present study includes elements of major interest in the area of classroom management, specifically in targeting students, teaching students to set goals, implementing change programs, and evaluating programs. The team concept is present, and the participants have several sources of informed feedback. These include actual data collected by them in assessing goal attainment, on-site classroom teachers, the university class instructor and resources provided in that environment, and input from peers.

Self-efficacy is defined by Bandura (1977) as one' s self-perceived ability to perform a task. Bandura (1977, 1986) and others have found that efficacy affects choice of activity, effort expended, perseverance in the face of failure, and feelings about performance. The impact of teacher efficacy has been studied much in the past two decades. Some studies have found strong correlations between teacher efficacy and teacher behaviors in the classroom (Ashton et al., 1983; Gibson and Dembo, 1984). Others have found a strong positive correlation between teacher efficacy and student performance, student perception of ability and student self-efficacy (Armor et al., 1976; Ashton, 1984; Ashton, Webb, & Doda, 1983a, 1983b; Midgley et al., 1989).

Teacher efficacy has been the basis of much current research in the field of education, particularly in relation to teachers-in-training. Teachers with a high sense of efficacy will be persistent in the face of student failure, more effective problem-solvers in classroom instruction and management, less frequently absent, have less attrition, and will possess more of what some have simply called a "passion for teaching". These assumptions have been supported by the work of such educators as Schunk (1985), Tuckman and Sexton (1990), Woolfolk (1990) and Dembo (1985, 1994). Measuring the teaching efficacy before and after an intervention should then provide a measure of the impact of the experience on one's perceived effectiveness, resulting in translation to success measures in the classroom environment.

Methods

The study included approximately 90 teachers-in-training. The term "teachers-in-training" is defined here as college students enrolled in an undergraduate educational program which culminates in a degree which prepares and allows them to be certified to teach in some area of grades K-12. The specific teachers-in-training involved in this study are further differentiated by being enrolled in an undergraduate educational psychology class, and having completed at least two years of their degree requirements. Some of the educational psychology classes included an in-classroom experience in the public schools (experimental). Other classes did not have any out-of-class experiences: in still other classes, some students chose the in-school (experimental) condition, while others chose a more traditional course of involvement through writing papers and group exercises (control condition). Text, syllabi, and other course requirements reflected an 80% similarity parallel (as required by State Board of Education specifications) for the courses containing the experimental and control subjects. Fifty three teachers-in-training performed an intervention in the public school (experimental); thirty-four completed their educational psychology courses without conducting an intervention (control participants). Each experimental teacher-in-training worked with two public school students.

Prior to the intervention, and after (i.e., on the pretest and posttest), all teachers-in-training were administered an instrument including the Teacher Efficacy Scale (Gibson and Dembo, 1984), a Teacher Locus of Control Scale (Rose and Medway, 1981) and several additional questions, including demographic information. During the 10-week intervention period, experimental participants were also asked several closed and open-ended questions in personal interviews.

The task (intervention) for the experimental participants consisted of choosing two public school students who needed either an academic or a behavioral intervention in the classroom. These teachers-in-training met with the public school teachers to target the two students for the intervention. During the ten week duration of the intervention, the teachers-in-training working in the public schools reported their progress and results to the instructor and fellow students in their university class. This was done in three phases: 1) Early in the quarter teachers-in-training targeted the problem, planned the intervention, and planned the method of assessment. These teachers-in-training also began charting baseline data, measuring student outcomes week by week; 2) During the middle of the quarter students discussed preliminary outcomes (i.e. student progress up to that point), noted changes, and modified programs; 3) At the end of the quarter the teachers-in-training presented their final data/results to their college class (e.g., they showed progress charts, discussed and critiqued the goal, method, and results). They also reported their feelings and reactions about their in-public-school-classroom experiences, and discussed their plan of exit (i.e., closure). All three phases were conducted in the form of oral reports to classmates in the educational psychology course, and each was followed by questions, comments, and suggestions from peers.

Results

Objective one, assessing change in teacher efficacy, was evaluated by comparing the pre-to-post gains for the participants receiving the treatment using a dependent (matched-pairs) t-test. The experimentals' means were 3.59 on the pretest (teacher efficacy) and 3.76 on the posttest. The change from pre to post was small, but it was statistically significant, t=3.2, p=.002. The control participants' means were 3.71 on the pretest and 3.83 on the posttest. This change was also small and statistically significant, t=2.5, p=.014.

Objective two, which consisted of comparing the change scores of the experimental and control groups, was evaluated using an ANCOVA (pretest=covariate, and experimental versus control=the independent variable). The main effect for group (i.e., are the adjusted posttest means, 3.8 for experimentals versus 3.79 for controls, significantly different?) was not significant, F(1,118)=.48, p [is greater than] .05. Post hoc power was very low (.11); however, this is largely due to the lack of any effect rather than lack of participants. It is clear that the there is no statistical effect of the treatment. Possible reasons for this are discussed below.

Objective three was to assess the impact of the experimental condition on the teachers in training who participated in implementing behavioral and/or academic intervention plans with the school children. The goal was evaluated using several descriptive statistics. Of the 53 experimental participants, 28 chose academic interventions, 12 chose behavioral interventions, and 13 chose one academic and one behavioral intervention. In analyzing frequency polygons from intervention plans, it was found that seventy percent (38) reported goal attainment with at least one of their two clients. All of the participants reported substantial progress and listed specific learning outcomes which would be useful to them in their teaching careers. For example, in evaluating the implementation plans, six participants reported that the original goal was too low, eight reported the goal was too high, and nine learned that the goal was nonspecific for measurable outcomes. This means that 43% of the participants were able to specify critical cognitive strategies regarding individualized goal-setting. Since these reports were shared with the entire university class, this means that 43% learned directly, and the others vicariously, the importance of both goal-setting and clarification, as well as evaluation.

Implications and Practical Importance of the Study

Teacher efficacy improved for both the experimental and control teachers-in-training. It is clear that teachers-in-training in educational psychology classes experienced improvement in teacher efficacy over the 10 week instructional period. The improvement, however, was not significantly greater for experimentals than controls.

One possible interpretation for the lack of group differences was a wash-out effect, or "reality shock" (Veenman, 1984). That is, students who go into the field may become more realistic about what they can actually accomplish once they become teachers (Hopkins, Hoffman, & Moss, 1996); this effect would tend to reduce teacher efficacy scores. This is underscored by the finding that subjects who had taught before (n=14) tended to have slightly lower beginning teacher efficacy scores than their classmates, as well as the finding that age and gain score in teacher efficacy was positively correlated (r=.179, statistically significant). This contention is supported in the writings of Bandura and Cervone (1983), Schunk (1981), and Gorrell and Hwang (1995) in discussing the adverse effects on efficacy when the perceived goal is beyond acquired skills or experiences. Conversely, students who stay in the classroom may tend to become more confident, but perhaps also become more naive about what they can accomplish in the classroom. This possibility will have to be teased out in a future study.

We conclude that experiences of teachers-in-training may still be helpful because it provides real exposure to schools, students, and actual work conditions, based on the feedback data presented above. Because of in-class observations and experiences, as well as theoretical considerations, we remain tentatively convinced that in-classroom experiences are needed. Most teacher training programs include inadequate time for observation and data collection before the actual "student teaching" experience. Far less prevalent is the opportunity to attempt, under supervised instruction, a targeted intervention within the naturalistic setting of the classroom.

In studying the impact of efficacy in the educational setting, there is a need to continue the search for those experiences which will afford greater competency in the areas of teacher training, motivation, and skills strength, as well as in the related areas of teacher burnout, and continuing education of seasoned teachers.

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E. Jean Newman, Assistant Professor, College of Education, University of South Alabama, Mobile.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. E. Jean Newman, Assistant Professor, College of Education, University of South Alambama, UCOM 3709, Mobile, Alabama 36688-0002.