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Perceptions of preservice teachers during early field experiences given the opportunity for reflection
Abstract
Elementary preservice teachers enrolled in an experimental five-year teacher education program participated in a two-semester early field experience. The preservice teachers spent five hours a week with a partner in a classroom, kept daily journals, and attended biweekly seminars. During the second semester preservice teachers changed partners, schools, and grade levels, and attended a developmental psychology class. Classroom activities included observation, tutoring, and small- and large-group instruction. The cooperating teachers collaborated in the development of the teacher education program. Data were collected from the 16 preservice teachers' journals during four two-week time periods. Daily entries and two-week reflective entries were analyzed to determine changes in length, topic, developmental level, critical thinking level, detail, and affect. Data were also collected twice during the second semester from the experimental group and a control group comparing their conceptual levels, critical thinking abilities, and responses to classroom situations. Developmental levels, intellectual levels, and amount of detail increased significantly across the four time periods. Preservice teachers focused on students, activities, and perceiving oneself as a teacher in their journal entries. Perceiving oneself as a teacher was the topic most focused upon at the beginning of the early field experiences, but a slowly declined thereafter. Sophisticated thinking was most likely to occur when the topic of "student " was in a cause and effect relationship, or when a unit of thought from a journal was negative. No statistical differences existed between the experimental and control groups in conceptual level or critical thinking ability; however, the experimental group tended to be at a higher conceptual level. The experimental group responded in a more positive manner to significantly different classroom situations. Conceptual level scores and developmental level scores of journals indicated that preservice teachers operated at a concrete level. Significant differences in journal entries from the four time periods indicated that the perceptions of the experimental group appeared to be in a process of change and may need more time to make a significant developmental change.
Subject Area
Teacher education
Recommended Citation
Cohoon, Kris Patrick, "Perceptions of preservice teachers during early field experiences given the opportunity for reflection" (1988). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8824920.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8824920