Pedagogical practices: examining preservice teachers’ perceptions of their abilities

Abstract

Teachers routinely make decisions regarding the best pedagogical methods for altering students' understandings about academic content. Such practices are at the root of teaching as persuasion, and have been shown to be related to academic achievement. Yet very little research has investigated the extent to which individuals learning to be teachers (i.e., preservice teachers) feel they are capable of performing the practices underlying teaching as persuasion. As such, the purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which preservice teachers see themselves as capable of performing persuasive pedagogical practices compared to more general teaching practices as operationalized on well-researched measures of teacher efficacy. Results indicated that undergraduates enrolled in preservice teacher education courses perceived themselves as less capable of performing persuasive pedagogical practices than more generally accepted practices. In addition, preservice teachers perceived they were more capable of altering students' knowledge about content than at modifying their beliefs about content. Implications for research and practice are forwarded.

Investigating Teacher Efficacy: Comparing Preservice and Inservice Teachers with Different Levels of Experience

“…Students need opportunities to establish their teaching efficacy early in their coursework and again during student teaching experiences (Woolfolk Hoy & Spero, 2005). However, Edwards, Higley, Zeruth, and Murphy (2007) questioned the ability of preservice teachers to differentiate between different aspects of practices (i.e., implementing effective strategies or classroom management techniques); thus, it is important to focus on the implementation of such practices during the initial stages of a program and to continue to examine and refine them through student teaching experiences. Greater confidence can be built as preservice teachers engage in experiences that allow them to manage as many aspects of the classroom as possible in conjunction with opportunities to reexamine beliefs at periodic intervals.…”

The psychological dimension of transformation in teacher learning

“…The issue being explored is the extent to which pedagogical content knowledge (and the elaboration of technological pedagogical content knowledge) can be distinguished from efficacious pedagogical practices (Edwards, Higley, Zeruth, & Murphy, 2007;John, 2002) and generic pedagogical knowledge (Atjonen, Korkeakoski, & Mehtäläinen, 2011;Fernández-Balboa & Stiehl, 1995;König, Blömeke, Paine, Schmidt, & Hsieh, 2011). The obfuscation of the distinction is of concern lest learning be understood as a necessary consequence of teaching, rather than as having a complex causal role in the teaching endeavour (Begg, Davis, & Bramald, 2003).…”

Preservice Teachers’ Academic Memories of School: A Tool for Learning

“…Our position is that memories can have an influence that is similar to that of beliefs. Reference [6] believed that teachers' efficacy maybe attributed to their own experiences as students in school. Memories of prior experiences operate in ways similar to beliefs, thus influencing attitudes and, subsequently, behavior.…”