How Will Student Teachers Become Teachers to Make “Transition of Children” in Japan?: To Automate before Sensemaking

Author(s):

Takashi Tohyama(presenting / submitting)Tadashi Asada Shigekazu Yoshida Yasuyuki Nisihara

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 09 A,

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

11:00-12:30

Room:

VII. Előadó [C]

Chair:

Cheryl Williams

Contribution

(Research Question)

Why can’t student teachers teach well?

Why microteachings change student teachers to good teachers?

What changes happened in expertise of teacher?

(Theoretical Framework)

In Japan, almost all candidates for teacher receive “teacher education” at college or university. And they get license before they begin to work at school.

They have much knowledge of pedagogy and teaching methods, but they can’t teach well, and can’t make “transition of children”. This is a big problem of Japanese teacher education like as other countries.

In Japan, one of major teacher training method before “practice teaching” is microteaching (teaching & reflection).

However most student teachers in Japan don't have many opportunities of microteaching before their 2-4 weeks “practice teaching”.

For that reason, we need to clarify development of student teachers in microteaching and improve microteaching. We were investigating what difficulty most student teachers feel in microteaching (Tohyama, Yoshida, & Nisihara, 2013; Tohyama, Asada, Yoshida, & Nisihara, 2013; Tohyama, Yoshida, Nisihara, & Asada, 2014). In these research, it is revealed as follows;

1) Student teachers try to act as plans of their behavior, but they can’t. They are often confused. And they can’t deal with unexpected situation and reactions from students.

2) In the reflection of 1st microteaching, some student teachers refer comparison between their behavior and plan. They can’t refer what students think and understand.

3) In the reflection of 2^nd or 3^rd microteaching, some student teachers refer reaction and behavior of students. And references of comparison between their behavior and plan decreased.

These may means as follows;

1) In expertise of teacher, at first student teachers think about their behavior in class.

2) And they have more experiences of class, they think less about their behavior in class, and more about student’s behavior, understand, and “transition”.

3) In “short-term (working) memory” article, it is presented existence of limit of thinking in same time (Allen & Baddeley, 2009; Cowan, 2001; Miller, 1956).

So, It is hypothesized that;

1) For expertise of teacher, Student teacher can’t increase quantity of thinking. They should change quality of thinking.

2) For expertise of teacher, Student teachers need to automate their planned behavior.

3) With automation, they have room of thinking about better Teaching.

4) For better teaching, “Transition of Children”, teacher should think about not only their behavior and students’ present behavior in class, but also students’ behavior, thinking, and values in past and future/

In this study, We compare contents of references about teaching a between student teachers in 1^st microteaching, 2^nd , 3^rd microteaching and a rookie teacher.

Method

(Methods of Data Acquisition) Micro Teaching 9 student teachers (3 female, 6 male) and 1 rookie teacher participated in this time. Student teachers belonged to the teacher training course of the health and physical education. Some students wanted to become junior high school teacher, and others wanted to become high school teacher. They had no previous experience of teaching. A rookie teacher teaches health and physical education in junior high school. 9 student teachers, college students (20-21 years old), participate some microteachings. They had sessions of reflection after teaching session. A rookie teacher (24 years old) cooperated interview about reflection of thinking in his class. (Analysis Procedures) The contents of reference in reflection were analyzed with a text mining method. All sentences categorized in 2 dimensions, degree of easy to understand and distance from “now”. Degree of easy to understand include “What I think”, “What I act”, “What student(s) do”, and “What student(s) think”. Distance from “Now” include “Now”, “Near future”, “Near past”, “Remote future”, and “Remote past”. Frequency were compared between references from student teachers and references from rookie teacher with Chi-square test and residual analysis.

Expected Outcomes

(Outcomes) 1) In the reflection on 1st microteaching, most of references were categorized in “What I think”, “What I act” and “Now”, “Near future”, “Near past”. 2) With increase in experiences, ratio of references about “What student(s) do (behavior)”, “What student(s) think (beliefs, values)” and “Near future”, “Near past”, “Remote future”, and “Remote past” were increased. 3) With increase in experiences, ratio of references about “What I think”, “What I act”, and “Now” were Decreased. (Conclusion) In expertise of teacher, “Sensemaking”(Weick, 1995; Maitlis & Christianso, 2014) may occur. But in this study, changes in teachers with experiences are commonplace in Japan; teachers have more experiences, teachers more think about transition of students’ beliefs and values, and more think about remote past and future of students. All student teachers may have fundamental pedagogical knowledge that teachers should think about students’ values and beliefs in remote future. These outcomes suggest 3 things. 1) Teaching experiences extend controllable ranges of teachers in their class. 2) Teachers with experiences automate their teaching activity, and they have room for think about other things. 3) Before change of sensemaking, teacher must automate their teaching activity. Microteaching have the three different phases; knowledge acquisition, skill acquisition, and transfer (Remesh, 2013). And it may need to automate teaching activity of student teachers.

References

Allen, R. J., & Baddeley, A. D. (2009). Working memory and sentence recall. In A. Thorn & M. Page (Eds.), Interactions Between Short-Term and Long-Term Memory in the Verbal Domain. Hove and New York: Psychology Press. pp. 63-85. Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 87-185. Maitlis, S., Christianson, M. (2014). Sensemaking in organizations: Taking stock and moving forward. The Academy of Management Annals, 8, 57–125. Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97. Remesh, A. (2013). Microteaching, an efficient technique for learning effective teaching. Journal of Research in Medical Sciences 18, 158–163. Tohyama, T., Yoshida S., & Nisihara Y. (2013). The microscopic development of candidates: Changes in reflections on teaching with physiological index. Proceedings of the 29th National Convention of Japan Society for Educational Technology, 747-748. Tohyama, T., Asada, T., Yoshida S., & Nisihara Y. (2013). Mental workload of Japanese candidates for teacher in microteaching. 10th Annual Action Research Conference. Tohyama, T., Yoshida S., Nisihara Y., & Asada T. (2014). The Reflection of the First Micro-teaching by Students of Teacher Training Course. Proceedings of the 30th National Convention of Japan Society for Educational Technology, 641-642. Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking. Organization Science, 16, 409–421.

Author Information

Takashi Tohyama (presenting / submitting)

Niigata University of health and welfare

Niigata-city Niigata

Tadashi Asada

Waseda University

Shigekazu Yoshida

Niigata University of health and welfare, Japan

Yasuyuki Nisihara