Session Information
10 SES 08 C, Parallel Paper Session
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
Teaching practicum is a central element in most teacher preparation programmes. However the assessment of students’ competence during practicum remains problematic. There are a number of contentious issues, not least the debate around competence versus competencies. The development of sets or lists of teacher competencies, dimensions or standards is a world-wide phenomenon, embedded in a much larger ‘master narrative’ of economic, social and political issues. However, in education what we label as standards are socially constructed, frequently fuzzy and require shared understandings by the community of practice. Building a shared understanding around assessment of student teachers’ competence is particularly significant for student teachers on their final practicum since these assessments have important consequences for the prospective teachers and the students they will teach as they begin teaching. Yet little is known about how these judgements of 'readiness to teach' are made.
This paper reports part of a study that is investigating judgements of readiness to teach. The research partners are a faculty of education and four primary schools. The study was funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s Teaching and Learning Research Initiative. The study uses a range of data sources to investigate how teachers and faculty make judgements of readiness to teach, and documents processes and strategies that enhance the authenticity and trustworthiness of such judgements. The overall research questions guiding the study are: How is graduating students’ readiness to teach ascertained by those who judge them in diverse practice settings? To what extent are these judgements authentic, trustworthy and evidence-based?
Making judgements about complex performances, such as teaching, is a sophisticated process. High stakes judgements, such as determining whether a prospective teacher is capable of independent teaching, involve both conscious and unconscious processes. Teachers are accustomed to making many judgements each day as they work with students and student teachers. Not all these judgements can be conscious and deliberate, which leads over time to the development of an 'instinct' about things that happen in a classroom.
Social Judgement Theory (SJT) (Hammond, Rohrbaugh, Mumpower, & Adelman, 1977) attempts to model how judgements are made in complex social settings so that we can understand and improve important judgement processes, such as assessing readiness to teach. Social Judgement Theory employs a lens model to describe the judgement process. The theory pays close attention to the context of the judgement, and to the cues and policies employed by the judges. This makes it suitable for considering the diverse practicum contexts in which prospective teachers are trying to demonstrate their competence.
In order to consider judgements of readiness to teach within a SJT framework we needed to tap into the cues and policies employed by teachers and faculty in making their decisions about prospective teachers. This necessitated the development of an interview protocol to provide answers to the question: What aspects of a student teacher’s practice are considered when judgments of their ‘readiness to teach’ are made? This paper describes the interview procedure and the findings it generated.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Hammond, K., Rohrbaugh, J., Mumpower, J., & Adelman, L. (1977). Social judgement theory: Applications in policy formation. In M. Kaplan & S. Schwartz (Eds.), Human judgment and decision processes in applied settings (pp. 1-29). New York: Academic Press.
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