'Teaching in the eyes of beholders': Preservice teachers' reasons for teaching and their beliefs about teaching.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to investigate Preservice Teachers’ (PTs') reasons for teaching, their beliefs about teaching and, their understanding of the goal of becoming teachers. Specifically, my intention in this study was to explore what specific reasons for entering the teaching career PTs have, and what typologies (clusters) of PTs exist based on their reasons for teaching. Further, across the clusters of PTs, their beliefs about teaching were investigated, all these in the context of PTs’ understanding their goals to become teachers..;Overall, the study results indicated a variety of reasons for teaching and beliefs about teaching expressed by PTs in their survey and interview responses. Findings from both the quantitative and qualitative analyses indicated that specific reasons were relevant for each group cluster of PTs in their teaching career choices. Quantitative results from the factor analysis conducted for the participants’ RTQ responses indicated six main categories of reasons (i.e., factors) that PTs expressed as being influential in their choices to become teachers. Overall, these factors (i.e., subscales) were reasons related to PTs’ identity issues, reasons related to PTs’ subject matter, reasons related to PTs’ meaningful relationships, reasons related to the teaching job benefits, reasons related to PTs’ holistic views of profession and reasons related to job opportunities through teaching. Further, a cluster analysis was conducted to identify clusters of PTs displaying similar motivational patterns for teaching. Results from the cluster analysis identified three different clusters of PTs, and showed that specific reasons were relevant for each cluster of PTs in their teaching career choices. Additionally, factor analyses results of PTs’ beliefs about teaching and learning indicated two categories of beliefs about schooling that PTs hold. These factors (i.e., subscales) were labeled as Student-centered perspective and Teacher-centered perspective. Furthermore, factor analyses results of PTs’ beliefs about the teaching career revealed three distinctive factors (i.e., subscales): Perception of the teaching career, Perception of student development and Perception of learning. Oneway analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post hoc tests, conducted to further explore the differences across clusters of PTs regarding their beliefs about schooling and beliefs about teaching career, showed significance differences across the three clusters of PTs.;Findings from the qualitative analysis brought more insights to understanding how PTs view their goal development with respect to their reasons for teaching and their beliefs about teaching. The interview results specifically provided more depth to understanding the interplay among PTs’ motivators and beliefs about teaching, and PTs’ actions, all key components, part of a comprehensive structural model with specific characteristics for each cluster of PTs. Qualitative data were analyzed by using the principles of grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 1989; Creswell, 2007). A grounded theory model was developed representing PTs’ understanding of their teaching goal development as related to four major categories: Motivators, Beliefs, Context, and Strategies. The developed model explained how PTs understand their goal development applied to all interview participants and further applied to the characteristics of the three clusters. Application of the grounded theory model to the clusters provided a better understanding of the interplay between various reasons for teaching and beliefs about teaching expressed by the participants within each cluster of PTs. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).;Participants were undergraduate students enrolled in the EDF 4210 Educational Psychology and EDF 4430 Classroom Assessment courses for the Spring semester 2007. The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, 215 participants completed a survey about PTs’ demographic data, PTs’ reasons for teaching and their beliefs about teaching. An initial quantitative analysis of participants’ responses for the Reasons for Teaching Questionnaire (RTQ) was made using factor analysis and cluster analysis, to establish groups/clusters of individuals displaying similar patterns regarding their reasons for teaching. For the second phase of the study a selected number of participants from the three clusters were recruited for an in-depth interview. Interview participants (N=25) were selected from survey respondents who indicated that they were willing to participate in a second phase of the study, the interview. The purpose of the interview was to explore PTs’ understanding of their goal to become a teacher, with respect to the clusters of PTs obtained previously.