Title: Exploring Concerns of Business Student Teachers.
Abstract: Abstract Background: The student teaching internship is the culminating experience and has been cited as the most significant, exciting, and difficult experience teacher candidates will encounter throughout their entire teacher preparation program. In order to prepare business teacher candidates for their internships, it is critical to understand the issues and challenges they will face during their student teaching. Purpose: As such, the purpose of this research study was to explore the unique lived experiences and frames of references of business teacher candidates regarding their issues, challenges, and barriers during their student teaching internships. Method: A qualitative phenomenological approach was implemented based on three data sources: (a) an online questionnaire; (b) a semi-structured focus group interview; and (c) an analysis of weekly journal reflections. Results: Based on 16 business student teachers, this qualitative study found three primary concerns: (a) addressing classroom management; (b) issues with the quadratic relationship; and (c) having compromising priorities. Conclusions and Recommendations: Thus, it is critical that teacher educators discuss strategies and techniques for classroom management, help form synergistic relationships with qualified and passionate mentor teachers and university supervisors, and only assign coursework that are critical for the development of the student teachers in their internships. Keywords: business education, student teaching, teacher development, teacher education, triad relationship Exploring Concerns of Business Student Teachers The student teaching experience has been declared as the most significant, memorable, and powerful experience teacher candidates encounter during their teacher preparation programs (Valencia, Martin, Place, & Grossman, 2009). The student teaching internship is also a pivotal time for aspiring teachers, because it oftentimes solidifies their passion (or lack thereof) for teaching. Due to the significance of this experience, it becomes quite problematic for those teacher candidates who do not perform well or encounter substantial issues during their internships. This leaves university supervisors and mentor teachers in a predicament, particularly because at this point it is often too late to engage in corrective action. However, knowing what significant issues and concerns prior student teachers have experienced may be a more proactive strategy for teacher educators. Teaching concerns are most likely expressions indicating the motivation for revelatory learning (Fuller, Parsons, & Watkins, 1974). Thus, teaching students about topics of little concern may not be of perceived value for teacher candidates. As such, teacher educators aspire to understand and address articulated concerns of teacher candidates to better prepare them for their student teaching internships, and their subsequent teaching careers (Crews & Bodenhamer, 2009). Moreover, prior research has found that investigating student teachers' concerns is important because concerns lead to stress, and this in turn may result in less teacher effectiveness in terms of decreased student achievement (Cakmak, 2008). Purpose and Research Questions The purpose of this research study was to explore the unique lived experiences and frames of references of business teacher candidates regarding their issues, challenges, and barriers during their student teaching internships. The following research questions were examined in this study: 1. What themes emerge as meaningful to business teacher candidates when they describe their student teaching internships? 2. What do business teacher candidates identify as primary concerns during their student teaching internships? 3. How different are the concerns of business teacher candidates compared to other teacher education disciplines? Related Research Other disciplines in teacher education have examined the issue of student and practicing teacher concerns. …
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 8
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