How did this person ever get in the program? What factors contributed to this intern's outstanding success? Supervisors of student teachers and teacher preparation program faculty frequently ask these questions as they strive to improve the quality of the teachers they prepare. This study investigates the nature of outstanding and weak performance in a teaching internship and how to predict that performance.In this study of university supervisors' evaluations of interns in a year-long internship, we highlighted opposing groups, looking at interns identified as either outstanding or weak. Examining these extremes allowed us to look for contrasts and isolate critical variables that seem to have eluded us in looking at entire populations.Written assessments from supervisors were used to produce descriptions of weak and outstanding interns and to establish factors that appeared to contribute to either outstanding performance or weak performance in teaching. From student records a number of possible predictor variables were examined including undergraduate GPA, gender, age, placement in cluster sites (PDSs), grades in education courses, Graduate Record Examination scores (verbal, quantitative, and analytical) and both university professors' and cooperating teachers' recommendations from an early experience course taken prior to admission to internship.We looked at weakness rather than failure, since failure is determined by failing grades (which are extremely rare) or by failure to complete internship, which can be attributed to a number of causes other than actual potential for teaching. Marginal performance or weakness in internship, turned out to be all too frequent--representing 11% of interns surveyed in a program priding itself on excellence in its graduates. Sixteen percent of the sample were identified as outstanding interns. 272 M.D. ANDREW ET AL. ContextThe context for the study was the five-year program at the University of New Hampshire. This integrated, undergraduate-graduate program culminates in a yearlong internship at the graduate level. The five-year program begins with an undergraduate semester of early experience in which students complete 65 hours of classroom work that is focused on the performance of teaching tasks. Cooperating teachers supervise this experience and give students all the teaching responsibility they feel the student can handle. A university professor works closely with cooperating teachers and runs a weekly seminar focusing on the classroom teaching experience as well as other elements of schooling and the role of the teacher. Approximately thirty percent of students decide not to continue in the teacher education program as a result of this course. Many are counseled out, and honest feedback regarding teaching potential is stressed for both cooperating teachers and university faculty.In the senior year, students who successfully completed the early experience course and who have completed other required professional course work apply for the internship. Approximately 25% are de...
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