The COVID-19 pandemic required many school districts and teacher preparation programs to make major changes to student teaching placements. Preservice students who completed student teaching during the academic year 2019- 2020 are now employed as first year teachers, yet the impact these changes had on teachers’ self-efficacy is not clear. First-year teachers (N=162) responded to a survey which included items from the teachers’ sense of self-efficacy scale (TSES) to understand how teacher self-efficacy differed based on disruptions to student teaching placements and current teaching modality (hybrid, virtual, in-person). Participant responses to quantitative survey items were analyzed using a two-way MANOVA, while a qualitative survey item was analyzed using thematic analysis. Results from the two-way MANOVA show a significant interaction at the
p
<.05 level between current teaching modality and change in student teaching placement on overall teacher self-efficacy (
p
=.003), student engagement (
p
=.005), and instructional strategies (
p
=.001). Thematic analysis resulted in 11 themes sorted into positive, neutral, or negative impact categories with the greatest number of themes in the negative impact category. Overall, the results add to the knowledge base about the importance of student teaching to teacher self-efficacy. Implications for higher education faculty, policymakers, and school leaders are discussed.
Teachers’ skill in fostering students’ engagement and limiting disruptive behavior is important for maintaining a safe, productive, and effective learning environment. Yet, teachers lacking specific training in classroom and behavior management continue to report higher levels of stress and are more likely to leave the profession (Ingersoll et al., 2018; Zabel & Zabel, 2002). Despite wide agreement from experts about the importance of developing classroom and behavior management skills, many teacher training programs do not require specified coursework or experiences to develop this skill set for teacher licensure or degree completion. In this article, we describe what we observe to be a disconnect between current requirements for and by teacher preparation programs, and the nature of adequate teacher training to appropriately manage and support student behavior. We argue that this disconnect currently contributes to a host of problematic outcomes observable in schools, including teacher attrition, racial disproportionality in discipline actions, and an over reliance on punitive and ineffective behavior support practices. We end our discussion with additional recommendations for improving teacher training and ensuring systems alignment.
Effective classroom management is critical for student and teacher success. Because teachers receive limited preservice preparation and in-service support in classroom management, educational leaders (e.g., school psychologists, behavior coaches, mentor teachers, and administrators) need efficient and effective tools to identify teachers’ strengths and needs and to guide professional development. Current approaches to assess teachers’ classroom management are either (a) simple and efficient, but have unknown psychometric properties, or (b) psychometrically sound, but resource intensive. Thus, a Classroom Management Observation Tool (CMOT) that is simple, efficient, and has promising psychometric properties would fill a critical need in the field. This article describes the initial development and validation of the CMOT—a four-item rating of teachers’ active supervision, opportunities to respond, specific praise, and positive to corrective ratio—and presents promising evidence of content validity, factor structure, interrater reliability, construct validity, and generalizability. Further research is needed to develop this tool for screening, progress monitoring, and other assessment purposes.
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