‘It Is Not Our Fault; It Is Our Professors’ Fault!’ Preservice Teachers’ Perspectives on Their Own Experiences in Teacher Education Classrooms

Year 2019, Volume: 8 Issue: 1, 141 - 156, 15.01.2019

Mustafa Yasar

https://doi.org/10.12973/eu-jer.8.1.141

Abstract

Teacher education programs are often accused of failing to prepare preservice teachers for real life classroom situations. In the case of research on classroom management, the focal point is often classroom teachers and their educational and behavioral goals rather than students’ experiences. This study aims to explore the perspectives of preservice teachers on their attitudes and behaviors in the university classrooms. For this purpose, 40 preservice teachers, who studied in the Early Childhood Education department at a state university in Turkey, were selected. The interview was chosen as the data collection method. The interview questions were based on the questions that Cothran, Kulinna and Garrahy (2003) used in their study with the secondary physical education students. The collected data were analyzed by the constant comparison method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and common themes were constructed through the analytic induction method (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993). In this study, the findings indicated that incompatible behaviors served different functions in teacher education classrooms. The preservice teachers perceived punitive teacher responses to students’ negative behaviors as compelling, ineffective and mostly humiliating practices. The preservice teachers provided three main elements that affect their attitudes, behaviors and experiences in a teacher education classroom. These elements were related to students, teachers, and the context of the classroom. The preservice teachers perceived their positive or negative behaviors mostly as reactions to the behavior of the teacher and the classroom environment.

Keywords

Teacher education; preservice teachers; classroom management

References

• Allen, J. D. (1986). Classroom management: Students' perspectives, goals, and strategies. American Educational Research Journal, 23(3), 437-459.
• Allen, J. (1995). Friends, fairness, fun, and the freedom to choose: Hearing student voices. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 10(4), 286-301.
• Anderson, J. A. (1999). Faculty responsibility for promoting conflict-free college classrooms. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 77, 69-76.
• Balli, S. J. (2011) Pre-service teachers’ episodic memories of classroom management. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(2), 245-251.
• Boeije, H. (2002). A purposeful approach to the constant comparative method in the analysis of qualitative interviews. Quality & Quantity, 36(4), 391-409
• Caner, H.A. & Tertemiz, N. (2015). Beliefs, attitudes and classroom management: A study on prospective teachers. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 186, 155–160.
• Cerit, Y. (2011). The relationship between pre-service classroom teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and classroom management orientations. Dokuz Eylul University, Buca Faculty of Education Journal, 30, 156-174.
• Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Cothran, D.J., & Ennis, C.D. (1997). Students and teachers’ perceptions of conflict and power. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(5), 541-553.
• Cothran, D.J., & Ennis, C.D. (1998). Curricula of mutual worth: Comparisons of students’ and teachers’ curricular goals. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 17(3), 307-326.
• Cothran, D.J., & Ennis, C.D. (2000). Building bridges to student engagement: Communicating respect and care for students in urban high schools. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 33(2), 106-117.
• Cothran, D. J., Kulinna, P. H. & Garrahy, D. A. (2003). ‘‘This is kind of giving a secret away...’’: Students’ perspectives on effective class management. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19(4), 435–444.
• Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). Teacher education and the American future. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1-2), 35– 47.
• De Juanas, A. & Beltrán, J. A. (2012). Epistemological beliefs of students of pedagogy and sciences of the education. Revista de Psicodidáctica, 17(1), 1-16.
• Farrell, E., Peguero, G., Lindsey, R. & White, R. (1998). Giving voice to high school students: Pressure and boredom, Ya know what I'm sayin'? American Educational Research Journal, 25(4), 489-502.
• Fowler, J. & Sarapli, O. (2010). Telling ELT tales out of school. Classroom management: What ELT students expect. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 3, 94–97. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.07.017
• Garrick, J. (1999). Doubting the philosophical assumptions of interpretive research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 12(2), 147-156. doi:10.1080/095183999236222
• Giallo, R. & Little, E. (2003). Classroom behavior problems: The relationship between preparedness, classroom experiences, and self-efficacy in graduate and student teachers classroom behavior problems. Australian Journal of Educational & Developmental Psychology, 3, 21-34.
• Glaser, B.G., & Strauss, A.L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory. New York, NY: Macmillan.
• Gurcay, D. (2015). Preservice physics teacher’s beliefs regarding classroom management. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 174, 2430–2435.
• Harrist, A. W. & Bradley, K. D. (2003). “You can’t say you can’t play”: Intervening in the process of social exclusion in the kindergarten classroom. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 18(2), 185–205.
• Jamieson, D. W. & Thomas, D.W. (1974). Power and conflict in student-teacher relationship. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 10(3), 321-336.
• Knowlton, Katie A., (2014). Student perspectives of misbehavior. Unpublished dissertation. University of Western Ontario.
• Koepke, M. F. & Harkins, D. A. (2008). Conflict in the classroom: Gender differences in the teacher–child relationship. Early Education and Development, 19(6), 843-864. doi: 10.1080/10409280802516108
• Kunter, M., Baumert, J., & Koller, O. (2007). Effective classroom management and the development of subject-related interest. Learning and Instruction, 17(5), 494-509.
• LeCompte, M.D., & Preissle, J. (1993). Ethnography and qualitative design in educational research (2d ed.). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
• Lewis, R. (2001). Classroom discipline and student responsibility: the students' view. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(3), 307-319.
• Lewis, R., & Lovegrove, M. N. (1987). What students think of teachers’ classroom control techniques: Results from four studies. In J. Hastings and J. Schwieso (eds.), New Directions in Educational Psychology, Vol. 2: Behavior and Motivation (pp. 93-113). Philadelphia, PA: The Falmer Press.
• Lewis, R., Romi, S., Qui, X. & Katz, Y. J. (2005). Teachers’ classroom discipline and student misbehavior in Australia, China and Israel. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(6), 729–741.
• Little, S. G., & Akin-Little, K. A. (2008). Psychology’s contributions to classroom management. Psychology in the Schools, 45(3), 227-234
• Lortie, D. C. (2002). Schoolteacher: A sociological study (2nd Ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago.
• MacAulay, D.J. (1990). Classroom environment: A literature review. Educational Psychology, 10(3), 239-253.
• Miller, A., E. Ferguson, & I. Byrne. (2000). Pupils’ causal attributions for difficult classroom behavior. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 70(1), 85–96
• Morse, J. M. & Field, P. A. Anne (1996). Nursing research. The application of qualitative approaches (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Springer.
• Patton, M.Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Pereira, N. & Gates, J. (2013). Perceived classroom management needs of pre-service teachers. Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children, 2(1), 1-17.
• Reupert, A. & Woodcock, S. (2010). Success and near misses: Pre-service teachers’ use, confidence and success in various classroom management strategies. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(6), 1261-1268.
• Sadler, T. D. (2006). “I won’t last three weeks”: Preservice science teachers reflect on their student-teaching experiences. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 17(3), 217–241. doi: 10.1007/s10972-005-9004-1
• Stake, R. E. (2010). Qualitative research: Studying how things work. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
• Stoughton, E.H. (2007). ‘‘How will I get them to behave?’’: Preservice teachers reflect on classroom management. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(7), 1024–1037.
• Strauss, A. L. (1987). Qualitative analysis for social scientists. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Sun, R. C. F. & Shek, D. T. L. (2012). Classroom Misbehavior in the eyes of students: A qualitative study. The Scientific World Journal, 2012, 1-8. doi:10.1100/2012/398482
• Supaporn, S. (2000). High school students' perspectives about misbehavior. Physical Educator, 57(3), 124-135.
• Tantleff-Dunn, S., Dunn, M. E., & Gokee, J. L. (2002). Understanding faculty–student conflict: Student perceptions of precipitating events and faculty responses. Teaching of Psychology, 29(3), 197-202. doi: 10.1207/S15328023TOP2903_03
• Tiberius, R. G. & Billson, J. (1991). The social context of teaching and learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 45, 67-86. doi: 10.1002%2Ftl.37219914509
• van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Weinstein, C. S. (1998). "I want to be nice, but I have to be mean": Exploring prospective teachers' conceptions of caring and order. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(2), 153 163.
• Wubbels, T. & Brekelmans, M. (2005). Chapter 1. Two decades of research on teacher–student relationships in class. International Journal of Educational Research, 43(1-2), 6–24.
• Wubbels, T., Créton, H. A. & Holvast, A. (1988). Undesirable classroom situations: a systems communication perspective. Interchange, 19(2), 25-40.
• Yasar, M. (2011). Resistance and solidarity within a cohort of preservice teachers. In D.F. Fernie, S. Madrid, and R. Kantor, (Eds). Educating toddlers to teachers: Learning to see and influence the school and peer cultures of classroom (pp. 199-225). New York: Hampton Press.
• Yasar, M. (2017). Adaptation of General System Theory and Structural Family Therapy approach to classroom management in early childhood education. Cukurova University Faculty of Education Journal, 46(2), 665-696.
• Zeidner, M. (1988). The relative severity of common classroom management strategies: The student's perspective. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 58(1), 69-77.