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How do teacher education faculty members define desirable teacher beliefs?
Tmchq & Teochcr Educamn. Printed I” Great Britam
Vol. 4. No. 3. pp. 267-273. lY88 0
0742-05lXBR S3.lW+O.W 1988 Pergarnon Press plc
HOW DO TEACHER EDUCATION FACULTY MEMBERS DEFINE DESIRABLE TEACHER BELIEFS?
BRUCE A. BROUSSEAU Michigan
and DONALD J. FREEMAN
State University,
U.S.A.
Abstract -
Fifty-seven teacher educators described (a) how graduates of their programs should respond to each item in an educational beliefs inventory, and (b) the extent of coverage they provided for each belief in their courses. Desired beliefs were also compared with measures of educational beliefs from 896 entry-level teacher candidates. Major findings include: Although faculty members said most beliefs should be shaped in a particular direction, they often disagreed on the desired direction. Faculty members were more likely to reinforce prevailing beliefs they judged as appropriate than to challenge inappropriate beliefs or to encourage students to develop their own informed positions regarding open-ended educational issues.
When educators contemplate reforms in teacher education curricula, they are most likely to think in terms of changes that will upgrade teacher candidates’ professional knowledge or teaching skills. But these views are short sighted. When attention centers on efforts to improve the ways candidates will ultimately act in their classrooms, it is evident that curriculum planners in teacher education must also consider educational dispositions and beliefs (see Ball & McDiarmid, 1987; Katz & Raths, 1985). Fenstermacher (1979) argues that, “If our purpose and intent are to change the practices of those who teach, it is necessary to come to grips with the subjectively reasonable beliefs of teachers” (p. 174). In a similar vein, FeimanNemser and Floden (1986) propose that, “Teacher education must build on or rebuild what teachers and teachers-to-be already believe about their work” (p. 523). But in what ways should teacher educators attempt to “build on or rebuild” teacher candidates’ beliefs? The basic purpose of this investigation was to examine the ways in which the teacher education faculty at Michigan State University
(MSU) defines desirable teacher beliefs. Two questions guided the design and data analyses: (1) to what extent do teacher education faculty members share common perceptions of desirable teacher beliefs?, and (2) which beliefs are faculty members most likely to emphasize in the courses they teach? Procedure Samp Ies The members of the teacher education faculty who participated in this study were instructors in five undergraduate teacher education programs offered by Michigan State’s College of Education. Of the 79 members of the faculty in these five programs, 57 (72%) completed the beliefs questionnaire. Analyses in this paper also considered the educational beliefs of teacher candidates at the time they entered one of MSU’s teacher preparation programs. Of the 1,321 students who enrolled in an introductory educational psychology course from fall term, 198.5through winter term, 1987, 896 (68%) responded to the entry-level survey. 267
268
BRUCE
A. BROUSSEAU
Instrument The questionnaire that plays a central role in this investigation is a modified version of the “MSU Educational Beliefs Inventory” (The Undergraduate Program Evaluation Committee, 1982). The version used here consists of 53 statements that are intended to reflect a representative sample of beliefs for each of Schwab’s (1958) four commonplaces of schooling (students, curriculum, social milieu, and teachers), plus a fifth category designed to capture beliefs about pedagogy. Entry-level teacher candidates were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed with each belief statement on a five-point Likert scale (where 1 = strongly agree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, and 5 = strongly disagree). In responding to a modified version of the student survey, members of the faculty were asked to make two judgments regarding each of the 53 statements in the inventory. The first was, “how should graduates of your program respond to each statement - should they agree, disagree, or make “either” response (i.e., express their own informed position)?” As a fourth option, faculty members could also say their interpretation of program goals did not provide an adequate indication of how program graduates should respond. The second question was, “to what extent do you deal with each opinion/belief in the courses you teach in this program?” The response options were, 1 = do not cover because it is not an important issue for teachers; 2 = do not cover for other reasons (e.g., likely to be covered by other courses in the program); 3 = cover, but don’t emphasize (i.e., less than 25 minutes of instruction); 4 = emphasize (i.e., more than 25 minutes of instruction is devoted to this issue). Derivation of Directionality and Emphasis Scores Faculty responses were summarized as “directionality” and “emphasis” scores. Directionality scores reflect the extent of agreement among faculty regarding the direction in which a belief should be shaped. Emphasis scores depict faculty reports of the extent to which they cover each belief in the courses they teach.
and DONALD
J. FREEMAN
Directionality scores were derived by coding responses to the first question as +1 when faculty said that program graduates should agree with a given statement, as zero when faculty said graduates should “adopt their own informed position after dealing with the statement as an open-ended issue in the program,” and as - 1 when they said graduates should disagree. When faculty members said they did not have an adequate basis for making a judgment. their responses were treated as missing data. Means were then calculated for each belief statement to establish the directionality score for that item. These scores could range from - 1 to +1 with values approaching either of these limits reflecting a high level of faculty agreement on the direction in which beliefs should be shaped. Moderate to low scores, on the other hand, could indicate that the faculty did not concur on the desired response, and/or that many members of the faculty felt the stated position should be treated as an open-ended issue. Emphasis scores were derived by coding responses to the second judgment on the faculty survey as 0 when faculty members reported they “did not cover” a belief in their course, as 1 when they said they “covered” a belief, and as 3 when they reported the belief was “emphasized”. Means were then calculated for each belief statement to establish the emphasis score for that item. Emphasis scores could therefore range from 0 to 3, with higher values reflecting more extensive coverage of a belief across courses in MSU’s teacher education programs.
Results To What Extent Do Teacher Education Faculty Members Share Common Perceptions of Desirable Teacher Beliefs? On average, participating faculty members said about two-thirds of the beliefs cited in the survey should be shaped in one direction or the other. But, as the frequency distribution of mean directionality scores in Table 1 indicates, members of the faculty did not always agree on the desired direction. According to the data summarized in the first row of Table 1, faculty members expressed “high” levels of agreement on the direction in
Teacher
269
Beliefs
Table 1 Frequency Distributions of “Mean Directionality Scores” with Associated “Mean Levels of Emphasis” (N = 57) Number of statements
Percent
Mean level of emphasis
(absolute value of directionality scores > 0.75)
11
20.8
1.53
(absolute value of directionality scores between 0.50 and 0.75)
14
26.4
1.39
(absolute value of directionality scores < 0.50)
28
52.8
0.96
Level of faculty agreement High
Moderate
Low
only 20.8% of the beliefs should be shaped. For the purpose of this analysis, high levels of agreement were arbitrarily defined as absolute directionality scores of 0.75 or higher. In order for directionality scores to reach this level, the number of faculty members in a given program who will persuade students towards a particular position must outnumber those who will attempt to shape the belief in the opposite direction by at least 75%. Examples of belief statements that yielded directionality scores at this level include: - School aged youngsters are capable of learning to accept responsibility for their own actions. - In even the most demanding subject areas, acquisition of academic knowledge is or can be made interesting and appealing to everyone. - Risk taking and making mistakes are essential components of social, emotional, and intellectual development. At the other end of the continuum, levels of faculty agreement were “low” for a majority of the items (52.8%) on the survey. Here, low levels of agreement were arbitrarily defined as absolute directionality scores of 0.50 or less. Directionality scores at this level indicate a lack of clearly established normative expectations to guide the faculty identification of desired responses (“right answers”). In the absence of recognized norms, faculty members might (a) make judgments of desired responses in accord with their own beliefs, or (b) take the position that the belief ought to be treated as an openended issue. Judging from the pattern of rewhich
sponses across this subset of 28 items, low directionality scores were more likely to result from the disagreements among the faculty regarding the direction in which a belief should be shaped than from a common perception that the belief statement should be dealt with as an openended issue. Faculty members often disagreed on the direction in which beliefs should be shaped. In fact, low directional scores could be attributed to this source for 18 (64.3%) of the 28 statements falling in the “low” category. Examples include: - No matter how hard they and their teachers try, some students who are placed in regular classrooms will never master all of the basic skills in reading and mathematics. - School learning is serious business; it doesn’t have to be fun. - A variety of face-to-face interactions with individuals from diverse cultures will not necessarily promote understanding and acceptance of those cultures. In contrast, the “either” option was the modal desired response for 10 (35.7%) of the 28 statements in this category. However, of these 10 statements there was only one for which a majority of the faculty (55%) reported that teacher candidates should “adopt their own informed position” [see statement (a) below]. Examples of statements that faculty members viewed as open-ended issues include: (a) Students who disrupt class activities day after day should be removed from regular classrooms.
270
BRUCE
A. BROUSSEAU
(b) Teachers in Grades 4-6 should assign at least 1 hour of homework every night. (c) Given the opportunity to choose, middleand high-school aged students will make viable decisions about what they need to learn. Which Beliefs are Most Likely to Be Emphasized? Relationship between emphasis and directionality scores. It should come as no surprise that
faculty members reported that some beliefs were emphasized to a greater extent than others. Mean emphasis scores ranged from 0.26 to 2.04 across the 53 statements in the inventory. It was therefore appropriate to consider the question of which beliefs were most likely to be emphasized. The final column of Table 1 describes the mean level of emphasis for each of the three categories of directionality scores. As these data indicate, the higher the agreement among faculty members regarding the position a graduate should take when responding to a particular belief statement, the higher the level of emphasis that issue was likely to receive. This relationship is also reflected in the correlation between directionality and emphasis scores. when the signs of the emphasis scores were set to match those of the directionality scores (i.e., plus or minus), the Pearson Product Moment correlation coefficient between directionality and emphasis scores was 0.52 (p < .OOl). Treating beliefs as open-ended issues. In a second series of analyses focusing on the question of which beliefs are most likely to be emphasized, we examined relations between the desired response faculty members reported for each belief statement (i.e., agree, disagree, or express their own opinion) and the levels of coverage members of the faculty said they provided for the statement (i.e., did not cover at all; covered, but did not emphasize; or emphasized) on an item-by-item basis. Here the focus of analysis shifts from relations based on summary statistics to relations suggested by a cross-tabulation breakdown of faculty responses for individual items in the inventory. Collectively, faculty members reported that program graduates should “agree” with about 45% of the statements on the survey and should
and DONALD
J. FREEMAN
“disagree” with roughly 22% of the items. They also indicated that they cover 33.6% of the statements in the first (“agree”) category and emphasize 39.2% of the beliefs of this type. The corresponding figures for statements in the “disagree” category were 34.6% covered and 32.0% emphasized. Thus, members of the faculty reported they were very likely to cover or emphasize beliefs they felt should be shaped in a particular direction. Contrast this with belief statements that faculty members said should be treated as openended issues [i.e., as issues for which graduates should “adopt their own informed position(s)“]. Collectively, faculty members said that about 26% of the statements on the inventory should be presented in this way. Whereas faculty members report that they covered 29.9% of the beliefs in this category, they emphasized only 16.1% of the beliefs of this type. Thus, faculty members reported they were far more likely to emphasize beliefs they felt should be shaped in a particular direction than those they said should be presented as open-ended issues. Comparing
faculty
and
student
responses.
These findings prompted one final set of analyses. As a test of the emerging hypothesis that members of the faculty typically reinforce (rather than challenge) prevailing educational beliefs, we contrasted the position faculty members said they wanted program graduates to assume with the responses students actually made to the 53 belief statements at the time they entered a teacher preparation program. The findings provided further support for the hypothesis. The responses of entry-level candidates were basically in accord with the position faculty members report that program graduates should adopt for 44 of the 53 belief statements. Table 2 describes response patterns for the nine belief statements in which the entry-level students and faculty were in greatest accord. There was a significant mismatch between beliefs held by teacher candidates at the time they entered a program and the desired response identified by faculty for only nine of the 53 statements in the survey. Table 3 describes the response patterns for these nine statements. Data presented in Tables 2 and 3 also describe the percentage of faculty members
271
Teacher Beliefs Table 2 Statemenrs Reflecting High Levels of Studenr and Faculty Accord Agree (%)
Statement
Disagree (%)
Emphasis (%) 45.5
School-aged youngsters are capable of learning to accept responsibility for their own actions
Faculty Student
94.7 85.3
0.0
Risk taking and making mistakes are essential components of social, emotional, and intellectual development
Faculty Student
89.5 93.3
1.8 1.2
42.9
Schools can reduce racism among students
Faculty Student
77.2 70.5
0.0
23.2
When working with slow learners, teachers should focus nearly all of their instruction on “minimum competency” objectives
Faculty Student
3.6 9.5
76.4 64.6
24.1
Subject-matter courses should stress the way knowledge is derived in the corresponding academic disciplines (e.g., why statements are or are not accepted as historical facts)
Faculty Student
63.0 56.0
5.6 3.9
24.5
Planning for instruction should almost always begin with a systematic diagnosis of student needs
Faculty Student
74.5 82.4
5.5 2.5
54.7
In general, the more a teacher knows about a subject, the better able she/he is to teach the subject effectively
Faculty Student
70.9 72.3
10.9 17.2
43.4
To be a good teacher, one must continually test and refine the assumptions and beliefs that guide his/her approach to teaching
Faculty Student
94.5 88.4
1.8 2.9
43.3
The development and delivery of a lesson plan should always be guided by a clear statement of what students are expected to learn
Faculty Student
83.6 86.1
0.0
61.1
7.2
7.8
3.9
All entries are percents. Faculty (n = 57); student responses (n = 896). Totals do not sum to 100% because “other” responses are not included here. Other responses for faculty are “either” (i.e., treat as open-ended issue) and “neither” (i.e., not enough information for judgment). The “other” response for students is “neither agree nor disagree.”
who reported they emphasize each belief in the course(s) they teach. These percentages were considerably higher for the nine items where the faculty and entry-level students were in the greatest accord (mean = 40.3%) than for the nine statements in which they had the least accord (mean = 22.2%). In other words, faculty members were more likely to emphasize issues on which they and their students already agreed than beliefs on which there was a conflict between students’ initial positions and those which the faculty viewed as desirable.
Conclusion Floden (1985) argues that teacher educators should be aware of teacher candidates’ beliefs and their rationales for taking the positions they hold. In his words, “If a teacher educator knows what teachers initially believe, he may take pains to discredit those initial beliefs, or to show how their plausibility is attributable to relationships not previously considered” (p. 28). This statement suggests that teacher educators should emphasize beliefs that (a) should be dis-
272
BRUCE
A. BROUSSEAU
and DONALD
J. FREEMAN
Table 3 Statements
Reflecting
Low Levels of Student and Faculty Accord
Statement
Agree f%)
Disagree (%)
Emphasis I%)
Some students do not have the innate ability to learn difficult concepts such as those taught in advanced high school courses in science and mathematics
Facultv
29.8 51.3
57.9 29.7
18.2
Within the classroom setting, nearly all students try to be fair, cooperative, and reasonable in their relations with other students and their teacher
Faculty Student
53.6 30.9
8.9 46.8
18.5
No matter how hard they and their teachers try, some students who are placed in regular classrooms will never master all of the basic skills in reading and mathematics
Faculty Student
24.6 42.6
40.4 32.2
29.1
In general, teachers’ decisions regarding “how to teach” are more important than their decisions of “what to teach”
Faculty Student
19.3 58.2
36.8 15.3
47.3
Teachers in Grades 4-6should assign at least 1 hour of homework every night
Faculty Student
10.7 39.2
26.8 26.4
7.3
With the exception of specialized programs, all schools in a district ought to teach the same content in a given grade and/or subject area
Faculty Student
10.9 47.7
50.9 23.9
16.7
When making educational decisions, teachers should rely on what “feels right” instead of “what available information suggests is right” whenever these two sources conflict
Faculty Student
7.4 42.7
51.9 19.4
34.6
Nearly all parents and schools
Faculty Student
41.8 21.7
18.2 50.2
9.4
Faculty Student
30.9 31.0
30.9 42.8
22.6
are supportive
of teachers
When a teaching strategy works in one class, it is very likely to work in a different class with the same age group, subject, and teacher
All entries are percents. Faculty (n = 57); student responses (n = 896). Totals do not sum to 100% because “other” responses are not included here. Other responses for faculty are “either” (i.e., treat as open-ended issue) and “neither” (i.e., not enough information for judgment). The “other” response for students is “neither agree nor disagree.”
credited, or (b) are held for inappropriate reasons. However, our data indicate that quite the opposite may be true in regard to beliefs that should be discredited. It is also reasonable to expect that teacher educators will encourage candidates to consider several legitimate schools of thought regarding critical educational issues prior to adopting their own informed opinions. But efforts to present more than one school of thought will generally require more instructional time than efforts
to present a particular point of view. One would therefore expect that the professors in this study would report they typically spend more time covering beliefs that should be presented as open-ended issues than beliefs they hope to shape in a particular direction. However, our data indicate that quite the opposite may be true. Reduced to simplest terms, the results of this investigation suggest that teacher education faculty members at MSU are more likely to reinforce prevailing beliefs than to challenge in-
Teacher
appropriate beliefs or to encourage the development of informed beliefs regarding critical educational issues. Some authors such as Lot-tie (1975) and Tabachnick and Zeichner (1984) have argued that because teacher candidates’ perspectives have been shaped and internalized during the thousands of hours they have spent as students in K-12 classrooms, teacher preparation programs generally have a limited impact on educational beliefs. In one sense, the results of this study support this argument. In general, the stronger the normative expectations guiding faculty identifications of desired responses, the stronger the tendency of entry-level candidates to respond in accord with those norms. However, this study suggests that the limited influence of teacher preparation programs may also be traced to: (a) a frequent lack of consensus among program faculty as to the ways in which beliefs should be shaped, and/or (b) faculty’s collective failure to challenge inappropriate prevailing beliefs or to encourage students to form their own positions regarding educational issues faculty classify as open-ended. It is important to recognize that this investigation did not examine students’ rationales for the beliefs in the teaching context. It is possible that teacher preparation programs influence educational beliefs in one or both of these ways. Despite this and other limitations, the results of this investigation provide clear support for the premise that educational beliefs should become
273
Beliefs
an explicit, rather than an implicit component of teacher education curricula.
References Ball, D. & McDiarmid. W. (1987). Understanding how teacher knowledge changes. Colloquy. 1 (pp. 9-13). Michigan State University, East Lansing: National Centre for Research on Teacher Education. Feiman-Nemser, S. & Floden, R. E. (1986). The culturesof teaching. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.). Handbook ofresearch and reaching (3rd ed., pp. 505-526). New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Fenstermacher, G. D. (1979). A philosophical consideration of recent research on teacher effectiveness. In L. S. Shulman (Ed.), Review of research in education, Vol. 6 (pp. 173-198). Itasca: F. E. Peacock. FIoden, R. E. (1985). The role of rhetoric in changing teachers’ beliefs. Teaching and Teacher Education. 1.19 32. The Undergraduate Program Evaluation Committee. (1982). Michigan State University educational beliefs inventory. East Lansing: Office of Program Evaluation, College of Education. Katz, L. & Raths, J. (1985). Dispositions as goals for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 1. 301-307. Lottie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schwab, J. J. (1958). The teaching of science as inquiry. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 14, 374-379. Tabachnick, B. R. & Zeichner, K. M. (1984). The impact of the student teaching experience on the development of teacher perspectives. Journal of Teacher Education, 35 (6), 28-36.
Received 8 January 1988 0
Vol. 4. No. 3. pp. 267-273. lY88 0
0742-05lXBR S3.lW+O.W 1988 Pergarnon Press plc
HOW DO TEACHER EDUCATION FACULTY MEMBERS DEFINE DESIRABLE TEACHER BELIEFS?
BRUCE A. BROUSSEAU Michigan
and DONALD J. FREEMAN
State University,
U.S.A.
Abstract -
Fifty-seven teacher educators described (a) how graduates of their programs should respond to each item in an educational beliefs inventory, and (b) the extent of coverage they provided for each belief in their courses. Desired beliefs were also compared with measures of educational beliefs from 896 entry-level teacher candidates. Major findings include: Although faculty members said most beliefs should be shaped in a particular direction, they often disagreed on the desired direction. Faculty members were more likely to reinforce prevailing beliefs they judged as appropriate than to challenge inappropriate beliefs or to encourage students to develop their own informed positions regarding open-ended educational issues.
When educators contemplate reforms in teacher education curricula, they are most likely to think in terms of changes that will upgrade teacher candidates’ professional knowledge or teaching skills. But these views are short sighted. When attention centers on efforts to improve the ways candidates will ultimately act in their classrooms, it is evident that curriculum planners in teacher education must also consider educational dispositions and beliefs (see Ball & McDiarmid, 1987; Katz & Raths, 1985). Fenstermacher (1979) argues that, “If our purpose and intent are to change the practices of those who teach, it is necessary to come to grips with the subjectively reasonable beliefs of teachers” (p. 174). In a similar vein, FeimanNemser and Floden (1986) propose that, “Teacher education must build on or rebuild what teachers and teachers-to-be already believe about their work” (p. 523). But in what ways should teacher educators attempt to “build on or rebuild” teacher candidates’ beliefs? The basic purpose of this investigation was to examine the ways in which the teacher education faculty at Michigan State University
(MSU) defines desirable teacher beliefs. Two questions guided the design and data analyses: (1) to what extent do teacher education faculty members share common perceptions of desirable teacher beliefs?, and (2) which beliefs are faculty members most likely to emphasize in the courses they teach? Procedure Samp Ies The members of the teacher education faculty who participated in this study were instructors in five undergraduate teacher education programs offered by Michigan State’s College of Education. Of the 79 members of the faculty in these five programs, 57 (72%) completed the beliefs questionnaire. Analyses in this paper also considered the educational beliefs of teacher candidates at the time they entered one of MSU’s teacher preparation programs. Of the 1,321 students who enrolled in an introductory educational psychology course from fall term, 198.5through winter term, 1987, 896 (68%) responded to the entry-level survey. 267
268
BRUCE
A. BROUSSEAU
Instrument The questionnaire that plays a central role in this investigation is a modified version of the “MSU Educational Beliefs Inventory” (The Undergraduate Program Evaluation Committee, 1982). The version used here consists of 53 statements that are intended to reflect a representative sample of beliefs for each of Schwab’s (1958) four commonplaces of schooling (students, curriculum, social milieu, and teachers), plus a fifth category designed to capture beliefs about pedagogy. Entry-level teacher candidates were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed with each belief statement on a five-point Likert scale (where 1 = strongly agree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, and 5 = strongly disagree). In responding to a modified version of the student survey, members of the faculty were asked to make two judgments regarding each of the 53 statements in the inventory. The first was, “how should graduates of your program respond to each statement - should they agree, disagree, or make “either” response (i.e., express their own informed position)?” As a fourth option, faculty members could also say their interpretation of program goals did not provide an adequate indication of how program graduates should respond. The second question was, “to what extent do you deal with each opinion/belief in the courses you teach in this program?” The response options were, 1 = do not cover because it is not an important issue for teachers; 2 = do not cover for other reasons (e.g., likely to be covered by other courses in the program); 3 = cover, but don’t emphasize (i.e., less than 25 minutes of instruction); 4 = emphasize (i.e., more than 25 minutes of instruction is devoted to this issue). Derivation of Directionality and Emphasis Scores Faculty responses were summarized as “directionality” and “emphasis” scores. Directionality scores reflect the extent of agreement among faculty regarding the direction in which a belief should be shaped. Emphasis scores depict faculty reports of the extent to which they cover each belief in the courses they teach.
and DONALD
J. FREEMAN
Directionality scores were derived by coding responses to the first question as +1 when faculty said that program graduates should agree with a given statement, as zero when faculty said graduates should “adopt their own informed position after dealing with the statement as an open-ended issue in the program,” and as - 1 when they said graduates should disagree. When faculty members said they did not have an adequate basis for making a judgment. their responses were treated as missing data. Means were then calculated for each belief statement to establish the directionality score for that item. These scores could range from - 1 to +1 with values approaching either of these limits reflecting a high level of faculty agreement on the direction in which beliefs should be shaped. Moderate to low scores, on the other hand, could indicate that the faculty did not concur on the desired response, and/or that many members of the faculty felt the stated position should be treated as an open-ended issue. Emphasis scores were derived by coding responses to the second judgment on the faculty survey as 0 when faculty members reported they “did not cover” a belief in their course, as 1 when they said they “covered” a belief, and as 3 when they reported the belief was “emphasized”. Means were then calculated for each belief statement to establish the emphasis score for that item. Emphasis scores could therefore range from 0 to 3, with higher values reflecting more extensive coverage of a belief across courses in MSU’s teacher education programs.
Results To What Extent Do Teacher Education Faculty Members Share Common Perceptions of Desirable Teacher Beliefs? On average, participating faculty members said about two-thirds of the beliefs cited in the survey should be shaped in one direction or the other. But, as the frequency distribution of mean directionality scores in Table 1 indicates, members of the faculty did not always agree on the desired direction. According to the data summarized in the first row of Table 1, faculty members expressed “high” levels of agreement on the direction in
Teacher
269
Beliefs
Table 1 Frequency Distributions of “Mean Directionality Scores” with Associated “Mean Levels of Emphasis” (N = 57) Number of statements
Percent
Mean level of emphasis
(absolute value of directionality scores > 0.75)
11
20.8
1.53
(absolute value of directionality scores between 0.50 and 0.75)
14
26.4
1.39
(absolute value of directionality scores < 0.50)
28
52.8
0.96
Level of faculty agreement High
Moderate
Low
only 20.8% of the beliefs should be shaped. For the purpose of this analysis, high levels of agreement were arbitrarily defined as absolute directionality scores of 0.75 or higher. In order for directionality scores to reach this level, the number of faculty members in a given program who will persuade students towards a particular position must outnumber those who will attempt to shape the belief in the opposite direction by at least 75%. Examples of belief statements that yielded directionality scores at this level include: - School aged youngsters are capable of learning to accept responsibility for their own actions. - In even the most demanding subject areas, acquisition of academic knowledge is or can be made interesting and appealing to everyone. - Risk taking and making mistakes are essential components of social, emotional, and intellectual development. At the other end of the continuum, levels of faculty agreement were “low” for a majority of the items (52.8%) on the survey. Here, low levels of agreement were arbitrarily defined as absolute directionality scores of 0.50 or less. Directionality scores at this level indicate a lack of clearly established normative expectations to guide the faculty identification of desired responses (“right answers”). In the absence of recognized norms, faculty members might (a) make judgments of desired responses in accord with their own beliefs, or (b) take the position that the belief ought to be treated as an openended issue. Judging from the pattern of rewhich
sponses across this subset of 28 items, low directionality scores were more likely to result from the disagreements among the faculty regarding the direction in which a belief should be shaped than from a common perception that the belief statement should be dealt with as an openended issue. Faculty members often disagreed on the direction in which beliefs should be shaped. In fact, low directional scores could be attributed to this source for 18 (64.3%) of the 28 statements falling in the “low” category. Examples include: - No matter how hard they and their teachers try, some students who are placed in regular classrooms will never master all of the basic skills in reading and mathematics. - School learning is serious business; it doesn’t have to be fun. - A variety of face-to-face interactions with individuals from diverse cultures will not necessarily promote understanding and acceptance of those cultures. In contrast, the “either” option was the modal desired response for 10 (35.7%) of the 28 statements in this category. However, of these 10 statements there was only one for which a majority of the faculty (55%) reported that teacher candidates should “adopt their own informed position” [see statement (a) below]. Examples of statements that faculty members viewed as open-ended issues include: (a) Students who disrupt class activities day after day should be removed from regular classrooms.
270
BRUCE
A. BROUSSEAU
(b) Teachers in Grades 4-6 should assign at least 1 hour of homework every night. (c) Given the opportunity to choose, middleand high-school aged students will make viable decisions about what they need to learn. Which Beliefs are Most Likely to Be Emphasized? Relationship between emphasis and directionality scores. It should come as no surprise that
faculty members reported that some beliefs were emphasized to a greater extent than others. Mean emphasis scores ranged from 0.26 to 2.04 across the 53 statements in the inventory. It was therefore appropriate to consider the question of which beliefs were most likely to be emphasized. The final column of Table 1 describes the mean level of emphasis for each of the three categories of directionality scores. As these data indicate, the higher the agreement among faculty members regarding the position a graduate should take when responding to a particular belief statement, the higher the level of emphasis that issue was likely to receive. This relationship is also reflected in the correlation between directionality and emphasis scores. when the signs of the emphasis scores were set to match those of the directionality scores (i.e., plus or minus), the Pearson Product Moment correlation coefficient between directionality and emphasis scores was 0.52 (p < .OOl). Treating beliefs as open-ended issues. In a second series of analyses focusing on the question of which beliefs are most likely to be emphasized, we examined relations between the desired response faculty members reported for each belief statement (i.e., agree, disagree, or express their own opinion) and the levels of coverage members of the faculty said they provided for the statement (i.e., did not cover at all; covered, but did not emphasize; or emphasized) on an item-by-item basis. Here the focus of analysis shifts from relations based on summary statistics to relations suggested by a cross-tabulation breakdown of faculty responses for individual items in the inventory. Collectively, faculty members reported that program graduates should “agree” with about 45% of the statements on the survey and should
and DONALD
J. FREEMAN
“disagree” with roughly 22% of the items. They also indicated that they cover 33.6% of the statements in the first (“agree”) category and emphasize 39.2% of the beliefs of this type. The corresponding figures for statements in the “disagree” category were 34.6% covered and 32.0% emphasized. Thus, members of the faculty reported they were very likely to cover or emphasize beliefs they felt should be shaped in a particular direction. Contrast this with belief statements that faculty members said should be treated as openended issues [i.e., as issues for which graduates should “adopt their own informed position(s)“]. Collectively, faculty members said that about 26% of the statements on the inventory should be presented in this way. Whereas faculty members report that they covered 29.9% of the beliefs in this category, they emphasized only 16.1% of the beliefs of this type. Thus, faculty members reported they were far more likely to emphasize beliefs they felt should be shaped in a particular direction than those they said should be presented as open-ended issues. Comparing
faculty
and
student
responses.
These findings prompted one final set of analyses. As a test of the emerging hypothesis that members of the faculty typically reinforce (rather than challenge) prevailing educational beliefs, we contrasted the position faculty members said they wanted program graduates to assume with the responses students actually made to the 53 belief statements at the time they entered a teacher preparation program. The findings provided further support for the hypothesis. The responses of entry-level candidates were basically in accord with the position faculty members report that program graduates should adopt for 44 of the 53 belief statements. Table 2 describes response patterns for the nine belief statements in which the entry-level students and faculty were in greatest accord. There was a significant mismatch between beliefs held by teacher candidates at the time they entered a program and the desired response identified by faculty for only nine of the 53 statements in the survey. Table 3 describes the response patterns for these nine statements. Data presented in Tables 2 and 3 also describe the percentage of faculty members
271
Teacher Beliefs Table 2 Statemenrs Reflecting High Levels of Studenr and Faculty Accord Agree (%)
Statement
Disagree (%)
Emphasis (%) 45.5
School-aged youngsters are capable of learning to accept responsibility for their own actions
Faculty Student
94.7 85.3
0.0
Risk taking and making mistakes are essential components of social, emotional, and intellectual development
Faculty Student
89.5 93.3
1.8 1.2
42.9
Schools can reduce racism among students
Faculty Student
77.2 70.5
0.0
23.2
When working with slow learners, teachers should focus nearly all of their instruction on “minimum competency” objectives
Faculty Student
3.6 9.5
76.4 64.6
24.1
Subject-matter courses should stress the way knowledge is derived in the corresponding academic disciplines (e.g., why statements are or are not accepted as historical facts)
Faculty Student
63.0 56.0
5.6 3.9
24.5
Planning for instruction should almost always begin with a systematic diagnosis of student needs
Faculty Student
74.5 82.4
5.5 2.5
54.7
In general, the more a teacher knows about a subject, the better able she/he is to teach the subject effectively
Faculty Student
70.9 72.3
10.9 17.2
43.4
To be a good teacher, one must continually test and refine the assumptions and beliefs that guide his/her approach to teaching
Faculty Student
94.5 88.4
1.8 2.9
43.3
The development and delivery of a lesson plan should always be guided by a clear statement of what students are expected to learn
Faculty Student
83.6 86.1
0.0
61.1
7.2
7.8
3.9
All entries are percents. Faculty (n = 57); student responses (n = 896). Totals do not sum to 100% because “other” responses are not included here. Other responses for faculty are “either” (i.e., treat as open-ended issue) and “neither” (i.e., not enough information for judgment). The “other” response for students is “neither agree nor disagree.”
who reported they emphasize each belief in the course(s) they teach. These percentages were considerably higher for the nine items where the faculty and entry-level students were in the greatest accord (mean = 40.3%) than for the nine statements in which they had the least accord (mean = 22.2%). In other words, faculty members were more likely to emphasize issues on which they and their students already agreed than beliefs on which there was a conflict between students’ initial positions and those which the faculty viewed as desirable.
Conclusion Floden (1985) argues that teacher educators should be aware of teacher candidates’ beliefs and their rationales for taking the positions they hold. In his words, “If a teacher educator knows what teachers initially believe, he may take pains to discredit those initial beliefs, or to show how their plausibility is attributable to relationships not previously considered” (p. 28). This statement suggests that teacher educators should emphasize beliefs that (a) should be dis-
272
BRUCE
A. BROUSSEAU
and DONALD
J. FREEMAN
Table 3 Statements
Reflecting
Low Levels of Student and Faculty Accord
Statement
Agree f%)
Disagree (%)
Emphasis I%)
Some students do not have the innate ability to learn difficult concepts such as those taught in advanced high school courses in science and mathematics
Facultv
29.8 51.3
57.9 29.7
18.2
Within the classroom setting, nearly all students try to be fair, cooperative, and reasonable in their relations with other students and their teacher
Faculty Student
53.6 30.9
8.9 46.8
18.5
No matter how hard they and their teachers try, some students who are placed in regular classrooms will never master all of the basic skills in reading and mathematics
Faculty Student
24.6 42.6
40.4 32.2
29.1
In general, teachers’ decisions regarding “how to teach” are more important than their decisions of “what to teach”
Faculty Student
19.3 58.2
36.8 15.3
47.3
Teachers in Grades 4-6should assign at least 1 hour of homework every night
Faculty Student
10.7 39.2
26.8 26.4
7.3
With the exception of specialized programs, all schools in a district ought to teach the same content in a given grade and/or subject area
Faculty Student
10.9 47.7
50.9 23.9
16.7
When making educational decisions, teachers should rely on what “feels right” instead of “what available information suggests is right” whenever these two sources conflict
Faculty Student
7.4 42.7
51.9 19.4
34.6
Nearly all parents and schools
Faculty Student
41.8 21.7
18.2 50.2
9.4
Faculty Student
30.9 31.0
30.9 42.8
22.6
are supportive
of teachers
When a teaching strategy works in one class, it is very likely to work in a different class with the same age group, subject, and teacher
All entries are percents. Faculty (n = 57); student responses (n = 896). Totals do not sum to 100% because “other” responses are not included here. Other responses for faculty are “either” (i.e., treat as open-ended issue) and “neither” (i.e., not enough information for judgment). The “other” response for students is “neither agree nor disagree.”
credited, or (b) are held for inappropriate reasons. However, our data indicate that quite the opposite may be true in regard to beliefs that should be discredited. It is also reasonable to expect that teacher educators will encourage candidates to consider several legitimate schools of thought regarding critical educational issues prior to adopting their own informed opinions. But efforts to present more than one school of thought will generally require more instructional time than efforts
to present a particular point of view. One would therefore expect that the professors in this study would report they typically spend more time covering beliefs that should be presented as open-ended issues than beliefs they hope to shape in a particular direction. However, our data indicate that quite the opposite may be true. Reduced to simplest terms, the results of this investigation suggest that teacher education faculty members at MSU are more likely to reinforce prevailing beliefs than to challenge in-
Teacher
appropriate beliefs or to encourage the development of informed beliefs regarding critical educational issues. Some authors such as Lot-tie (1975) and Tabachnick and Zeichner (1984) have argued that because teacher candidates’ perspectives have been shaped and internalized during the thousands of hours they have spent as students in K-12 classrooms, teacher preparation programs generally have a limited impact on educational beliefs. In one sense, the results of this study support this argument. In general, the stronger the normative expectations guiding faculty identifications of desired responses, the stronger the tendency of entry-level candidates to respond in accord with those norms. However, this study suggests that the limited influence of teacher preparation programs may also be traced to: (a) a frequent lack of consensus among program faculty as to the ways in which beliefs should be shaped, and/or (b) faculty’s collective failure to challenge inappropriate prevailing beliefs or to encourage students to form their own positions regarding educational issues faculty classify as open-ended. It is important to recognize that this investigation did not examine students’ rationales for the beliefs in the teaching context. It is possible that teacher preparation programs influence educational beliefs in one or both of these ways. Despite this and other limitations, the results of this investigation provide clear support for the premise that educational beliefs should become
273
Beliefs
an explicit, rather than an implicit component of teacher education curricula.
References Ball, D. & McDiarmid. W. (1987). Understanding how teacher knowledge changes. Colloquy. 1 (pp. 9-13). Michigan State University, East Lansing: National Centre for Research on Teacher Education. Feiman-Nemser, S. & Floden, R. E. (1986). The culturesof teaching. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.). Handbook ofresearch and reaching (3rd ed., pp. 505-526). New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Fenstermacher, G. D. (1979). A philosophical consideration of recent research on teacher effectiveness. In L. S. Shulman (Ed.), Review of research in education, Vol. 6 (pp. 173-198). Itasca: F. E. Peacock. FIoden, R. E. (1985). The role of rhetoric in changing teachers’ beliefs. Teaching and Teacher Education. 1.19 32. The Undergraduate Program Evaluation Committee. (1982). Michigan State University educational beliefs inventory. East Lansing: Office of Program Evaluation, College of Education. Katz, L. & Raths, J. (1985). Dispositions as goals for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 1. 301-307. Lottie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schwab, J. J. (1958). The teaching of science as inquiry. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 14, 374-379. Tabachnick, B. R. & Zeichner, K. M. (1984). The impact of the student teaching experience on the development of teacher perspectives. Journal of Teacher Education, 35 (6), 28-36.
Received 8 January 1988 0