ELEMENTARY PRESERVICE TEACHERS’ EXPERIENCES IN THE FIELD:

THE INTENDED VS. THE REALIZED EXPERIENCE

Lou Ann H. Lovin

James Madison University

lovinla@jmu.edu

Abstract: This paper focused on elementary preservice teachers’ experiences in a field-based mathematics methods course, in particular, their experiences during one of the field placements. The theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism was used to focus on the meanings the preservice teachers had for the field experience. The findings suggest that how the preservice teachers defined their situation affected what they did during the field experience. In short, the tutoring perspective they used overshadowed the messages they were hearing in the mathematics methods course.

Introduction

Research findings suggest that many teacher education programs have minimal impact on preservice teachers’ views about teaching and learning, resulting in most classroom teachers teaching the way they were taught (Anderson and Bird, 1994; Borko, Eisenhart, Brown, Underhill, Jones, and Agard, 1992; Zeichner and Tabachnick, 1981). Thus, scholars have suggested that researchers and educators place greater attention on the preservice preparation process (Brown & Borko, 1992; Frykholm, 1999). In particular, Frykholm (1999) suggested that “we need focused research on the impact of methods courses and field experiences on student teachers and on the connections between the two experiences” (p. 103). Early field experiences are also integrated into many teacher education programs. This situation invites us to explore the connections between the methods course and these field experiences as well as the impact field-based methods courses have on our preservice teachers.

The purpose of this research was to understand elementary preservice teachers’ experiences in a field-based mathematics methods course. In particular, the purpose was to examine how the preservice teachers interpreted their field experiences and the connections they made between the field experiences and the methods class.

Theoretical Perspective

Symbolic interactionism, which served as an orienting theoretical perspective for this study, asserts that we use perspectives as a means to understand the world around us. A perspective is a point of view that guides our perceptions of reality or helps us to make sense of the world around us. We adopt our perspectives from the people with whom we interact (i.e., our reference groups). We use perspectives as filters because they force us to focus on certain things in a situation while ignoring other things. Charon (1998) described perspectives as sensitizing “the individual to see parts of reality, they desensitize the individual to other parts” (p. 3). Therefore, no one perspective can capture the whole reality. In fact, depending on the perspective we use, we will see the world in a particular way. When a different perspective is used, a different world will be seen, and perhaps a new way of looking at things will be revealed.

Furthermore, symbolic interactionism emphasizes that the meaning of an object in our environment is not inherent in the object itself but emerges through interaction with the object and others (Blumer, 1969). (Objects in symbolic interactionism can be physical objects, such as manipulatives, or they can be ideas, such as using questions to probe children’s mathematical thinking.) Most importantly, people act toward objects on the basis of the meaning that those things have for them, not on the basis of the meaning that those things have for someone else.

In the past twenty years, mathematics education researchers have focused on teachers’ beliefs as a way of understanding their actions in the classroom (e.g., Cooney & Shealy, 1997; Thompson, 1984). This research does not consider that how a person defines the situation at hand can have a major impact on his/her actions in that situation. Beliefs and past experiences play a role in our present behavior; however, according to symbolic interactionism, the most important way our beliefs and our past influence our action is in helping us to define our environment. We then act according to this definition. In other words, we are not controlled by what happened to us in the past or by our beliefs; we use these to interpret the current situation and then we act accordingly.

Methods and Data Sources

The case study method was chosen because it allowed the researcher to pursue the participant’s perspective by permitting an up-close view of the preservice teachers’ experience in the field-based methods course (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993; Merriam, 1988). The case studies focused on five female elementary preservice teachers, Elise, Susan, Allison, Jackie, and Mary during the first of two mathematics methods courses. (All names are pseudonyms.) Four semi-structured interviews (audiotaped and transcribed), course assignments, journal writings, and observations of the participants during the on-campus classes and weekly field experiences informed the case studies. The on-campus classes were audiotaped and field notes were taken to enhance data collection. Field notes were also taken during observations in the field.

The research cycled between data gathering and analyzing, with the initial analysis phase informing subsequent data collection. In particular, data collection and analyses were guided by analytical induction techniques (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993). Analytic induction involves scanning the data for themes and relationships, and developing and modifying hypotheses on the basis of the data.

Two field experiences were integrated into the first methods course. Once a week the preservice teachers worked in pairs with an elementary school student at a nearby school, Edison Elementary. With this field experience, the methods instructor intended to provide opportunities for the preservice teachers to focus on a child’s mathematical thinking in order to evaluate the child’s conceptual understanding. During the other field experience, each preservice teacher spent all day in a classroom for four weeks. This field experience was not mathematics-specific as was the Edison experience. This paper focuses on the preservice teachers’ interpretation of the Edison field experience and how that interpretation affected their actions in the field placement.

Findings

Despite the teacher educator’s explicit intent that the preservice teachers use the Edison field experience to focus on children’s mathematical reasoning, all five of the participants defined their situation at Edison as tutoring: helping individual students with procedural skills. This definition prevailed in spite of Dr. Mathis telling “us that we would be called the ‘math tutors.’ But that we’re not, that this wasn’t about tutoring” (Elise). The situation fit with their past experiences of tutoring because they focused on the fact that they were working with one student who they assumed needed help mastering a skill in mathematics. This tutoring perspective influenced what the preservice teachers perceived they were to do with their elementary school students and what they perceived to have learned from the experience. Most importantly, they did not see that the methods course had informed much of their interactions during the field experience.

The preservice teachers distinguished between tutoring and teaching. They saw teaching as introducing a new topic to students. As a tutor, they were not introducing a new topic, but were “reviewing stuff that they’ve already been taught….Stuff that the teacher had said she struggled in, that they had already been taught in class….You’re teaching to an extent, but it’s more so reviewing” (Allison). Elise explained that she had tutored in the past and thus, saw the Edison experience as tutoring: “Just through doing it, and experiencing it, it was yeah, this really is tutoring….We are not introducing new lessons to them….You are only working with one student. You are not teaching a whole class.”

Elise and Susan were so focused on the idea that Edison was tutoring that they could not see until late in the semester that the Edison student actually needed to be challenged. They were confused because their experiences with their Edison student were not consistent with their idea of tutoring: the student did not need a great deal of help with his class work. Elise even confessed, “I’m not sure what he needs help with because he seems to understand what we go over....Susan and I both wonder why he was chosen to be an Edison Buddy.”

Tutoring for these preservice teachers entailed having the student practice procedures. This perspective was evident in the tasks they asked the students to do. Consider the following typical episode from a day during the Edison field experience, in which Mary and Jackie asked their student to add 28 and 22. The student wrote down 40. Notice the questions Mary and Jackie asked the student.

28

+22

40

Mary: How did you do this one?

Child: (No response)

Jackie: Which numbers did you add first?

Child: 2 plus 2.

Mary: Why did you add that first?

Child: (No response)

Mary: Let’s look at it again. Start with 8 and 2. What do you get?

Child: 10.

Mary: Ok, so write down the zero...

One of the ideas endorsed in the methods course was asking a student questions, whether the child answered correctly or incorrectly, to probe his or her mathematical reasoning. In particular, the preservice teachers were encouraged to ask students how and why questions. While they readily “adopted” this questioning strategy, as this excerpt illustrates, they did not use appropriate how and why questions to probe the child’s conceptual understanding of the mathematics. Rather their questions mainly centered on steps to a procedure.

Moreover, instead of using ideas from the class or posing problems and using the child’s responses to inform their instruction, Mary and Jackie waited for the classroom teacher’s input as to what they should do with their student. Tutoring required them to know what the student was having trouble with and as far as they were concerned, it was not their role to determine this but the teacher’s obligation to inform the tutor. They “needed more help to know what to plan” (Jackie) and they felt that the teacher, who was with the student every day, was in a better position to tell them what the student needed help with. Mary explained,

The Edison experience could have been [very beneficial] but I don’t know if it really was for us. If we had a teacher that, it plays with the teacher’s interactions, letting us know what is going on and stuff like that, to where it could have been beneficial but it really wasn’t.... I think if we had gotten more feedback from the teacher who was with her everyday, rather than once a week...that we could have helped her out more.

Consequently, they blamed the classroom teacher for the experience being less than beneficial. In fact, when reflecting on what she learned from the experience, Mary stated that “If you [as a classroom teacher] have someone help one of your students, make sure you communicate with them about what the child needs. Do not leave them guessing.”

Early in the Edison field experience, each of the preservice teachers interviewed a second grade student using a standard protocol. This experience gave them the opportunity to compare the mathematical thinking of second grade students across a specific class. Later in the semester, Jackie claimed,

I liked [the second grade] interview because we had to ask more questions than we did even just at Edison. Because we had to ask how you did it, why you did it. So I asked a lot more questions and found out a lot about how she was thinking, more so than I did with [our Edison student].

What was enlightening about her comments was the fact that probing the student’s mathematical thinking was precisely the intent of the Edison experience. Instead, the preservice teachers interpreted Edison to be about tutoring or practicing procedures with their students.

Discussion

The preservice teachers in this study acted in the field experiences in ways that were meaningful to them. They used a tutoring perspective, which influenced what they perceived they were to do with the students even in light of the explicit intentions of the teacher educator. This perspective limited the preservice teachers’ actions to an emphasis on procedures and appeared to prevent the preservice teachers from using this experience to further understand course content. What is important to note is that the preservice teachers felt their experience at Edison would have been different had it not been about “tutoring.” Future research should investigate how preservice teachers interact with students during field experiences when they define their situation differently from tutoring.

The study provides insight into the connections preservice teachers make and do not make between methods course content and a concurrent field experience. In particular, this study highlights the need for educators and researchers to examine how preservice teachers define their current situation. If ignored, we may slip into believing that our preservice teachers are interpreting our courses in ways that we are intending, when actually this may not be the case.

References

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Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Borko, Eisenhart, Brown, Underhill, Jones, and Agard. (1992). Learning to teach hard mathematics: Do novice teachers and their instructors give up too easily? Journal for Research in Mathematics, 23(3), 194-222.

Brown, C., & Borko, H. (1992). Becoming a mathematics teacher. In D. Grouws (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Mathematics Teaching and Learning (pp. 209-239). New York: MacMillan Publishing Company.

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Zeichner, K., & Tabachnick, B. (1981). Are the effects of university teacher education ‘washed out’ by school experience? Journal of Teacher Education, 32(3), 7-11.