Effects of Field Experiences on Pre-Service Teachers’ Professional Growth Through the Lens of Genre Theory
F. Todd Goodson Lori A. Goodson Amanda Lickteig Kansas State University Kansas State University Emporia State University Two years ago we decided to look closely for evidence of growth on the part of our pre-service secondary teachers. As part of a Core Teaching Skills class, our students prepare and deliver two video-recorded “micro teaching” activities, and they are also placed in a multi-week field experience in an area public school. We have students complete one micro teaching activity prior to the field experience and one after the field placement has concluded. During the field experience, they deliver at least one lesson for secondary school students under the guidance of a Cooperating Teacher. We take it on faith that field experiences are good things for our students, but beyond surveys of the perceptions of the value of those experiences, we have surprisingly little empirical evidence documenting the impact of the field experience on their performance. Our research seeks to identify specific behaviors the emerge as a result of the field experience. After gathering and examining data for two semesters, we decided to use contemporary genre theory (e.g., Berkenkotter, Devitt, Miller) as a theoretical lens through which to interpret our data. Genre theory recognizes the way patterns of communication are embedded in social purposes, contexts, and communities, and genre theory is an especially rich body of theoretical work capable of illuminating the school as a context for communication and the various recurrent situations within which teachers must fluently perform. In this case, contemporary genre theory offers a lens that helps us better understand the learning process of our pre-service teachers. Standing in front of a group of students in a classroom and presenting a lesson isn’t necessarily teaching. Teaching is teaching. Presenting a project is presenting a project. Students present projects. Teachers teach. Part of learning to teach is captured in each of the lines on the rubrics we use to assess progress, but a larger part of learning to teach is stepping into the role of teacher. A teacher doesn’t cluster together with his or her peers for support. A teacher prepares carefully, but a teacher almost never reads from a script. A teacher interacts with students, and a teacher molds and shapes the interactions based on the responses received from the students in real time. A teacher is sharing, leading, reflecting, responding…all at once. At the very least, we need to understand the aspects of community that are part of the learning we expect of our pre-service teachers. What can we do to bring for them to the level of their conscious realization the fact that they are, quite literally, moving from the back of the room to the front, from the little desk to the big desk?
It’s time to replace the student pants with the teacher pants, and that involves a deeper, more personal kind of transformation that can only be noted indirectly in the boxes on the rubric. Moving from one community to another (in this case, the student community to the teacher community) is a journey that is more than managing isolated skills. It has social, psychological, and even mythical components that go well beyond the scope of what we traditionally think of as part of teacher education. In this respect, our field experiences take on more importance than ever because it is the contact with public school students that drives home to our preservice teachers that they cannot sit comfortably where they are. They must challenge themselves to move away from their own complacency, and they must confront their own fears. Having said that, our analysis of our data suggest the complex set of behaviors we associate with teaching can be viewed as a set of what we are calling micro-genres— unique situations and contexts with which teachers become comfortable. Below we include our working list of those micro-genres, and we welcome speculation on the possible wisdom of engaging students in role-playing activities or highly structured field experiences focused on these acts of communication. Of course, the explicit teaching of genres is controversial within the community of genre scholars, and we offer our list with the full understanding of that debate. Working Taxonomy of Micro-Genres of Teaching Audience Genre Students
Parents Colleagues Administrators
Multiple
Classroom Performances Hallway Interaction Extra-Curricular Duties Other Duties (E.g., Lunch Room Supervision, Rest Room Supervision, Etc.) One-On-One Confrontations Back-To-School Night Parent-Teacher Conferences Phone Calls (E.g., Complaints, Praise, etc.) Faculty Meeting Behavior (Expectations and Norms) Team and Department Meeting All Informal Situations Interviews Office Referrals Evaluative Conferences Complaints and Requests Progress Reports Grade Cards Unit and Lesson Plans Curriculum Guides In-Service Training Graduate Classes Teacher Research