An Analysis of Teacher Opinion Regarding Student Academic Achievement and Teacher Ability to Cope with Underachievement.
ABSTPACT An instrument was designed 'o allow respondents to freely express their opinions concerning the major learning problems of students in the public schools, the quality and nature of their teacher education programs, and their retrospective views of courses which would have met their needs better than the ones which were taken. The instrument used to collect the data was an open-ended opinionnaire which was distributed to all public school administrative units within a 24-county area of southwest Missouri. Administrators were requested to distribute the instrument to faculty members and to some students as well. The 158 respondents indicated, among other things, that. their preparation was not adequate for "eaching the expressive and receptive communication skills, for beaching children appropriate questioning skills, for matching materials with children's reading levels, or for organizing classrooms for instruction in reading. Other conclusions drawn from this questionnaire are discussed and specific recommendations are made. (TS)
Change in Student Teacher Dogmatism.
AbstractThe purpose of this study was to determine if change in student teacher dogmatism during the student teaching experience was a function of the degree of dogmatism of the supervising teacher. The measure of dogmatism for all subjects was Rokeach’s Dogmatism Scale, Form E. The population in the study consisted of eighty student teachers and eighty supervising teachers. A significant change in dogmatism scores of student teachers did occur. Of the eighty student teacher subjects, fifty-three moved in the direction of the supervising teacher on the variable of dogmatism from pretest to posttest. Twenty-seven student teachers moved in the opposite direction. This difference was significant at the .01 level. The shift in mean dogmatism score for those student teachers who scored lower than the supervising teacher was significant at the .01 level. For the subjects who scored higher the mean shift was significant at the .05 level.
Initial Teacher Training: the French view
ABSTRACT This paper, against the background of trends in the development of initial teacher training in Europe as a whole, identifies and explains some of the recent, radical reforms which were introduced in France by a socialist government. These include the need to raise the status and the competence of the teaching profession; the creation of new teacher‐training institutions of university status (Instituts universitaires de formation des maitres); the introduction of common entry qualifications at degree level for both primary and secondary levels; the harmonisation and the extension to 2 years of the post‐degree teacher‐training course and the increase in emphasis placed on professional training, both theoretical and practical. These reforms provoked a storm of protest and an examination of the reasons for this reveals a multiplicity of crucial questions which have far‐reaching implications.