An Investigation of the Influence of Cooperating Teachers on the Educational Goal Ranking Behavior of Student Teachers

• Main Author: Jones, Susan Myrna
• Format: Others
• Published: DigitalCommons@USU 1979
• Subjects: cooperating teachers; student teachers; educational goal ranking; relative importance; experience; Psychiatry and Psychology
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/5552; https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6616&context=etd

The purpose of the study was to identify the effects of the influence of cooperating teachers on how student teachers prioritize particular goals of education. This was accomplished by administering a predetermined list of eighteen educational goals to a group of student teachers prior and subsequent to their quarter-long student teaching experience, and to their respective cooperating teachers during their student teaching quarter. The list enabled the teacher groups to rank the goals in order of priority. In this way the cooperating teachers' goal rankings were compared to both the student teachers' pre and post student teaching goal rankings. Twenty-three student teachers and their respective cooperating teachers in secondary and special education served as subjects. The Phi Delta Kappa Goal Setting Instrument was used as the goals list in the study. The questions explored were: 1) are there differences between the relative importance as signed to selected educational goals by student teachers prior to the student teaching experience and the relative importance assigned to the same goals by the cooperating teachers; 2) are there differences in the relative importance assigned to selected educational goals by student teachers before their student teaching experience as compared to their assigned rankings after their student teaching experience; and 3) is there a relationship between any changes in the relative importance assigned by the student teachers prior and subsequent to the student teaching experience and the relative importance assigned by the cooperating teachers. To test the hypotheses under investigation, eighteen one-way analyses of variance with repeated measures were computed. Significant F ratios were found for two of the eighteen goals; the remaining F ratios were not statistically significant. The results suggest some tentative support for student teachers' goal prioritizations of two goals changing after the student teaching experience. Some tentative support was also suggested on these two goals for the student teachers' goal prioritizations changing after the student teaching experience to become more similar to the cooperating teacher' s goal prioritizations. However, the lack of significant change in sixteen of the eighteen goals more strongly suggested that the influence of a) the experience of the student teaching activity and b) the cooperating teachers' own goals prioritization biases upon the student teachers did not markedly affect student teacher goal prioritization behavior. The possibilities that the teacher groups had initial general agreement on goal priorities, that the goals may represent stable educational values, and that instrumentation concerns may have affected the results were then discussed.