The Urban Review, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2000
Student Teacher Efficacy in Inner-City Schools Stephen P. Rushton The resolution of five middle-class student teachers’ conflict and growth toward efficacy during their year interning in an inner-city school is described in this qualitative study. Analysis of 4 interviews, 12 written reflections, and 7 transcribed group discussions revealed a sense of culture shock felt by interns upon entering the inner-city schools. In particular, their concerns focused on problems in the children’s home lives. Aggravating their worries were the normal concerns of student teachers about getting along with their collaborating teachers and their students and coping with doubts about their own abilities and values. Growth in self-efficacy began as the interns attempted to manage problems and take risks. KEY WORDS: self-efficacy; student teachers; inner city; qualitative study.
Learning to teach in inner-city schools provides a special challenge. The National Commission’s (1996, p. 13) report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future, described some of the problems to be encountered as “the plagues of modern life—crime and violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and lack of adequate health care.” The same report challenged universities to set higher standards for the students entering their faculties and to train student teachers to have a greater understanding of the influence of culture upon their students. Student teachers need to be prepared for these cultural problems and to understand the economic, social, and political factors that maintain them (Kozol, 1992; Williams and Williamson, 1992). Because the National Commission (1996) also identified teachers as bearing the responsibility for the future of public education, particularly student teachers in the process of being trained, it is important that we prepare such teachers well. Other reports on education also emphasized the importance of teacher preparation, including the Carnegie Forum (1983, 1986), Project Alliance 30 (1991), and Holmes Group, (1995). They cited many early studies describing the difficulties and uncertainties that teachers and, subsequently, student teachers expeAddress correspondence to Stephen P. Rushton, Department of Education, University of South Florida, 5700 Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, Florida 34243; e-mail: srushtonsar.usf.edu. 365
0042-0972/00/1200-0365$18.00/0 2000 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
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rienced. Although these studies were typically limited to 13–20 weeks of observation in middle-class suburban environments (Pilard, 1992), the ordeals of the student teacher do come through. For example, early on, Lantz (1964) described the difficulties student teachers face in developing self-confidence; he recommended they be placed in nonthreatening classrooms. Walberg (1968) found student teachers were often in conflict between the desire to create friendly rapport with their students and the need to maintain authority and discipline. Fuller (1969) noted that student teachers were often overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, by circumstances, and by interpersonal conflicts. Fuller and Brown (1975) described students as so preoccupied with their own adjustment that they had little energy left over for the concerns of their students. Finally, Glassberg and Sprinthall (1980, p. 14) concluded, that “Results indicate a multiplicity of concrete and clearly negative findings—interns become more authoritarian, rigid, impersonal, restrictive, arbitrary, bureaucratic and custodial by the end of their student-teaching experiences.” One wonders how much greater must be the problems of adjustment facing student teachers in inner-city schools? Given the importance of teacher preparation and the cultural changes taking place in the American classroom, several universities have restructured their educational training programs to incorporate a one-year teaching internship as an additional fifth year of preparation, resulting in a Master’s degree. The assumption is that a full year as an intern in the schools will raise the quality of teaching by exposing preservice teachers more fully to the ways schools work. However, a missing element in the discussion to date has been the student teacher’s own input. This becomes especially noticeable for those students being trained to work in the inner city who now are required to spend a complete year student teaching. When Hynes and Socoski (1991, p. 2) reviewed the literature, they “did not uncover any sustained effort to assess student teachers’ attitudes about teaching in urban schools.” The situation remains the same today. What are these student teachers’ needs? What does it feel like to be in an inner-city school? What are the central issues that they face? And, what is the process by which they become effective teachers? The following study attempts to answer some of these questions by exploring the lived experiences and subsequent perceptions of five women interns who were student teachers in innercity schools.
METHOD Data Collection
Interns specializing in urban/multiculture elementary education student-teach for a full academic year in a Master’s degree program recently established by
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the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Specifically designed to help student teachers understand the socioeconomic, cultural, and political issues that face those who work in the inner cities, the program concludes with a fifth-year internship. As a recent graduate assistant and instructor for this program I was interested in understanding the experiences and perceptions of these students during this year. In the semester prior to the year-long internship, each student teacher was required to spend several half-days a week, for four months (January–April), in an inner-city school classroom in order to become familiar with the school and surrounding environment. During this first semester I acted both as their instructor while teaching an elementary methods course and as their supervisor while observing them in their placements. As part of the training, each student teacher was required to write a journal of these initial experiences. It became evident, through these journals and weekly class discussions, that some of the interns’ experiences overwhelmed them and challenged their beliefs about teaching. I decided to study the experiences of some of these student teachers more fully as they moved into their year-long internship. A qualitative research design was used to capture five women interns’ experiences. Three separate sources of text were gathered. Using an in-depth, semistructured approach (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994; Seidman, 1991; Fraenkel and Wallen, 1996), I interviewed the participants four times during the school year. The first interview took place during the initial month of school, soon after they entered the classroom. Two more were spaced evenly during the school year (November and February), and the final interview occurred during the last few weeks of school. Interview questions focused on the experiences and perceptions of the student teachers as they taught in inner-city schools as well as their relationship with significant others in the school. To guide the interview, I asked them such questions as “What experiences stood out for you the most?” and “Tell me a story about what has happened to you or one of your students during the past month?” or “What has impacted you the most?” All interviews were transcribed by me, and copies of the transcriptions were given to each intern prior to the next interview. At the beginning of the interviews, I gave the interns an opportunity to reflect on what they had said in the previous interview so they could clarify particular issues, concerns, or questions that either they or I might have. A second source of data was the weekly two-page written reflection they wrote regarding their experiences the previous week. I had asked the interns to reflect on, and write about, an incident they had observed that week that particularly stood out for them. I collected 10–12 reflections from each intern. A third source of data consisted of weekly taped discussions in which the 5 participants in this study, along with 13 other students in the Urban/Multiculture cohort, elaborated on the experiences they all had had that week. There was a
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total of seven taped discussions. Again, each of these discussions was audiotaped and transcribed by me. Two schools sites were selected based on the school’s willingness to supervise student teachers. The enrollment in both schools consisted of 90–95% African-American students, 95–97% fee-waiver students, and free-and reducedprice-lunch students. Both schools were located in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. One of the sites had just received state funding to become a magnet school in both math and technology. I chose not to act as supervisors for these two schools so as to not influence the student teachers while they were involved in the research. The five interns who chose these two schools did so prior to knowing that I was going to conduct any research. Each participant was approached by me before the beginning of September and asked if she would like to take part in this study, after she had already selected the school.
Participants
Typical of other American student teachers described by the National Commission (1997), the five participants were 20–23 years old, single, female, and from lower-middle-class backgrounds. The five interns shared other similarities, including being raised in the general vicinity of the universities they would attend, coming from divorced families, being religious, and desiring to improve the lives of those around them. Two were African-American and three were of European descent. The following names will be used, Mary, Julie, Mia, Jillian, and Shelly.
Mary Mary viewed herself as a “liberal-minded feminist” dedicated to bringing about the “equal rights of others.” Mary mentioned growing up in a “dysfunctional family” and having feelings of “mental abandonment, sexual harassment, and physical abuse.” She described her childhood as like a “roller-coaster ride,” with both parents and subsequent step-parents being “divorced, remarried, divorced, [and] separated enough times that they were separated more than they were together.” Her father, an alcoholic, maintained a “strict household and expected us to wait on him,” while her mother’s addiction to narcotics and attempted suicide made Mary responsible for raising two younger brothers. Mary suggested that it was this background that had led her to develop the spiritual side of her personality. She felt that her past gave her the empathy and strength to understand the lives of children living in the inner city. She was determined to “work for the promotion of myself [sic] and women and any minority or anybody who has had to suffer.”
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Julie Julie considered herself an optimist even though she described her upbringing as “somewhat unstable.” Her parents divorced when she was 10, after which she moved with her mother and two brothers from Knoxville to another state. After bankruptcy and a broken engagement, the family moved back to the mother’s hometown in Texas. There they lived in a trailer park before Julie and her brothers moved in with their father. For Julie, “finding God” gave comfort to her to during these disruptive moves and saved her from many temptations (drugs and sex) during her teen years. Said Julie, an expressive woman who shared intimate detail, “I see now that God has protected me from all these things and I’m very thankful now. Since then I have had a lot more stability.” Julie’s faith played a major role in leading her to become a teacher. She stated, “Probably my strongest desire is to be a light in people’s lives. You know, if I had the opportunity and if someone wants to hear me talk about the Lord, to talk to them what my hope is, I would.” Mia Mia was raised mainly by her mother and her maternal grandparents. She had a younger brother who had recently graduated from high school and of whom she was very fond. Mia felt fortunate to have been raised by both parents for the first eight years of her life and later by her extended family. She stated, “I have had the experience of living with the immediate family and the experience of living with an extended family. So I guess I can say that I have experienced both situations. I enjoy[ed] both of them.” Mia described herself as patient and open-minded, but a little shy. She said that she was uncomfortable around people “not willing to listen and who won’t give you a chance to speak. . . . I hate to be around people who are not open-minded.” Mia, an African-American, indicated her sense of purpose in teaching: “I want children to see someone black who is doing well for themselves and to provide them with some structure and to be a role model for them.” Jillian Jillian, the youngest of three children, was raised by her mother and grandmother after her parents divorced. She attended church every week while growing up and continued to do so while attending university. Jillian described her family situation as “we did not have a lot of money, but it was enough for [mother] to take care of us and to make us feel, you know, comfortable.” Jillian did not think much about being a “black woman” until she started attending the university. When she saw so many interracial couples, her racial identity became a more important part of her life. She said, “I don’t think being a black
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woman . . . I mean I never . . . it never really dawned on me until I got here. Of course, then it was not being a black woman; it was just being black.” Reflecting on why she became a teacher, Jillian discussed the influence her grandmother had had. She described her grandmother as saying, “You need to pray and ask God.” She also told about how she had asked God to let her know if she was making a mistake once she had decided to become a teacher. Shelly Shelly described herself as being fortunate to be from a wealthy middle-class “tight” family in which both parents raised her and her two sisters. Her father owned a construction company and her mother worked for her father. Analyzing her parents’ relationship, Shelly said, “I think it is a very well-balanced relationship. My father worked hard and my mom does do everything for my dad. She cooks, she cleans. . . . My mom is fine with that.” Shelly attended the local county schools, was raised a Southern Baptist, and considered herself “very conservative.” Her father was conservative, too, and, according to Shelly, expressed concern about Shelly’s choice of working in inner-city schools. After visiting Shelly at one school, he would not permit her to return. She stated, “I was not allowed to go back!” As part of a prior university course, Shelly had become involved with the Big Brother/Big Sister organization and befriended a young child living in the welfare housing projects surrounding an elementary school. It was at this time that she considered becoming a teacher. Data Analysis
The interpretation of the data began with the reading of all 12 of one intern’s written reflections, followed by that intern’s 4 transcribed interviews, and then the transcription of the group discussions that contained comments from that intern. After several readings, I turned to a different intern and continued the process until the full text from each of the five interns had been read. At this point, I went back to the written reflections and wrote a pr´ecis of it along with a summary table of the contents. From here, I began indexing, highlighting, and color-coding different areas of the five texts which appeared to share similar themes. Notes relating to key issues were placed in the margins of the interviews alongside the highlighted portions. Thus, references to children were highlighted in one color and information related to cooperating teachers was highlighted in another color. Many categories emerged covering a wide range of topics. Some of the main ones concerned interactions with people (children, teachers, principals, supervisors), interactions in the environment (inner city, university, classroom), and interactions with self (conflicts with self, concerns about maturity). I repeated this
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highlighting and summarizing procedure on each intern for each of the four interviews, for the written texts, and for the transcribed oral discussions. The next step in the process was to reread each of these topic folders separately. Several themes emerged within each topic. In particular, I noted distinct phases related to growth in feelings of self-worth and increasing tolerance of their surroundings. Initially, each intern appeared to experience a shock between the values of their culture and upbringing and the environments they found themselves in and the cultural differences they found there. This culture shock was most evident during the first interview and early reflective writings. The interview in particular highlighted a series of conflicts each participant experienced. These conflicts varied as to cause and target, but 80% involved specific students (e.g., their behavior), cooperating teachers (e.g., their disciplinary attitudes), or themselves (e.g., their own ability). Most of these reflections about students, teachers, and themselves (about 47%) referred to frustrations with particular students in their classes. Specifically, the interns described how they were unable to maintain discipline. Other reflections (31%) involved conflicts with the cooperating teacher (e.g., with the structure of that teacher’s behavior management technique). RESULTS The interviews, written reflections, and weekly discussions revealed that personal efficacy emerged over a four-part process across several unique experiences. Efficacy is defined here as the positive change in attitude toward self, teaching, and working with others. The participants were able to view their new situations and culture from a perspective that was both accepting of the environment (which had previously been viewed as incongruent with the participants’ prior beliefs) and, ultimately, empowering of self. These student teachers grew in efficacy. They moved past the shock of their initial experiences and were able to teach more effectively as the year progressed. Beginning with the recognition that both their personal and academic backgrounds had left them unprepared for the reality of inner-city schools, the interns came to accept the contrast between reality and their preconceptions. Over time, as the interns adjusted to the cultural differences and grew better able to cope well with them, they reached a state of self-efficacy. The following discussion reveals each of the five participants’ experiences. Following the interns’ initial culture shock, I quote some of the statements they made about their sense of disequilibrium. Then, a transition period occurred during which the participants appeared to assimilate the disequilibrium into their belief systems. From here, I will provide each participant’s narratives during the period of adjustment. Finally, the interns’ emerging sense of efficacy is shown by their various statements, particularly in the last interview. Each intern
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developed efficacy in different areas, and some developed it in more than one area. Julie and Shelly emphasized their feelings of self-worth about becoming teachers, while Mia described her feelings of growth in relation to a sense of gaining authority and respect with her pupils. Jillian described her growth to personal efficacy mainly in relation to her cooperating teachers. Culture Shock
The following quotations graphically illuminate the discrepancy that each participant experienced between their culture and that of the inner-city schools. These upsetting experiences were the result of an incongruence between the interns’ expectations and the reality they observed. Mary Mary began her first interview with a discussion on how a fourth-grader had pinched her bottom on a field trip; “I just didn’t know what to do? One minute he was sitting there; the next he was up and pinched my bottom.” Mary also made numerous references suggesting consternation (in both her written reflections and during the first interview) about her pupils, their families, and their living conditions. When referring to her students’ home lives she stated, “They live in bath tubs. . . . He has been sexually abused. . . . She was raped in kindergarten.” When discussing her students’ parents, she said, “Her street name [referring to a student’s parent] is Cocaine! . . . His mother [referring to a different pupil] is a known prostitute. . . . He [yet another student] watched his mother lying naked in the street, begging for sex.” Moreover, when discussing her students’ experiences, Mary made the claim that “this is a different world.” At one point during the first interview Mary had to take a break to clear her eyes of tears. Her identification with the students’ lives became overwhelming. She stated that “they [third-graders] see so much crime and violence; they know about drugs and gangs. It is so sad.” Perhaps one of the more illuminating experiences Mary recalled was when, during her first month at school, during recess she and the students “practiced drive-by drills, because last year a kindergarten child was shot and killed in the neighborhood.” Julie Julie, who spent the year at the same school as Mary, had a number of similar graphic comments regarding her first exposure to teaching in the innercity schools. The apparent knowledge about sexual activities by her third- and fourth-graders was bothersome to her. Julie referred to “finding notes that would blow you away.” One girl wrote that she would like to “kiss his black ass.” Another replied in agreement, “I love his ass and his big dick” and had
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included a drawing of “an erect penis with stuff coming out of it.” In addition to the sexual discussions that Julie found her students engaged in, she was also taken aback by the violence surrounding her students. She often referred to incidents in which a parent was either in jail, on probation, or coming home from jail. A typical statement quoted by Julie when discussing her students was “My step-daddy just got out of prison and my mom just went it.” Other comments included a student describing how “her brother killed her cat” and another student’s “daddy was shot when she was four.” Mia For Mia, an unexpected series of culture shocks arose over the ease and frequency with which her second-graders used obscenities. Mia claimed that these second-graders “almost had me crying.” She said, “We have kids standing up calling people mother-fuckers.” One child, Jake, a fourth-grader, was described by Mia as “this child is from, excuse me, hell! He doesn’t care who you are, he’s going to talk back. Jake has no respect for authority or for anyone.” As with Julie, Mia was taken aback by the home environments in which her students lived. She said of these students, “They don’t go home to anybody, or at least no adults” and “These parents are not involved and don’t care about their children.” Jillian Jillian also experienced many of the situations mentioned above. For her, the events were most shocking when they related to the youngest of the children— those in kindergarten and first grade. As was the case with Mia, Jillian was struck by the obscene language. She commented, “You can’t believe it! Firstgraders spitting on people, grown people.” Further, “Last week, a kindergarten child along with first-graders [was] ejected from the bus for cussing adults. And the profanities they use—I mean, I am not just talking about ‘ass,’ excuse me, but ‘bitch,’ ‘mother-fucker,’ and ‘fuck you’” She concluded her first interview with a comment that the school was “like a zoo” and that she was “overwhelmed with it all.” Shelly Shelly’s first kindergarten experience made her question her ability to teach. She described how one child “stood on his chair and yelled at me!” Then “he rolled around the floor all day; [later] he took his crayon box and just threw it on the ground.” Shelly’s frustration with this child’s behavior even pushed her to saying, “I think I’m going to kill him.” During the parent conferences, Shelly expressed concern as “the parent blamed it [the preceding child’s behavior] all
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on the teacher last year, [yet the parent] came in drunk and I could smell it across the table.” Also reflecting her perception of the severity of the difference between the inner-city environment and her own was her comment, “I drove by a shooting on the way to work the other day. . . . It was the first time I’d ever seen someone shot.” Cognitive Dissonance
The participants found many of the experiences they described difficult to interpret. Disequilibrium between expectations and observations generates the state Festinger (1957) termed “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state which individuals are motivated to reduce by, for example, bringing their expectations into line with a new reality. To illustrate, I focus on two of the participants, Mary and Julie. However, all of the interns in one way or another experienced similar feelings. Some felt cognitive dissonance because of interactions with their cooperating teacher, others with teaching, and many with their pupils. Mary stated,
• • •
Hearing about rape and sexual abuse of children when they are small, I think my euphoric worldview [regarding children] is shattering. My teacher said that almost every child in the school has either seen someone slain or in the process of being slain. People really do get killed. I was prepared for a lot of this, but I didn’t realize there was that much violence. I am going a whole different avenue than I was. I’m just trying to hold my ground.
Mia had difficulty getting used to hearing young children swearing and speaking rudely to adults. Shelly did not know how to discipline the children without screaming at them. Julie alluded to a desire to be on the playground dancing with her students rather than meeting with teachers to complain about them. In one of her reflections Julie wrote the following questions:
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What do you do with a mom who is a known prostitute and comes in drunk to meetings? What do I do when a kid comes to me and says, “My brother was killed in a gang last night.” I need to know what to do. What do you do when you see a mom running up and down the [school hallway] barefoot with no bra on and with greasy hair and smelling bad screaming at me, and I don’t know why? Transitional Period
As time passed the interns adjusted to their situations and broadened their perspectives. The interns were able to articulate their transition as shown in the
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statements that follow. Each of the transitional comments involved a different perspective from that which the student teacher had initially stated. Each revealed a process of maturation through which the interns were able to go beyond their usual behavior to take a stand on a particular issue. In all cases, it took several months for these new perspectives to develop:
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I’m working with a great teacher whom I didn’t understand at first, but now he even says I have changed so much since the beginning of the year. I went to her and said, “Ms. Moyers, do they really need to go to the office [for discipline]?” And it was really hard for me to do that, but I didn’t really believe they needed to be there. I could not have done that a month ago! I used to think that they [cooperating teachers] were just doing that to be mean. But now, I look at it and say, “I wonder what is happening.” It has been good the last three weeks teaching. I have had the class under control. We had some hard times with one or two children. But because I am in a structured classroom and I have kept [cooperating-teacher] routines and tried a few new things, too, it has gone well. Efficacy
Self-efficacy became evident as the interns began to state feelings about a willingness to take risks and as they increased in confidence (Bandura, 1997). The interns talked about their initial problems with calmer voices and expressed their pleasure at coping better with what was originally an exasperating situation. Some wondered why particular issues had bothered them at all. Others found themselves embracing whole new perspectives. The interns frequently said they had shifted from just wanting to be popular with their students to being able to maintain strict and consistent discipline. Mary expressed pleasure at her ability to establish boundaries with her students. She stated, They want that structure and need boundaries. Since I have become stricter and more aggressive, as far as their behavior is concerned, I have more kids tell me that they love me and warm up to me because they see me as an authority and [that] I am going to take care of them. So, I love waking up in the morning to come here.
In Julie’s last interview, she discussed how she felt she had changed. She stated, “I feel like I have matured. I’m kind of hardened to things. It has gone well.” Events that had initially shocked her no longer appeared to be so dramatic. For instance, “I don’t go home every night and cry. It is like, you know, Anthony’s mom is a prostitute, and that is just how it works.” Julie attributes this change in attitude partly to her ability to have her class under control. She states,
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It has been good the last three weeks teaching. It has not been horrible. I have had the class under control. We had some hard times with one or two children, but because I am in a structured classroom and I have kept her routines and tried a few things, it has gone well.
Several interns became more realistic about life in the inner city, realizing that they were unlikely to change their students’ living conditions. Believing that one could (or should) just enter a culture and change it proved to be an unproductive attitude. Mia summarized the feelings of most interns: It is easy to feel sorry for the kids, and there is nothing wrong with that, but you have to understand that that is where they come from and that is their life and they are accustomed to it. We might not like it, but they live it every day.
In relation to Jake, “the child from hell,” Mia now took part of the responsibility herself instead of attributing it all to him. “I guess I am learning to be more patient and deal with my anger before I say something to him or to any of them, for that matter. You know they do stuff that is just so crazy, or ridiculous, but that’s the way it is.” Shelly was seeing the world from her students’ perspectives and no longer took everything personally. She stated, “I don’t think I would say, ‘They are just doing that to bother me.’ [But before, I would say,] ‘Oh, they are just being mean.’ But [now] I wonder what is happening? Why are they behaving like that?” She concluded, “I enjoy getting up at 5:30 now and that just amazes me!” Jillian believes that she, along with the other members of the cohort, are far better-prepared teachers than other education students. She indicated that other students were coming to her and asking her how to handle certain classroom management situations. She concluded, “We are better-prepared teachers than other interns in other programs—very much more prepared.” Individual Transitions
The four-part process to self-efficacy found in the interns’ adjustment to the culture of the inner city applied to other domains of their experience. For example, the interns described many conflicts with cooperating teachers. In what follows, I will show the path to self-efficacy for each of the interns. Each intern developed efficacy in different areas, and some developed it in more than one area. Mary grew in efficacy in establishing the appropriate boundaries in her relationships with her students. Julie and Shelley emphasized new-found feelings of self-worth about becoming teachers. Mia’s sense of efficacy centers on her ability to gain respect and authority from both her cooperating teacher and her students. Jillian described her new maturity mainly in regard to her cooperating teachers.
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Mary Mary had a problem maintaining discipline because she identified so much with her students, as she, too, had been physically and sexually abused. For her, conflict arose when she first realized that teaching required professional boundaries to be established if learning was to take place. Yet, with too much discipline, Mary felt the children’s emotional needs would be neglected, and this produced dissonance in her. As Mary put it, “My whole point was that I wanted to know what I could do as a teacher to break the boundaries, with all the violence and stuff, to actually teach all these great things I have learned to do.” Disequilibrium arose when she thought that she could not be both disciplining and nurturing at the same time. Mary questioned whether she was qualified to be a teacher, stating, I am struggling right now. I feel like those boundaries are being crossed all the time. It is confusing to them and it is confusing to me. . . . I went through this period of thinking, “Is this really what I want to do? Am I really cut out for this?”
Several events during Mary’s internship led her to confront the issues of crossing boundaries with students and dealing with their emotional lives. As mentioned earlier, the experience of a child pinching her, along with practicing drills about what to do if there were drive-by shootings during recess, and observing the way that parents came to school, caused Mary to alter the way she understood these students’ lives. She stated, As far as myself, it happen[ed] to me, an awakening . . . like my eyes have been opened to something. I never realized how violent and stuff the world really is. I think I have been sheltered a long time. Gosh. My eyes have been opened. I think I was naive as to how bad things really are.
Mary proudly states that her intern year caused the most growth so far in her life: I must say that the past three and a half months have been incredible. I have grown and matured more in this period of time than any other point in my life. The responsibility of teaching is beyond one’s belief until they have lived through the experience. Having responsibilities in a child’s life, especially one that has not even lived a decade, is a remarkable challenge.
Mary also came to a strong conclusion about her problem over the amount of discipline to give: That is how I got so obsessed because I did not know, really, how I was supposed to deal with it or how I was supposed to feel. I didn’t know how to feel. I almost felt
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like I was becoming callused in a way. I have learned how to feel appropriately to it. I can’t take it home with me, but I was amazed. This is a different world. They don’t want to hear the bad stuff; even my friends don’t want to talk about the seriousness of it. I feel like a different person.
Julie Julie struggled with her sense of purpose and self-worth throughout the year as she wavered between her desire to become a teacher and wanting to do “missionary work.” After spending several summers working with a missionary group serving inner-city children in Atlanta, she believed that teaching provided a similar platform to reach out. Proclaimed Julie, Probably my strongest desire is to be a light in people’s lives. You know, if I had the opportunity and if someone wants to hear me talk about the Lord, to talk to them about what my hope is, I would. I don’t know what I would do without God.
Her doubts were revealed early in the interviews when she said, “I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be a teacher. . . . Like inner-city ministry, that would be more my job.” Julie’s conflicts led her to become disillusioned about becoming a teacher. For her, disequilibrium arose when she realized that what was possible with students in a school was different from what was possible while working in a church group: It is almost like the only relationship I know with inner-city kids is what I had the past two summers. . . . So now, I don’t know the typical “I’m a teacher, you’re a student” kind of relationship, so I’m not going to do that because I don’t like it.
During an especially troublesome point, Julie described how she went to the bathroom during a break, got on her knees, and prayed for God’s help to get her through the day. By the third interview, Julie proclaimed, “I would say that I have grown a lot. I can’t tell you that I want to teach; I don’t think I do. I love getting to know the kids. I think I have realized that I do not want to teach.” Julie’s new maturity was manifest in knowing that her first “calling” is to the “Lord.” Given her constant indecision, I do not believe Julie reached self-efficacy as far as full-time teaching is concerned. The following quote describes her overall feelings: “I have grown up a lot. I was twenty-one when I started, and now I am twenty-three and I feel like an old woman. It has worn me out.” Shelly Shelly’s efficacy grew over the course of the year. She began the year feeling anxious and unsure of her abilities to teach. When placed in what she
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perceived as “a disruptive kindergarten classroom” she found it difficult to comprehend the behavior she observed: I’m here against my parents’ wishes. They really did not want me teaching these kids. . . . I’m okay doing a lesson a week, but that’s all [most of the other interns would be teaching a lesson every other day]. . . . Sometimes I don’t think I want to be that responsible. It is so different now than it was when we were in school ’cause when we walked in, we respected our parents. . . . Do they [the parents] not teach them respect?
Shelly’s worries about her ability to receive respect and teach effectively led her to yell at the kindergarten children. She could not see them accomplishing any goals: I actually screamed today. I never scream, but it had to be done. I told my mom, “I don’t think I am going to like it here.” . . . I am not sure that I am ready to be in charge. . . . I’m afraid that I won’t get done what I am supposed to do and I don’t want to be in charge, ever.
Toward the end of the year, however, she was able to state, “I can accept my downfalls now.” After an evaluation by her principal, who pointed out the students’ disruptive behavior, Shelly said, I hated it, my first evaluation, when Ms. Landers said here are some suggestions . . . but now, I am accepting that much more. Like when she gives me a suggestion I take it and say it is not my fault that I can’t do that.
During the last interview, Shelly declared that she thoroughly enjoyed her job, believing that “you can’t teach anyone how to be a teacher,” but the experience of actually teaching helps: “Once you get in there, you have to learn this by yourself.” Shelly had changed since the beginning of the year, so much that she “now enjoyed getting up at 5:30; and that just amazes me because I was the one who slept until 11:00 and was late for class.” Shelly declared that she “liked what [she] is doing.” Mia Mia’s progression to self-efficacy centered on her desire to gain the same “authority” she perceived her cooperating teacher had over the children’s behavior. The year began with Mia’s shock over how “rigid” her cooperating teacher appeared and how difficult it seemed to gain control over the classroom. Mia said of her teacher, “Her class is going to be very well disciplined and she is stern and some of the teachers think she is mean.” This teacher may have had
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to be stern in order to deal effectively with the kind of student Mia described as “the boy from hell.” The contrast between the children’s behaviors and the teacher’s stern actions led to Mia’s confusion: In my opinion, it does not make sense for a grown up [herself] to have to sit and argue with a child because the child is way out of line. I am at a point where I do not know what to do. To my surprise I have tried yelling at them.
With regard to her teacher Mia expected more creative teaching and wondered, “Maybe she is creative or can provide a good lesson. . . . It is just that she has not done it yet. I am kind of anxious to see her teach a lesson, to be honest.” Mia’s disillusion with her teacher and the children dissipated as the year progressed. She grew more patient in dealing with disruptive behavior. She began to see why her cooperating teacher had adopted disciplinary strategies. Mia said, “I guess I am learning to be more patient and deal with my anger before I say something to him, or to them, for that matter. You know, they do stuff that is just so crazy, or ridiculous. But really, what can you do?” With respect to her cooperating teacher she made the claim, I remember telling you all that she doesn’t let my kids go out to play. But now I see exactly why she doesn’t, ’cause when you are actually trying to teach, you actually don’t have time to teach it all. Every moment counts; you can’t waste time on playing.
As the year progressed, Mia’s perspective on the children and assessment of herself as a teacher changed to the point where the students’ misbehavior no longer overwhelmed her. She came to believe herself to possess authority similar to her mentor’s. She states, “Now, I feel like I have the same authority she does. I feel like a different person than I did at the beginning of the year.” Jillian Jillian also experienced a cycle of conflict, disequilibrium, growth, and efficacy during her classroom placements. Neither she nor her cooperating teacher had been informed that Jillian was to be placed in the classroom, making them both uncomfortable. She claimed, “My new cooperating teacher found out Tuesday morning [the same day that the placement began] that she was to have an intern.” The lack of communication with her cooperating teacher led Jillian to feel there was little she could do. During her second interview, Jillian protested, saying, “I was not informed about a schedule and I didn’t feel good
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about that at all. I wasn’t doing anything in the room. I would ask to do things but there wouldn’t be anything to do.” Nonetheless, as time passed, Jillian began to adapt to the routines and procedures of the classroom. She accepted the situation for what it was and worked around it. Finally, as she observed the teacher’s strengths, she became more accepting. Looking back on the experience, Jillian complimented her teacher, elaborating on the teacher’s ability to integrate computers and technology with language arts. Jillian’s parting comments on this teacher were “I think she is a great teacher. . . . She is usually on the ball with time, [and] she is good with those computers and the technology that she incorporates. . . . They are making books.” DISCUSSION This paper described the unique experiences of five student teachers who spent eight months working in classrooms in inner-city schools as recorded in interviews, written reflections, and classroom discussions. The results were often consistent with those from studies carried out in middle-class suburban schools (cited in the introduction), but there were also important differences. For instance, although early research found that the experience of student teaching in schools led to anxiety, self-doubt, and personal change (and similar processes took place in the five women in this study), I also found a degree of purpose and determination not described previously. The voices of the five women in this study evidenced not only high levels of anxiety and frustration, but also exhilaration as they learned to cope. This study corroborated early findings (e.g., Walberg, 1968) that interns experienced conflict between their desire to create friendly rapport with students and their need to maintain classroom discipline. Two interns (Mia and Jillian) whose cooperating teachers did not allow them to become overly friendly with students maintained strict and authoritative classrooms. Subsequently, neither Mia nor Jillian found classroom discipline to be a problem. Julie’s proclamation, on the other hand, that “I’d rather be dancing with fourth-graders,” reflected (and may have helped cause) a great deal of her internal conflict. Despite these differences, all five women agreed that the university should advise future interns to establish clear boundaries with the students as soon as possible, rather than trying to become the students’ friends. I found that the interns became concerned about the emotional needs of their students much earlier than had been noted previously. For example, Fuller (1969; Fuller and Brown, 1975) reported that student teachers were not able to set aside personal concerns until quite late in the process. Perhaps the dramatic conditions of life in inner-city schools described by the interns in this study are so overpowering they forced them to address the needs of their students first.
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However, this also caused them to give any discussion about curriculum and teaching strategies a low priority. This study disconfirmed the finding (e.g., Lantz, 1964) that interns need to be placed in nonthreatening classrooms to foster the development of their selfefficacy (see also Bandura, 1997). Instead, I found that the severity of practice teaching in inner-city schools speeded up the development of self-efficacy. By first accepting, and then embracing, situations not normally considered conducive to building self-esteem, the interns were forced to master the situation. Glassberg and Sprinthall (1980, p. 14) concluded their work: “Results indicate a multiplicity of concrete and clearly negative findings—interns become more authoritarian, rigid, impersonal, restrictive, arbitrary, bureaucratic and custodial by the end of their student-teaching experiences” (p. 14). As noted, the interns in this study did adopt a more authoritarian and restrictive nature. However, they were not “rigid, impersonal . . . and custodial by the end of their student-teaching experiences.” Rather, the interns in this study felt sufficiently empowered by their teaching skills and abilities to eagerly want to begin teaching. This may have been partly due to the longer duration of the internship in this study when compared to the more usual 9- to 12-week student-teaching experience. The single most audible plea from all five interns was their desire to be better prepared for the situation they found themselves in. Strategies need to be designed (e.g., case studies, films, speakers, discussion groups) to prepare interns for the situations that await them. For example, sexual abuse and violence were common and ongoing in many classrooms. These young women were simply not prepared for these situations. Further, disruptive behavior is of an intensity not normally encountered. This, too, needs to be addressed. On the most positive note, interns might be told that research validates the age-old wisdom that conflict is inevitable, feelings of dissonance are normal and are part of the adjustment process, improvement of skills occurs slowly and sometimes painfully; and feelings of efficacy will eventually be experienced if they persevere. REFERENCES Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Freeman. Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy (1986). A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century. New York: Carnegie Corporation. Denzin, K., and Lincoln, N. (1994). Handbook of Qualitative Research. New York: Sage. Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Fraenkel, J. R., and Wallen, N. E. (1996). How to Design an Devaluate Research in Education. New York: McGraw-Hill. Fuller, F. F. (1969). Concerns of teachers: A developmental conceptualization. American Educational Research Journal 6(2): 207–226.
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Fuller, F., and Brown, O. (1975). Becoming a teacher. In K. Ryan (ed.), Teacher Education: 74th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part II (pp. 25–52). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Glassberg, S., and Sprinthall, N. A., (1980). A developmental approach. Journal of Teacher Education (March–April) 31–38. Iannaccone, L. (1963). Student teaching: A transitional stage in the making of a teacher. Theory into Practice 2: 73–81. The Holmes Group. (1986). Tomorrow’s Teachers: A Report of the Holmes Group. East Lansing, MI : National Center for Research on Teacher Learning. (ERIC Document Reproduction Services No. SP 027 831). The Holmes Group. (1995). Tomorrow’s Schools of Education: A Report of the Holmes Group. East Lansing, MI.: Holmes Group. Hynes, J., and Socoski, P. (1991). Undergraduates’ attitudes towards teaching in urban and nonurban schools. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Educational Research Association: Boston. ERIC, ED 362 498 Kretovics, J., and Nussel, E. (1994). Transforming Urban Education. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc. Kozol, J. (1991). Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. New York: Harper Perennial. Lantz, D. L. (1964). Changes in student teacher’s concept of self and others. Teacher Education 15(2): 200–203. McDermott et al. (1995). The influence of classroom practice experiences on students teachers’ thoughts about teaching. Journal of Teacher Education 46(3): 184–199. Pilard, D. (1992). The Socialization Process of Student Teaching: A Descriptive Study. East Lansing, MI : National Center for Research on Teacher Learning. (ERIC Document Reproduction Services No. 479 865) National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983). A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (1996). What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. The Project Alliance 30. (1991). Project 30 Year Two Report: Institutional Accomplishments. Newark: University of Delaware. Seidman, I. E. (1991). Interviewing as Qualitative Research. New York: Teachers College Press. Sitter, J. P. (1982). The Student Teaching Experience from the Perspective of the Student Teacher: A Descriptive Study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University. Walberg, H. (1968). Personality-role conflict and self-conception in urban practice teaching. School Review 79: 41–49 Weiner, L. (1993). Preparing Teachers for Urban Schools: Lessons from Thirty Years of School Reform. New York: Teachers College Press Williams, J., and Williamson, K. (1992). I wouldn’t want to shoot nobody: The out of school curriculum as described by urban students. Action in Teacher Education 15(3): 34–56.
