CIET | Online Survey of Research in Education

Jani, H B. (1998). Secondary Education Trainees Pre-conceptions of Teaching. Unpublished. Ph.D., Education. Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University ,Gujarat.

The objectives of the study were: (1) To find out the secondary education trainees preconceptions of good teaching, expectations of their future teaching performance and explanations for their self-ratings. (2) To compare the trainees conceptions of good teaching with those of secondary school teachers.

About 900 B. Ed. Trainees of 10 Gujarati medium B. Ed. Colleges of Saurashtra and Kutch regions were the population of the study. Four B.Ed. colleges and their 292 trainees were selected for the sample using Stratified Random Cluster Sampling Technique. There were 150 male and 142 female trainees in the sample. One hundred thirty seven secondary school teachers were also selected for the study from the same area using the same technique.

So the questionnaires constructed by Wenstein were used. The questionnaires were translated in Gujarati and checked for their reliability and validity. The questionnaires consisted of both open-ended and fixed response questions. There were two questionnaires for B.Ed. trainees and one for secondary school teachers.

Survey Research Method. The questionnaires were administered to B.Ed. trainees during the first three days of their first term of B.Ed. training. The content analysis method was used to analyze the responses to open-ended questions.

Percentage, mean standard deviation, correlation, and chi-square test were used for the fixed response questions.

Major findings were: (1) Secondary education trainees (82.88%) predicted that their teaching performance would be above average. The trainees were extremely optimistic about their future teaching performance. (2) Trainees mentioned their self-confidence and commitment to teaching were the most important factors for their future teaching. (3) According to the trainees, the most important attributes of good teaching were commitment to teaching, high IQ, patience, and organizational skills. (4) Trainees most frequent response to the conception "a really good teacher" had to do with knowledge of content and method, and responsibility. The secondary school teachers agreed with trainees in this matter. (5) Secondary education trainees tended to engage in "unrealistic optimism", and to demonstrate self â€“ serving biases. For describing good teaching, the trainees emphasized affective variables and downplayed academic dimension of teaching.

Keyword(s): Pre-conceptions, Trainees