Accepting Personal Responsibility When Becoming a Teacher

• In Event: Poster Session 2
  In Poster Session: Motivation and Cognition in Varied Contexts

Abstract

We sought to explain why some prospective teachers embrace a sense of responsibility for becoming a skilled teacher while others do not. Our study focused on the beliefs of students (n=128) attending a teacher education program that prepared candidates for leadership roles in a large urban school district. Grounded in the tenets of attribution theory, a theory of motivation that emphasizes why individuals behave as they do, we used a causal comparative design. Participants' action readiness profiles, trait-focused perceptions of teaching, and beliefs about an ideal school were compared to determine the qualities of their perceptions of responsibility. Comparisons between dispositional and situational reasoning revealed the common actor-observer bias when prospective teachers evaluated their responsibilities.

Authors

• Theresa A. Thorkildsen, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Persis Driver, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Kuan Xing, University of Illinois at Chicago