From Preservice to Practicing Teacher: Considering the Stability of Personal and Classroom Goals

• In Event: Sometimes My Teaching Just Flows: Emerging Research on Teachers’ Emotions and Motivation

Abstract

Theory and objectives. This study examined changes in motivation across the transition from pre-service to practicing teacher in terms of personal achievement goals (Elliot & Murayama, 2008) and classroom goal structures (Ames, 1992). Research shows both stability and change in students’ personal goals (Fryer & Elliot, 2007; Muis& Edwards, 2009). For pre-service teachers it seems that all goals increase over the course of teacher education, but mastery-approach do so most strongly (Malmberg, 2008). None of this research, however, examines the transition from per-service to practicing. The same can be said of the literature on classroom goals. Many teacher education programs are instructing pre-service teachers in mastery approaches (Hewitt, 2003). However, a conflict exists because the schools in which they will eventually teach remain largely performance driven. The purpose of this study was to inspect changes in pre-service teachers’ personal goals and intended classroom goals once they became practicing teachers.
Method. Three stability analyses were conducted to compare 53 participants’ responses to Elliot and Murayama’s (2008) Achievement Goal Questionnaire-R and Midgely et al.’s (2000) PALS at the end of their education program and two years later. In addition, focus groups were conducted with eight teachers in order to elaborate on the results.
Results. Pearson-moment correlations assessed differential continuity and showed that pre-service teachers’ personal mastery-approach goals were significantly related to mastery-approach goals as practicing teachers (r=.51, p<.01). The correlations between the other personal goals at the two time points were non-significant. Both classroom goals were moderately positively correlated (mastery r=.56; performance r=.55, ps<.01). Paired-samples t-tests assessed mean-level change and showed a significant decrease from pre-service to practicing for personal performance goals t(42)=2.27, p<.05 and classroom mastery goals t(42)=4.20, p<.001. We used the Reliable Change Index (Jacobson &Truax, 1991) to determine how many participants decreased, stayed the same, or increased on each variable. Chi-square statistics suggested meaningful change on all variables and that the majority of participants increased on personal mastery-approach goals (44.2%) and performance classroom goals (37.2%) and decreased on all other variables. A supporting quote is: “I think your main focus as a student teacher is to get a job…. But as a teacher your goals are different. You want to be the best you can be you want to always be learning….”
Discussion/Implications. The transition from pre-service to practicing teacher reveals both stability and change. For personal goals, pre-service teachers who endorsed mastery-approach were likely to retain that endorsement as teachers and even became more mastery focused. Additionally, the group as a whole showed a decrease in personal performance-approach goals. One explanation is that the competitiveness pre-service teachers experience at university doesn’t have a school-based counterpart. The correlations suggest that pre-service teachers’ intended classroom goals were related to their reported practices. However, mastery structures were less strongly endorsed and performance structures more strongly as practicing than pre-service. Perhaps pre-service teachers overestimated their ability to implement mastery practices and had to increase their endorsement of performance practices in light of a performance-based education system.

Author

• Lia Marie Daniels, University of Alberta