Understanding preservice teachers' beliefs about children experiencing difficulty learning to read

Susan L. Hodges Nierstheimer, Purdue University

Abstract

This study examined preservice elementary education teachers' knowledge and beliefs about children who are at risk of failing to learn to read and what these future teachers believe they should do to help these children. The teacher candidates were enrolled in a redesigned corrective reading methods course with a tutoring practicum where features of the Reading Recovery professional development model were infused. Using the theoretical lenses of constructivism, symbolic interactionism, and phenomenology, preservice teachers' knowledge and beliefs were documented to determine if there were changes and shifts over time. Embedded in the context of the study of 67 undergraduate students' knowledge and beliefs, as well as their experiences in the course, are case studies that provide the perspectives of three individual students. Interpretations of multiple data using within- and cross-case analyses as well as single case content analyses revealed two major assertions. First, as elementary education preservice teachers enter a newly designed corrective reading course, the preservice teachers generally believe that elementary children's reading problems are caused by sources outside of school. They also believe that it is not their responsibility as future classroom teachers to help these children; rather, the responsibility belongs to someone else. Second, after teacher candidates participated in the course, they shifted in their beliefs toward assuming responsibility for helping children with reading problems. One of the primary factors involved in their shifts in beliefs appeared to be the use of features of the Reading Recovery professional development model in the tutoring component which influenced students' abilities to select appropriate instructional practices and focus on the needs of individual children. This study has implications for teacher education because it relates to an already common concern that practicing teachers abrogate responsibility for teaching the hardest-to-teach children to specialist teachers. It is imperative that teacher educators recognize future teachers' beliefs as they enter practicum experiences and afford those prospective teachers opportunities, such as the Reading Recovery model, to observe and participate in successful interventions for those children who experience difficulty learning to read. Through such successful interventions future teachers move toward assuming responsibility for at-risk literacy learners.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Dillon, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Literacy|Reading instruction|Teacher education|Elementary education

COinS