QIRYAT TIV ON, ISRAEL, December 27, 2022/ EINPresswire.com / -- The Problem: Novice teacher early-career dropout

Novice teacher dropout poses a challenge to the global field of teacher education. Preservice teachers (PSTs) have rated their training programs as ineffective because the content taught did not correspond to the work in the field. The Oranim College-Field Partnership Program, which was developed to address this challenge, is based on several principles: field-based studies, whereby academic courses are designed to address issues encountered in the field; emphasis on social and emotional aspects of teaching; the introduction of academic and organizational changes in the teacher-training programs.

The plan to change the process of teacher training in Oranim College of Education

Oranim College of Education has initiated The College-Field Partnership (CFP), a plan to change the process of teacher training (Razer et al., 2019), from a theory-based to a competence-based program. The aim is to improve the training by altering the ratio between theory and practice and inculcating the concept of inclusion an diversity as the basis for teaching. This will reduce the existing gap between teachers’ practical knowledge and skills and the schools’ needs, a chasm that has created insurmountable difficulties for novice teachers, leading to early-career dropout. Another objective is to turn the PSTs into a valuable asset for the staff of the practicum schools while equipping the PSTs with tools for coping with the heterogenous population of students in the classroom.

The study’s purpose and the main conclusion

The current study examined the extent to which the CFP model is embedded in the college’s teacher education program (specifically, the academy/field ratio, the quality of the school of education, and the program’s overall effectiveness) as measured through PSTs’ self-efficacy and satisfaction levels. The findings support the hypothesis that a stronger connection is needed between the academic content and the experience in the field, which should be mediated by the teacher education programs and the development of courses with relevant content.
The study reveals that the greater the program emphasis on gaining practice in the field and the higher the quality of modeling offered in the academic training programs and the quality of the coaching, the higher too were the PSTs’ levels of self-efficacy and satisfaction, reflected in a higher willingness of making a recommendation to a friend about the program, as well as enhancing their intention to pursue a career in teaching.

A quantitative methodology was used for this study. Teaching students in the program were tested at the beginning and at the end (pre-post) of the teaching training year. Participants were 221 Israeli Arab and Jewish PSTs training or retraining to become teachers. The independent variables were as follows: The amount of experience in the field; characteristics of the schools where the students experienced (teacher-student relationship, quality of teaching, quality of relationship between colleagues); Characteristics of the academic program (The degree to which the courses are connected to the field, the degree to which the program is suitable for students from different backgrounds, the degree to which the program deals with the teacher-student relationshipThe characteristics of the trainers (The quality of the accompaniment of the pedagogical instructor, the quality of instruction of the school coach, the modeling of lecturers) The dependent variables were as follows: PSTs’ self-efficacy (general teaching skills, inclusive education, coping with students’ social and emotional difficulties, collaborating with the staff, involvement is school activities other than teaching, and working with parents ) and PSTs’ satisfaction (willingness to recommend the program to a friend) and intention of pursuing a career in teaching.
The Main Findings

In multivariate linear regression analysis on the variable “giving a recommendation it to a friend” the variables Lecturers’ modeling, the quality of the guidance of the pedagogical instructor, the theoretical courses in the discipline, and the education courses for a teaching certificate predicted satisfaction with the program (to recommend it to a friend). Here, 51.5% of the variance is explained.

Two regression models were calculated to explain the self-efficacy of the students: The first one used predictors from the field experience and found three significant variables. The quality of the guidance of the pedagogical instructor, the number of lessons that the student taught using diverse teaching methods, and the number of lessons that the student taught that adapted to different levels of students. Here, 24.9% of “self-efficacy of the students” is explained by the model.

The second regression used predictors from the academic courses and found two variables out of three significant predictors that deal with the connection of the academic component with the field, “The academic courses help to understand the school’s reality” and “the academic courses use examples from the field”. The additional significant predictor was “the academic lecturers serve for them as an example of teaching. Here 33.5% of “self-efficacy of the students” is explained by the model.

The findings of the study support the assumptions underlying the CFP program, namely, that a significant aspect of PSTs’ training takes place at the school where the practicum is held, and that the amount of field experience, the quality of the training program , its staff, and the input from the pedagogical mentor all have a significant impact on PSTs’ acquired level of professional self-efficacy. These findings also lend support to the rationale of the College-Field Partnership model, which attributes importance to the school of education where the training is held. The findings further underscore the importance that the CFP program attributes to the quality of interpersonal relationships in the training endeavor, as demonstrated by the significant impact that lecturers’ and mentors’ modeling had on PSTs’ developing a strong sense of self-efficacy. On both the theoretical and practical levels, the relationship between the pedagogical mentor and the PSTs would benefit from a viable model describing the connection between the relationship and the content of the training. This is the direction being paved for research in the coming years. Finally, the research design is used also as an administrative tool that helps the educational staff members align their educational goals with the variables being measured.

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