The relationship between the self-awareness of a sample of student teachers and selected aspects of teaching effectiveness

The primary purpose of this research was to determine whether differences in selected aspects of teaching effectiveness existed between fourteen student teachers who were involved in a self-awareness experience and fourteen student teachers who did not participate in this program. A second purpose of this investigation was to provide data that would make possible the continued study, evaluation, and improvement of the student teaching phase of teacher education programs. Literature relating to the effective and cognitive attributes of teachers, group counseling as a dimension of the counseling process and group counseling undertaken with individuals in the realm of education was reviewed and reported. The twenty-eight student teachers comprising the study sample were randomly selected from a total of fifty prospective teachers at the College of Education, University of Houston, who (1) were enrollees in the student teaching course in the fall semester of 1969; (2) had selected the Houston Independent School District, Houston, Texas, for their student teaching assignment; and (3) had shown a preference for teaching the third, fourth, fifth or sixth grades. The study sample was then divided randomly into two groups: an experimental group and a control group, each comprising fourteen prospective teachers. The treatment included eight awareness experience sessions administered to the experimental group over a nine-week period. Changes in selected aspects of teaching effectiveness were measured by pre-test and post-test responses to stimuli on the following instruments: the Bass Orientation Inventory, the My Teacher Inventory, the Teacher Description Inventory, the Cognitive Merit of Teachers, and the Observer Rating Scale. Each of the instruments was administered pre- and post-test to both experimental and control groups to determine if differences existed as a result of the treatment. In the statistical analysis, the experimental group and the control group were treated separately. Means and standard deviations were computed on each variable collected. The differences between the mean change scores for experimental and control groups were tested with t statistic. Every variable was correlated with every other variable in each group. The results of the analysis of the data showed that no significant change was apparent at the .05 level of confidence between experimental and control groups in regard to the questions asked and null hypotheses presented that can be related to awareness experience. Nevertheless, although the hypotheses were not verified, by combining the groups a number of variables were isolated that were related to change in behavior as measured by change score. Some of the changes that occurred were as follows: increased task orientation, increased affective orientation, decreased affective and cognitive variability in the pupil's perception of the student teacher, and increased over-all teaching skill. Since the changes that took place in the groups were not due to awareness experience, it seemed apparent that these changes were due to the student teaching experience. The conclusions which resulted from this study suggested that the student teaching experience is of great benefit to teacher education students in increasing over-all teaching effectiveness and should possibly be extended to include sophomore and junior years. It was also suggested that awareness training may be of value, although in the present study the student teaching experience may have been so much more powerful in producing changes that the effect of awareness training was over-powered and masked. Possibilities for further research of awareness training were presented whereby future researchers would avoid incorporating awareness training into the student teaching experience but isolate it where it could be studied for its own impact. In this way, future researchers could attempt to determine whether awareness training is worthwhile in regard to producing even greater teaching effectiveness.