Learning to teach is a highly emotional task for pre-service teachers and this hinders the more rational technical and reflective approaches to teaching that form the basis of what most teacher educators are trying to accomplish in their courses. Horror stories, for example, are examples of this emotional response that contrasts with the rational approach most university educators are trying to model. This study seems to indicate that pre-service teachers are easily frustrated, skeptical about information given to them by university sources, and selective about what constitutes a satisfactory learning experience. These characteristics must be considered and dealt with before the work of more rational approaches can proceed.
In order to accomplish this, there are three broad categories of suggestions that can be applied to courses in which pre-service teachers participate: immediate, near future and visionary future. First there should be careful consideration of who works with these teachers. In an ideal situation, actual classroom
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teachers as well as university educators who are not responsible for evaluating these pre-service teachers and who understand group facilitation should be working with them over a period of time. Scheon (2005) also contends that the “…strong emotional reactions to the dilemmas they
face…underscores the importance of teacher educators building trusting, collegial, supportive
relationships with the pre-service teachers with whom they work, in order to facilitate pre-service teachers‟ willingness to share and examine their beliefs” (p. 673). Authority, power and consequences for actions are very real for pre-service teachers. These participants indicated that they were highly aware of with whom and where they could share certain stories. Even when there is a sense of trust, these participants were wary of letting too much information be formally recorded.
Other immediate actions that should be taken by teacher educators include setting time aside immediately after the experience to allow emotional and other preparatory sharing of the experiences and save the more rational, technical sharing for more structured class time. Any sharing during this time should be in self-selected groups and not considered in any evaluative procedures. Once this emotional processing has occurred, then reflective activities using structured questions such as those offered by Hay and White (2005) to make the transition to more technical reflections possible.
To further facilitate the quality of this sharing, the teacher educator should consider the size of the group in which these emotions are processed. Group size and bonds among the members are important. Large group discussions do not offer the same level of intimacy that may be necessary to allow these kinds of stories to be shared. How members of the group relate to one another is important as well. For this study, the teachers did not select the other group members but it was obvious that those who were already comfortable with one another shared a greater variety of stories that those who were not. In order to make the emotional processing more productive, small groups should be established and the teacher educator should oversee these discussions with as little intervention as possible until the initial stages of discussion have occurred. As the conversation is winding down among group members, then the teacher educator can have the group offer an oral summation of events discussed.
The final suggestion that could be applied immediately would be to consider the quantity of experiences that are being processed and pick only those experiences that seem most problematic to address in more structured class analysis. As demonstrated in this study, pre-service teachers are
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overwhelmed with information to process and it is important to get them to slow down and carefully consider what can be learned from their experiences. Since stories are not a problem-solving tool in themselves, these teachers must learn how to use them effectively in order to make them a problem solving tool. Furthermore, the number and types of frustrations that are told through their stories may help identify pre-service teachers who may be in trouble. For example, if the pre-service teacher consistently tells stories that demonstrate consistent failure or inability to overcome an obstacle, the teacher educator may need to work more closely with that teacher to create a new story outcome.
In the near future, teacher educators may want to work more collaboratively within departments to help pre-service teachers create class journals that travel from course to course with the teachers. This may help these teachers connect past with present experiences. It will also help them begin to identify patterns of experiences that may occur across courses and help them see beyond a particular university teacher. Researchers such as Coia and Taylor (2001) have recommended having pre-service teachers write autobiographies to use as a basis of reflection in university courses. This could be expanded to include university experiences also so that the pre-service and university teachers could observe changes that may occur as experiences accumulate.
Finally, teacher educators could seek to establish self-selected cohorts that meet outside of the courses and for the duration of the course of study. Although the pre-service teachers and a faculty advisor may remain the same throughout the time they are taking education courses, university and classroom teachers can rotate through the groups to share their own insights. The key aspect of this group would be the lack of evaluation and the ability to process the more emotional aspects of learning to teach and initiating the first steps to more rational thinking about the problem these teachers are facing. This process would address the time and relationship obstacles observed with these teachers.