Development of Pedagogical Knowledge Related to Teaching At-Risk Students: How Do Inservice Teachers and Preservice Teachers Compare?

This study examined the development of pedagogical knowledge of preservice and inservice teachers as they implemented newly learned assessment and instructional strategies with at-risk readers in clinical settings. The preservice teachers worked in pairs to tutor children during the regular semester at a university reading clinic; the inservice teachers worked for four days a week for six weeks in a special reading academy. Four stages of development emerged from the examination of the reflective responses of teachers that they wrote after each tutoring sessions with the at-risk readers. The stages identified were: novice, advance beginner, competent, and proficient. Development of Pedagogical Knowledge Related to Teaching At-Risk Students: How Do Inservice Teachers and Preservice Teachers Compare? Diane D. Allen University of North Texas Rebecca A. Swearingen Southwest Missouri State University This study examined the development of pedagogical knowledge of preservice and inservice teachers as they implemented newly learned assessment and instructional strategies with at-risk readers in clinical settings. The preservice teachers worked in pairs to tutor children during the regular semester at a university reading clinic; the inservice teachers worked for four days a week for six weeks in a special reading academy. Four stages of development emerged from the examination of the reflective responses of teachers that they wrote after each tutoring sessions with the at-risk readers. The stages identified were: novice, advance beginner, competent, and proficient. 50 Reading Horizons, 2002, 43, (1) MOST UNDERGRADUATE and graduate programs in reading provide students with opportunities to work with individual children who are atrisk for reading failure. The importance of this type of authentic activity in teacher education is well-documented in literature (Bonar, 1985; Gipe, Duffy & Richards, 1989; McDiarmid, 1990). Other researchers have noted additional benefits of teacher reflection related to these teaching experiences (Bartlett, 1994; Bonar, 1985; Commeyras, Reinking, Heubach & Pugnucco, 1993). Although working with at-risk children does provide for authentic experiences related to teaching, preservice and inservice teachers face unique and challenging instructional questions and dilemma when planning lessons. With this study we hoped to determine how preservice and inservice teachers made instructional decisions for at-risk readers and if the teachers moved through definable stages as they made these decisions. Stages of learning and development are not new in educational literature. William Perry (1970) described stages of intellectual development that have pertinence to the training of teachers. His work documents that university students generally move from a stage in which they look to the professor as the authority with all the answers to a stage in which they accept that knowledge is contextual. More specifically, Black & Ammon (1992) and Kitchner & King (1990) have documented that as new teachers practice their craft, they move from a passive/recipient stage to an active/participant stage. In the area of literacy, some recent research has focused on how university students learn about teaching children who are at-risk for reading failure. Walker & Roskos (1994) and Walker & Ramseth (1993) have investigated what types of activities in university courses assisted students who succeeded with at-risk readers. The findings from these studies indicated that preservice teachers benefited from a combination of lecture and actual experience (tutoring) and that this type of activity assisted them in developing a procedural knowledge more specific and free of personal feelings. Kostelnik and Allen (1995) found that preservice teachers successfully proceeded through predictable stages of learning and became more proficient when asked to tutor an at-risk reader and reflect on their practice. How Do Inservice and Preservice Teachers Compare? 51 Our study builds on this previous research by seeking to elaborate and expand knowledge related to the development of good teachers of reading at both preservice and inservice levels. By detenrining how teachers progress toward an understanding of assessing and implementing literacy instruction to address specific student needs, perhaps university instructors can develop more effective scaffolding techniques and can adapt their instruction to better assist in this process. Specifically, the following research questions were posed as guidelines for this study: * What stages of development do preservice and inservice teachers experience when they work in an inquiry-based instructional model with at-risk readers? * What is the nature of these stages? * How do the stages of pedagogical concepts differ between the two groups of teachers? Research Design and Methods