Flexible or Rigid? Exploring Preservice Teachers' Classroom Preferences Academic Article

abstract

• Understanding preservice teachers (PSTs) classroom preferences offers the potential to inform school hiring and reduce early career turnover. This large-scale qualitative study ( n = 2,798) explores rich PST responses to the open-ended survey item: Describe a classroom setting in which you would enjoy teaching. Results indicate three categories of characteristics (classroom setting, pedagogical strategies, and student characteristics) and from those categories, two contrasting profiles. Flexible PSTs focus more on implementing their perception of effective pedagogy in any context. Rigid PSTs believe certain school, classroom, or student characteristics would facilitate their success. Categories meaningfully varied by certification level but not by gender or ethnicity. Findings advise teacher education to prepare PSTs toward effective pedagogy and district screening characteristics for improved hiring.

authors

• Kwok, Andrew

published proceedings

• EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER

altmetric score

• 3

author list (cited authors)

• Kwok, A.

citation count

• 2

complete list of authors

• Kwok, Andrew

publication date

• October 2021

publisher

• American Educational Research Association (AERA)  Publisher

published in

• Educational Researcher  Journal

keywords

• Development
• Qualitative Research
• Teacher Characteristics
• Teacher Context
• Teacher Education
• Teacher Knowledge

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.3102/0013189X211011426

start page

• 463

end page

• 473

volume

• 50

issue

• 7

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x211011426

user-defined tag

• 4 Quality Education