Individual personality traits of pre-service teachers may have a significant influence on their confidence in teaching. Confidence in teaching does not always align with the experience of pre-service teachers. simSchool enables transformational experiences for teacher candidates to improve in general teaching skills, connect learning theories in the classroom, and develop confidence to be an effective teacher without the ill impacts of practicing on real students. This study executed a quasi-experimental design to explore the personality traits of 152 pre-service teachers and examined how their perceptions of teaching confidence and teaching experience were related in the context of simSchool. A treatment and comparison group completed the Survey of Teaching Skills pre/post tests and the OCEAN survey for quantitative data analysis to investigate four research questions: 1. Is there a difference between treatment and comparison groups on educator’s gains in confidence and experience? 2. Is there a relationship between personality type and perceived teaching effectiveness? 3. Is there a relationship between personality attributes and pre-service educator ratings of teaching experience in a simulated teaching environment? 4. Is there a relationship between personality attributes and pre-service educator ratings of teaching confidence in a simulated teaching environment? Findings from repeated measures MANOVA tests indicated that the simSchool treatment group increased their perceptions of experience with significant gains (p < .05), in contrast to the comparison group. Two key constructs of personality and effective teaching, the latter of which is comprised of the pre-service teachers’ self-reports of teaching confidence and teaching experience, were examined using canonical correlation analysis. The traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism were components linked by structure coefficients to the synthetic variable of personality, the latter of which was found to be correlated with effective teaching. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were produced to assess the relationship between experience and confidence and relationships between experience and confidence with the personality traits of conscientiousness, openness, extraversion, and emotional stability. Multiple regression analyses were run using the predictors of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism. These were found to be significantly (p < .05) effective in predicting self-reported teaching experience and confidence from personality traits. Furthermore, the variable of openness was individually found to be a significant (p < .05) predictor of teaching experience and confidence. These findings suggest that personality traits affect the experience and confidence ratings of pre-service teachers in a simulated classroom environment and that simSchool training can foster the development of teaching effectiveness.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc500089 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Hopper, Susan B. |
| Contributors | Knezek, Gerald A., Christensen, Rhonda, Tyler-Wood, Tandra L. |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | x, 143 pages : illustrations (some color), Text |
| Rights | Public, Hopper, Susan B., Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved. |
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