The effects of pre-service school experiences on the attitudes about teaching as a career of freshman teaching fellows at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this research was to examine whether one school exposure model produced freshman UNC-Chapel Hill Teaching Fellows with a more positive attitude toward teaching as a career than the other. This study examined and compared perceptions concerning teaching as a career of freshmen who began UNC-Chapel Hill and the Teaching Fellows program in August 2002. Between September and December 2002 these freshman completed the first semester of program-required and organized school experiences. Of 58 participants, 18 participated in a classroom-based initial school experience under the guidance of several teachers. The remaining 40 students participated in an after-school initial school experience that involved one-on-one interactions with students. All participants completed their initial school experience at an elementary school located in the research triangle. To address the research questions, this study analyzed the results of pre- and post-Likert-scale surveys distributed and collected by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Teaching Fellows program as part of its internal program evaluation process. The results of this study showed that participants completing their field experience in the classroom under the supervision of a teacher experienced a non-significant negative change in their attitudes about teaching as a career, while participants completing their field experience after-school working one-on-one with students experienced a significant increase in positive attitudes regarding teaching as a career. Rosenberg's theory of cognitive structure and attitudinal affect was used to guide the discussion of this study's results.