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Teacher efficacy and elementary teacher education.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Elementary teacher education in Taiwan has been facing the dilemma of cultivating prospective teachers to be generalists or specialists for certain subject areas since 1997. Referring to the significant factors affecting teacher education, "teacher efficacy" is at the heart of this dilemma. This study aimed to compare prospective teachers' efficacy toward mathematics and science of ten preparation programs. Findings indicated that more subject-matter preparations resulted in superior efficacy. It further provided a deliberation on how to prepare elementary teachers.

Introduction

A large and growing body of research data indicate that the preparation and ongoing professional development of teachers in mathematics and science for grades K-12 needs rethinking and improvement on a large scale (e.g., Holmes Group, 1995; Hwang, 2003; National Research Council [NRC], 2001; National Science Foundation, 1996; Rodriguez, 1998; Sanders & Rivers, 1996; Wright et al., 1997; Wu, 2004). While re-examining the effectiveness of the design of teacher preparation programs, it indicates that the traditional design of teacher preparation programs are oriented to cultivate elementary generalists (NRC, 2001). Furthermore, for instance, "too often, teacher preparation programs are characterized by a lack of coherence and articulation across the general education, science education, and professional education curriculum strands" (NRC, 1997, p. 9). Even though most programs currently require prospective elementary school teachers to have a major in a discipline other than education, few of them choose majors in mathematics or science. Within this trend of program designing, prospective teachers received inadequate preparation in certain subject areas, for instance, mathematics and science (education). It led to the insufficiency of in-depth content knowledge and conceptual understanding of and efficacy toward mathematics and science needed for teaching these subjects effectively at all grades.

With regard to Taiwan, the design of all teacher preparation programs encountered significant changes beginning in 1997. Perspective teachers who entered the teachers college were categorized into different departments (programs), such as Departments of Mathematics Education for students' major in mathematics education. Usually, there were eleven departments in one teachers college [1], including the Departments of Mathematics Education (DME), Science Education (DSE), Elementary Education (DEE), Language Education (DLE), Art Education (DAE), Social Science Education (DSS), Music Education (DMU), Early Childhood Education (DEC), Special Education (DSP), Physical Education (DPE), and Department of Children's English Education (DCE). The purpose of separating the whole teacher preparation system by subject matter was to train all prospective teachers to be not only generalists but also specialists in certain subject areas. Following this movement, the teacher preparation programs were modified by having more detailed separation of functions enabling all new teachers to master the subject matter they would teach in the classroom. In addition, there were several new departments established, e.g. the DSP...

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