Education professors comment on pre-service teacher program

Kristy Nicolich / staff photographer Faculty members from the College of Education speak on aspects of instruction involving pre-service teachers Thursday.

Discussing techniques for pre-service teaching, two education professors spoke Thursday afternoon in Health and Human Services Building room 1301.

The pre-service, or student, teaching program provides JMU pre-service teachers an opportunity to research and test a struggling 4th or 5th grade reading student in a local elementary school. In their talks, the professors focused on the effectiveness and results of the program by studying and interpreting undergraduate journals and responses online.

Karen Broaddus, assistant education professor, spoke about the format of the case studies and used student journal responses and papers to make points. Each preservice teacher took notes and tested the progress of their elementary school student, she said. At the end of the semester, the JMU pre-service teachers wrote a paper summarizing their experience and research conclusions.

Broaddus said the program benefited pre-service teachers by giving "students a greater view of literacy" and increasing "personal learning."

Broaddus also discussed weaknesses in the program. She said undergraduates felt uncomfortable writing and choosing appropriate materials for the elementary school children. She also spoke about the lack of urban diversity within the program and the difficulty of picking materials to help improve state test performance.

Charles Watson, director of the school of education, said, "Harrisonburg is the second most diverse school district in the state," and since there are no urban cities near JMU, nothing can be done to facilitate urban learning. He said urban learning is different from traditional learning becuase it incorporates teaching with an emphasis on the importance of diversity. He also said material quantity and quality are "directly related to funding" and materials are purchased and used based on recommendations from surrounding school districts.

Associate professor of education Tamara L. Jetton spoke about the online portion of the program. Undergraduate students participated in an online discussion forum to discuss their individual case studies with the struggling elementary school readers, she said. Jetton discussed the importance of technology as a "way to expand learning beyond the classroom" and the need to stress the "importance of the discussion board" when presenting the different requirements of the case study.

She outlined several positive and negative aspects of using the online discussion system. She said most of the positive impacts involved multiple users being able to view and comment on specific problems. The forum gave undergraduates multiple perspectives on different challenges and created an excellent environment for active problem solving techniques, according to Jetton. She highlighted instructor input and increased depth of issues as other positive impacts of the forum.

Negative aspects of the online forum also were discussed. Jetton said that since the forum only could handle written responses, gestures and oral responses were lost.