Volume 18 Number 2
January 1979

James M. Mahan and Mary F. Smith

TEACHER preparation institutions and their preservice teacher enrollees are displaying increased interest and involvement in cross-cultural student teaching projects and early field experiences. Along with desired and desirable cultural immersion successes, however, have emerged many unresolved and unstudied issues. Teacher preparation projects in Indian communities are generally characterized by little research germane to some pragmatic questions that follow.

A very important research effort could be undertaken to determine the degree to which non-Indian preservice teachers are effective teachers of Indian youth. School administrators and teachers normally report student teachers as assets to their school programs. Most school students come to like and respect the preservice teachers and say they did a "good job." Student teachers also, in self-evaluation activities, are usually convinced that they have made important contributions to the education of Indian students. However, there are few hard data to prove that school pupils achieved as much, more, or less under student teachers than under the regular classroom teacher.

Perhaps this is because teacher trainers and school faculty members may be mutually apprehensive about encouraging and/or conducting research concerning pupil achievement as a result of a student teaching experience. What would parental reaction be if their children learn less when taught by student teachers? This issue needs to be faced in every student teaching site. In addition, it should be an even higher priority question in Indian communities that have fought so long for more relevant, more culturally sensitive, more effective schools and for more Indian teachers.

The effectiveness of the non-Indian student teacher in an Indian school may well be related to the structure of the student teaching experience in that school. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that pupils learn more when student teacher and classroom teacher effectively team to instruct rather than when the student teacher "picks up the whole load" after observing for a few days. Two educated adults should be able to identify complementary ways to distribute their energies, expertise, cultural outlooks, motivational strategies, and individual attention more intensively and abundantly in a classroom than can a lone teacher, regardless of experience. This same team approach should also be more effective instructionally than a classroom teacher who restricts the freedom and activity of a student teacher and relegates the novice to the role of tutor or assistant.

When graduates of Indian school placements return "home" to teach non-Indian youth, it is hypothesized that their teaching will be both more culturally pluralistic and more adaptable to the cultural characteristics of the local people--brown, black, or white. Teacher preparation personnel and Indian educators who invest time and money in cross-cultural student teaching projects should expect project graduates in any classroom to display different knowledge, attitudes, and materials relative to Indians than do teachers who have never studied about or met Indian people. Is the expectation justified?

If in a suburban school one periodically observed and compared a former reservation student teacher with teachers, born, raised, and educated in mainstream settings, would these differences be obvious?

• Project graduate includes more comparative culture topics and discussion in weekly learning activities.
• Project graduate evidences more knowledge about minority history, social conditions, and current aspirations.
• Project graduate selects more and better curricular materials, more accurate histories of the settlement of this nation, more diverse stories and tales, more values clarification activities, more culturally pluralistic examples of art and music, etc.
• Project graduate is more sensitive to the characteristics, beliefs, unique contributions of any minority child enrolled in that room.
• Project graduate avoids stereotyping Indians and teaches that all ethnic people are individuals first and foremost.

Perhaps the reservation project graduate comes "back home" to emulate those conventional teachers who have their pupils fashion feathered headbands for Thanksgiving and build construction paper tipis for cultural enlightenment. Is it not timely and appropriate then that a random sample of young teachers from mainstream and Indian student teaching backgrounds be drawn, carefully observed, and compared? There should be teaching differences and attitudinal differences between the two groups. A related question could be addressed as well. Do young teachers who have served under Indian supervising teachers demonstrate more culturally pluralistic tendencies in the classroom than young teachers who have taught on a reservation under non-Indian teachers?

Student teachers who arrive at isolated Indian schools are more foreign to the local social system than are student teachers placed in urban or suburban settings. The citizens of the site may not be as convinced of the need for cross-cultural experiences for teachers as are some educational reformists. Arguments are often heard that student teachers bring some new educational methodology, a youthful enthusiasm, diverse perspectives, and very different background experiences to any school to share with pupils and inservice teachers. Do Indian lay people want these inputs from the outside? (Do they even agree with these assumptions?) The question is particularly important in Indian educational settings where past attempts to use schools to separate Indians from their culture are aggressively being replaced with bilingual and bicultural programs to maintain and strengthen the tribal language and culture.

Across the nation, student teaching placements are made for almost every conceivable time interval--four, six, eight or sixteen weeks; half days for varying numbers of weeks; and even for a full academic year. There is a serious shortage of research concerning length of placement in the classroom as a factor in student teaching outcomes. This lack of research is even more critical relative to the immersion of student teachers in ethnic minority neighborhoods. Non-Indians placed on a reservation do report initial feelings of culture shock. It takes time for the feeling to wear off. In order to function more confidently and effectively as a teacher, the outsider needs time to meet the people, explore the setting, study the culture, and discover how daily life is paced.

If ethnically different student teachers are expected to adapt their personalities, teaching strategies, and communicative processes to the mores and life flow of an Indian community, it would seem that sufficient time to observe and orient oneself must be programmed. Would the cause of cultural pluralism be as well served if more convenient and abbreviated placements were made? If more preservice teachers were provided intensive, on-site cultural experiences for relatively short periods of time, what changes would occur in project outcomes? Would the student teachers’ classroom instruction be as effective? What would be the resultant attitudes of these student teachers toward Indian adults and youth? Would Indian educators and lay citizens be as willing to accept "short timers?"

It would seem that more research studies focusing on the effects of varying lengths of field experience assignments should be available to guide program developers. It would also seem that assignment length might have very different implications for student teachers reporting to cross-cultural settings than for student teachers reporting to mainstream schools. A carefully constructed, widely disseminated research study on the relation of assignment time to selected student teaching outcomes in ethnic minority and mainstream settings should be avidly applauded by teacher educators committed to multicultural education. Such a study could include the perceptions of ethnic minority parents and pupils as the input of inservice and preservice educators at the university and public school levels.

One often heard and read criticism of Indian education, especially of BIA boarding schools, is that a high teacher turnover rate characterizes many faculties. Student teachers accepting reservation placements obviously are programmed for departure. Where inservice teachers usually will remain at least a year or two, preservice teachers will be leaving in six to sixteen weeks. The pupils have just begun to know and communicate with the student teacher as a person when it is time to bid goodbye.

How does this short inter-cultural interaction with its inescapable termination affect pupil attitudes towards outsiders, toward non-Indians, toward the school? Are feelings of sadness or resentment or resignation or anomie stimulated by the comings and goings of student teachers in isolated Indian schools? The author has interviewed many returning student teachers who were emotionally affected when they concluded their classroom teaching work in reservation schools. Basically, they did not want the experience to end. It can be hypothesized that the emotional reaction is not a one way phenomenon - that it is reciprocated by many of the pupils. Research is needed to determine the nature and intensity of pupil reaction to the departure of student teachers.

Anglo education majors are encouraged to augment their learnings about ethnic and economic minorities with on-site, real-life community/school involvement. Cross-cultural field experiences for Indian or other minority preservice teachers seem equally desirable. In a culturally pluralistic nation each ethnic group has the responsibility to learn more about the history, values, and life patterns of other groups. It is not enough that non-Indian student teachers be placed on reservations. Indian preservice teachers should be assisted to engage in cross-cultural suburban or urban assignments. If non-Indians come to know Indians better by being minority guests in their communities, so can Indians come to know non-Indians better by entering and analyzing non-Indian communities.

If non-Indian student teachers have perspectives and skills to share with Indian pupils, then Indian student teachers have equally important viewpoints and educational approaches to bring to non-Indian pupils, parents and inservice teachers. Cultural deprivation of teachers can be lessened if all teacher trainees spend some time walking in another’s shoes along an unfamiliar cultural path. Data are needed to describe the current situation and to determine the strength of institutional, school, social subgroup, and parental commitment to cross-cultural field experience for any preservice teacher regardless of the ethnic membership of the trainee.

There are many reasons why questions previously raised have been incompletely answered through research efforts. Cross-cultural field experiences are relatively new to teacher preparation programs. Most of these experiences are modestly funded, leanly staffed, and more field than research oriented. Staff time tends to be utilized in site development and communication and in the preparation, placement and supervision of teacher program trainees. Research colleagues on campus are often hesitant to study field experience outcomes. After all, there are so many expected and unexpected uncontrollable variables and forces in the field to affect outcomes. Furthermore, schools and communities rarely have the freedom or interest to collaborate in "tidy" classical studies with experimental and control groups and well-defined "treatments."

Teachers are not anxious to complete more surveys--neither are principals. Legal requirements must be carefully observed if data are to be obtained from school pupils. Ethnic minority groups are disenchanted with being the subjects of research that leads to papers and presentations but not to real life educational improvements. It is always difficult to reach agreement on what represents the most important outcomes of cross-cultural field experiences. It is even more difficult to locate or create instruments that accurately measure those outcomes.

And what if field experience outcomes should be trivial or discouraging? Preservice teachers want to work in the field. Teacher preparation program safety sometimes is assured by not doing the research. Despite the obstacles, real or imagined, more research on the frequency, nature, and outcomes of cultural immersion field experiences is needed. Educational research, like teacher preparation, needs to become more culturally oriented, more community based, and more inclusive of minority views.