Volume 23 Number 3
May 1984

James M. Mahan, Indiana University

TEACHER PREPARATION PROGRAMS across the country are now offering more multi and/or cross-cultural early experience and student teaching placements than in the past. Native American schools and communities in particular have benefited from this new trend in preservice teacher preparation. As a result, many Anglo education majors do express interest in Native American education, do seek field assignments where they can teach Native American youth, and do take inservice teaching positions in schools serving Native American people. Increasingly, Indian schools are perceived as viable and valuable field extensions of campus multicultural instruction.

Anglo preservice teachers who accept student teaching placements in Indian communities almost always encounter cultural characteristics and lifestyles very different from conditions in which they were born, reared and educated. Can these young teachers depart from college campuses and college towns and feel successful in Indian communities unfamiliar to them? What are the major concerns of student teachers before, during, and after a teaching assignment in a school serving a predominately Indian student body?

To investigate these questions, a "Frequent Concerns of Student Teachers Survey" was developed and utilized by a large university which annually places student teachers on Navajo, Hopi, and Apache Reservations. Each student reads Indian-oriented books and articles, views films, attends seminars and interacts with Native American consultants as required orientation before Reservation placement requests are arranged. This paper reveals the "worries" of forty-two Anglo American elementary student teachers placed in schools on three Reservations.

The "Frequent Concerns of Student Teachers Survey" which ultimately listed twenty four pragmatic concerns of student teachers, was developed and validated over a two year period. Specific concerns initially were extracted by two professors and five doctoral students from their supervisory conferences with one hundred and ten student teacher assignees. The seven supervisors of student teachers prepared a "first draft" list of student-stated concerns and reached at least 85% panel agreement on the assignment of each concern to one of three general categories. Next, thirty additional student teachers "tested" the instrument, conferred with the developers, suggested additional concerns, and made minor changes in wording to enhance clarity. Then the "Concerns Survey" was field tested with one hundred thirty student teachers serving in diverse cultural communities in Indiana and in the Southwest. All of these respondents were encouraged to add new and different concerns and then rank order their additions if they felt the Survey omitted some aspect of their personal student teaching situation. A few new concerns were added. The additions, however, all centered around personal finances—money needed for tuition, apartment rental, gasoline expense to and from school, etc. The survey developers decided to accept "financial problems" as a major worry of every student teacher enrolled in a university program and elected to examine only the rankings of non-financial concerns.

American Indian Reservation Project participants (42) during the 1982-83 academic year were instructed first to read through and think about all twenty-four items, then were asked to rank the twenty-four concerns in order of importance. The first stage ranking procedure was simply a matter of separating the items according to the eight concerns of most personal importance and the eight concerns of least personal importance. The remaining eight concerns automatically became concerns of medium importance. The second stage ranking procedure then required that each student examine the items in each importance category (greatest, least, medium) and number them in order of priority.

Each participant completed the survey three times--1) before leaving for the Reservation student teaching site, 2) after ten days of student teaching and 3) after seventeen weeks of student teaching in the Reservation school. Respondents handed the completed surveys to the researcher immediately after the on-campus completion and mailed them to the researcher immediately after each of the two on-site completions. Thus respondents were not able to compare their earlier rankings of concerns with later rankings.

An important element of the survey design was the categorization of concerns according to: 1) instructional and curricular knowledge and skills (Type M). These were the types of concerns that are commonly addressed in university courses related to teaching methodology, professional skills and development, and strategies of teaching. 2) cultural knowledge and skills (Type ( C ). These concerns included such items as "adapting to on-site cultural shock," "the geographical or social conditions presented by the placement site" and "avoiding culturally inappropriate behavior at the placement site." 3) personal relationships and preferences (Type P). These concerns dealt with items such as reaffirming teaching as a career, leaving behind college campus friends and activities, and satisfaction with school policies and staff.

Survey respondents also had the opportunity to add any concerns not represented on the survey. These "write-in" concerns were, also, to be ranked. Again, no new concerns were added except "having enough money to survive the student teaching semester."

Indian leaders, teacher educators, supervising teachers, building principals and future student teachers can gain insights into the professional life and social life of young teachers placed in Native American communities by examining Tables 1, II, and III. The three tables present the most important concerns or worries felt by the forty-two Reservation student teachers at each of three time periods, and reveal changes in the importance of twenty-four different concerns over the seventeen week field placement.

TABLES I, II, and III not in original document.

Table I indicates that the top concerns most continuously identified by the respondents belong to the Methods (M) category (3 at pre, 4 at 10 days, 4 at post) and to the Cultural (C) category (5 at pre, 3 at 10 days, 3 at post). Three concerns were ranked in the top eight at each response time. They are: 1) "motivating pupils to work" (M), 2) "understanding the culture of the people" (C) and 3) "adapting teaching to fit culture" (C). "Incorporating cultural topics/values into the curriculum" (C) initially was a top concern, dropped to,medium importance at the end of ten days of teaching, but rose to a top concern status again at the end of seventeen weeks of classroom observation and teaching.

It should be noted that concerns related to cultural knowledge and skills are of major importance to these student teachers throughout the teaching assignment. Recognition of the importance of cultural forces and aspirations certainly is needed if teachers are to become effective instructors of Native American youth. The preservice teachers seem to be saying that they need to know more about the life, history, activities, learning styles, cultural goals, etc. of the Indian people they serve. Indian leaders and other ethnic minority spokespeople have been advocating more cross-cultural and multicultural components in teacher preparation programs for years. Concurrently, mobile young teachers have been seeking teaching positions in a wider geographic area, in ethnic minority communities, in desegregated school systems, etc. This poses an important question: Are teacher educators in colleges and universities adequately "teaching to" the cultural expectations and characteristics their graduates will face?

Methods concerns are revealed as very important to student teachers in Indian settings. Motivating students, evaluating students, lesson planning and using curricular materials are common and continuous challenges for every teacher. These teaching functions are emphasized in methods classes, but apparently not adequately. Even when student teachers are placed in cultural settings different from the mainstream public schools so often used by the university, basic teaching techniques and skills remain top priority prerequisites to classroom success. Vigorous attention should be paid to methods preparation, exposure to instructional materials of all kinds and to early public school classroom experience when preparing education majors for multicultural student bodies. Improved methods preparation coupled with improved cultural preparation appear highly advisable for teacher preparation programs in the 1980s.

Several concerns which initially were considered quite important to presite student teachers were ranked as only medium concerns in the final week of placement. These included two cultural concerns and one methods concern. "Personal knowledge of subject matter" (M) dropped to a least concern ranking at the end of ten days before rising to medium importance at the end of student teaching. Perhaps the student teachers’ worry over their subject matter mastery ought to seriously concern arts and sciences professors and education professors. Four or more years of college course-taking apparently do not provide elementary education majors with maximum confidence in their knowledge of the content they are to teach to Navajo, Hopi and Apache children.

Two cultural concerns, "acceptance by community people" and "communicating with parents and adults" hovered between sixth place and thirteenth place during the entire time frame of the study. Obviously these student teachers were culturally sensitive, were oriented to lay people outside of the classroom and school and wanted to be an accepted member of the local community. Indian people tend to cooperate more with those Anglo teachers who supplement their professional role with community involvement, friendship building and two-way sharing of thoughts and perceptions.

Often it is assumed that Anglo student teachers will not be happy or comfortable in ethnic minority schools and communities. Separation from the familiar, along with the absence of family and friends are suggested as serious obstacles to the completion of lengthy cultural immersion placements. If these factors are pre-eminent, then the Reservation student teachers could be expected to rank many Personal (P) concerns in the top eight. They did not do so. Personal concerns were generally of least importance. This trend should be very encouraging to teacher educators who have been debating whether "to risk" placing Anglo student teachers in Native American, Hispanic, or Black communities. The data suggest that student teachers are able to adjust (as people) to new surroundings and cultures. In fact, "adapting to cultural shock" ( C ) never rose higher than a twentieth ranking. Adjustment difficulties still center around mastering teaching techniques (professional skills), not around living in a different community (social skills).

The least concerns category always included "housing at the placement site" (P), "separation from college joys" (P), "is teaching the right career for me?" (P) and "satisfaction with school program/philosophy" (P). "Sufficient informal social relationships" (P) was always a medium category concern. "Being perceived by pupils as a real teacher" (P) went from status as a least concern (prior to student teaching) to a medium category concern (during student teaching). All in all, Personal worries of the student teachers were of much less importance than Methods and Cultural worries. That speaks well for the adaptability, sensitivity, determination and service orientation of our future teachers.

The forty-two respondents received considerable orientation to Navajo, Hopi and Apache cultural values, history, social organization, economic activities, education, etc. before they left campus for placement sites on the Reservation. The required orientation and the data of the study prompt these questions: