Teaching Practice: Is There any Relationship Between Academic Supervisors’ and School Supervisors’ Assessment of Students?

Abstract

Teaching Practice (TP) is an essential part of all teacher training processes. It is both a practice that all teacher trainees go through, but is also an examination. The world over, who mans the education sectors is critical to national development. Who is approved to be a teacher is a critical question then, and how assessments are done, of interest to all stakeholders. In the study, we examined the following: i. the nature of assessments school administrations and/or cooperating teachers made of practicing teachers, ii. Academic supervisors’ assessments of students iii. tested relationships between lecturer scores and school supervisor scores, and iv. differences between the performance of Diploma and Bachelors students. The study utilized reports made on each student at the end of the three months of Teaching Practice (TP) by both in-school supervisors (heads and/or cooperating teachers) and lecturers. Students in the study were visited at least three times by their academic supervisors and all their scores on each occasion were then converted to just one aggregate mark, as is done, because the practicum is considered as one examination. The study wanted to establish whether students who did well in their teaching also did well according the heads of schools and cooperating teachers in other measures. On-TP student teachers were assessed on: preparation (scheming, planning, writing of focused objectives;) and actual teaching: introduction, development, and closure of lessons, in addition to their rapport with learners, mastery of subject matter, use of teaching materials and aids as well as body language and appropriate dressing. At the end of the three months the heads of schools also assessed them using a short questionnaire. A total of 113 students were randomly selected using from each group for the study (41 diploma, 72 bachelors). Confidential school assessments ranging between ‘3’ (average) and ‘5’ (excellent), and lecturer ratings ranging between 41% and 86% were used for comparison. The results of the study show that on all aspects, there were no significant differences in the scores of diploma and bachelors students. However, the degree trainees had significantly better mastery of content than their diploma counterparts even though it did not translate into better performance in other measures of actual teaching.