How Pre-Service Teachers' Engagement and Affect Informs Instructional Format of an Introductory Methods Course

Douglas DiStefano, Fordham University

Abstract

An old Finnish saying inspires my research, “those things you learn without joy, you will forget easily.” My research is framed by Vygotsky (1978) describing how “subjugation to rules eliminates the joy of action” (p. 93), and guided by Rodriguez and Fitzpatrick (2014) who describe cognition and emotion as “interdependent and inextricable” (p. 79) and see learning as a social endeavor involving the student, the teacher, and the relationship between the two. Baker Rodrigio Ocumpaugh Monitoring Protocol (BROMP) is used to explore the learning brain and the teaching brain (Rodriguiez & Fitzpatrick, 2014). Coding a class for engagement, behavior, and format of content delivery informs the learning brain by giving quantitative data that supports a classes’ preferred format of content delivery. It provides data for the teacher educator’s preferred format of content delivery. Ideally, these two points of information would create an instructional “sweet spot” where pre-service teacher engagement and teacher educator’s format choices are aligned and learning outcomes can be optimally realized. Results from my research can be used to avoid methods class that Ness and Osborn (2010) described as “laundry lists of fractured components” that “leave pre-service teachers ill-prepared to connect theory to practice” (p. 342). I address the question: When delivering introductory methods to pre-service teachers, during which instructional format is there: (a) the highest level of on-task behavior; (b) the lowest off-task behavior; (c) the highest level of engaged concentration; and (d) the lowest level of boredom?

Subject Area

Teacher education

Recommended Citation

DiStefano, Douglas, "How Pre-Service Teachers' Engagement and Affect Informs Instructional Format of an Introductory Methods Course" (2018). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI10823350.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI10823350

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