A study of preservice teachers' attitudes toward English language learners and perceptions of their professional education training and instructional strategies regarding English language learners.

摘要

With the rapidly changing demographics of the public school student population in the United States, teacher preparation programs have been driven to prepare teachers for linguistically and culturally diverse students. Considering these issues, the current research was conducted to benefit current teacher education research regarding English language learners (ELL) students. The purpose of the study was to investigate (a) preservice teachers' attitudes toward ELL, (b) preservice teachers' perceptions toward their professional education training for ELL, and finally, (c) their perceptions toward instructional strategies regarding ELL.;The current study utilized the Concurrent Triangulation Strategy (Creswell, 2003) research design to enhance the reliability and validity of the study. The study centered on 12 research questions which include 8 quantitative and 4 qualitative research questions. The research was conducted in two phases, quantitative and qualitative. In the quantitative phase, a theory-based survey was adopted and adapted. One hundred and twenty-nine preservice teachers of a teacher preparation program in a state-supported university of South Texas participated in the survey questionnaire. In the qualitative phases, a 35 minute semi-structured individual interview was employed. Twelve interviewees from among the 129 preservice teachers participated in the interviews. The data analysis also has two phases. The researcher utilized SPSS 16 to analyze the quantitative data with descriptive statistics, Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient test, and Mann-Whitney U test. The qualitative data was analyzed and coded with theory-based themes and Atlas.ti 5.0.;The discussion of the findings focuses on four main topics on the basis of the research questions, (a) attitude toward ELL, (b) relationship between professional education training for ELL, and attitudes and perceptions, (c) perceptions toward their professional education training for ELL, and (d) perceptions toward instructional strategies regarding ELL. The researcher first discussed the participants, Bilingual Generalist Early Childhood to 4th major, and Generalist Early Childhood to 4th major as a whole group. Then, the researcher examined participant attitudes and perceptions regarding English language learners in terms of their majors. The conclusions from relevant literature together with the results of quantitative and qualitative data, were triangulated to discuss the findings.;Finally, in order to benefit teacher education research, based on the findings, the researcher provided pedagogical implications for teacher preparation programs. Recommendations were also made to better similar research for future studies. It is hoped that by providing better and sounder teacher preparation, the future teaching force can indeed be ready to teach all students.