"Who I am": supporting pre-service teacher integrity within an evidence-based student teaching assessment program

Abstract

At one western, land-grant university, a student teaching exit survey given spring 2016 suggested that teacher candidates were falsifying data on their final student teaching projects--teacher work samples. An intrinsic case study on pre-service teacher integrity framed by Parker Palmer's work, Courage to Teach, was undertaken over 13 weeks of interactive, online journaling and followed by face-to-face discussions when the candidates had completed their experiences. Five female pre-service teachers revealed several elements that these candidates experienced as crucial during their student teaching experiences in order to maintain integrity to whom they were as individuals and whom they were becoming as educators. Themes arising during the study included vulnerability/comfort (confidence), challenge/courage, isolation/community, imbalance/balance, and labor/calling. Results had ramifications not only for needs of teacher candidates during student teaching but also for teacher educators needing to examine their own integrity as university instructors of the next generation of this nation's educators.