The effect of the cognitive development of secondary student teachers on the cognitive attainment of their learners and the cognitive level of their unit objectives

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the cognitive development (as proposed by Piaget) of student teachers on the cognitive attainment of their students and on the cognitive level of their unit objectives. Because other factors such as student teacher knowledge, grade level, and subject matter could have contributed to the effect, secondary questions were posed. The seventeen member sample was composed of volunteers from secondary student teachers during the 1984 spring semester at Texas A&M University. They represented several teaching fields spread across junior and senior high school teaching assignments. The student teachers' cognitive development was measured using the Lawson Classroom Test of Formal Operations. The students' cognitive attainment was assessed on the basis of the number of objectives successfully completed by each student during the second unit taught by the student teacher. The level of development of unit objectives was assessed by the researcher by comparing each objective to stated definitions of concrete and formal concepts. All other data were compiled from student teacher departmental records. Descriptive statistics, product-moment correlations, and stepwise multiple regressions were used to analyze the data. Decisions were made to reject the null hypotheses for correlations significant at the p (LESSTHEQ) .05 level or for p (LESSTHEQ) .10 and 10% of the variance accounted for. Results for this sample indicated the cognitive development of student teachers had no significant effect on the cognitive attainment of the learners. However, due to the low number of non-formal student teachers (4/17) there was minimum variance within the sample; thus it was concluded that the hypothesized relationship had not been tested and should be further investigated with a larger and more varied sample. There was a significant effect of the cognitive development of the student teacher on the cognitive level of the unit objectives indicated by 10% of the variance accounted for. Secondary results indicated that further investigation of the effect of student teachers' cognitive development on curricular goals and student achievement should take account of the subject area, the school level, and the student teacher's grade point average in professional education courses.