Teacher trainers as action researchers: Scrutinizing the reasons for student failure
Abstract
This action research aims to identify the teacher trainees’ attributions for their failure, their locus of control and their achievement goals as a result of high failure rate in “Teaching English to Young Learners†course at a large state university in Turkey. For this purpose, qualitative and quantitative data were gathered via an attribution questionnaire, locus of control (LOC) scale, and interviews. The 35-item attribution questionnaire was developed by the researchers and consisted of four parts investigating student, instructor, course, and exam related reasons. The student related reasons had also four sub categories such as study skills, critical thinking ability, in-class performance/attendance and group work performance/attendance. The questionnaire also had an open-ended part with the same categories. The overall reliability of the questionnaire was found to be .80 and .77, .78, .70, .81 for respective sub-groups. The participants were also given a LOC scale and finally 21 successful and 21 unsuccessful students were interviewed. The results revealed that, having the highest mean score, student-related reasons were identified to be the major reason for the participants’ failure from the course. Moreover, the participants’ had internal locus of control and they mostly carried performance goals for achievement. In addition, it was found out that 40% of trainees did not have a desire to be a teacher after graduation. The results have implications for teacher trainers facing similar problems in Turkish context and governmental institutions in terms of teacher qualifications and teacher trainee selection in education faculties.
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