The effects of an intervention in student teachers' classroom management learning processes

Abstract

Classroom management learning of student teachers for secondary education at the workplace is often unfocused as they tend to struggle with the effective use of theoretical knowledge and how to use their teacher educators or others during their internship. As a consequence, student teachers lack efficiency in their classroom management learning process. In the present study, we present the development and implementation of an intervention with the ambition to add more focus and direction to student teachers' classroom management learning by offering them activities they can use in their interpersonal learning process. Participation in this intervention was voluntary for student teachers. The intervention consisted of three activities: lesson observations, planned conversations and unplanned conversations. The results show that student teachers mainly use a combination of unplanned conversations and lesson observations to promote their learning, and that the intervention is helpful for student teachers to structure their learning process. The main conclusion of this study is that the intervention was effective for student teachers and it had impact on developing their knowledge and beliefs/attitudes, and differences in their interpersonal behaviour. However, the student teachers perceived no differences in their pupils' behaviour in the classroom.