Date

6-2018

Department

School of Education

Degree

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Chair

Samuel C Smith

Keywords

Assessment Tests such as Major Field Tests, Cooperating Teachers, Novice Teachers, Praxis II Exams, Student Teaching Experience, Teacher Competency Assessment

Disciplines

Education | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | Educational Methods

Abstract

Numerous universities throughout the United States of America offer Social Studies Education programs as a major. Naturally, it is the desire of leaders in any credible institution to well train and equip eventual graduates to become quality teachers of Social Studies subject areas, including the field of history. The importance and purpose of this study was to investigate records from Social Studies Education majors of an individual university, to determine if this particular university’s combined efforts between its history department and education department are producing future novice teachers with a keen knowledge of Social Studies fields as well as the skills to successfully teach these subjects. The congruent records utilized in this study were secondary education cooperating teacher evaluations of student teaching experiences and the outcomes from Praxis II exams as well as the university’s history department usage of a Major Field Test (MFT) to assess student content knowledge. Seven consecutive years of records were in review of initially 32 Social Studies Education major students. Of these students, 20 took the MFT assessment, the Praxis II test, and completed Student Teacher internships concluded by a Teacher Competency Assessment (TCA) from cooperating teachers. The Point Biseral Correlation method was used in this study and determined that there was a non-significant relationship between Praxis II scores and TCA results as well as a non-significant relationship between MFT scores and TCA outcomes.

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