Abstract
This study reports and discusses students' progress through a fifteenweek
reading course for preservice elementary teachers. Twenty-nine
students agreed to participate in a study involving a questionnaire directed
at determining changes in their attitudes/beliefs about teaching
beginning reading. Nine students volunteered to participate in the second
stage of the study, namely. a detailed analysis of their written
assignments and final examination. The results of the first stage of the
study indicated that this group of students did demonstrate positive
changes in their attitudes/ beliefs. Furthermore, the nine students in Stage 2 of the study did differ in evaluations of their field experience, their lesson planning skills, and their
performance on the final examination. The most variation was seen in
both the field experience evaluation and the final examination performance.
Three of the nine students were clearly superior in every way.
One student was somewhat below these three highly-performing students.
The other five students were at least minimally competent, but
did not perform at as high a level as the other four.