This study was designed to investigate the characteristics and motivations of students entering teacher training by examining the relationship between selected student characteristics and the influences or reasons given for choosing to become a teacher. The sample of 266 students beginning an introduction to education course was found to be…

The relationships between measures of anxiety, concerns, and attitude toward teaching and selected personal and academic characteristics of 260 beginning education students were investigated. Relationships were found between these measures and basic academic skills, earliness of decision to enter teaching as a career, relative assurance of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate changes during teacher training in students' anxiety, attitude, concerns, and confidence about becoming a teacher and the relationships between these changes and selected student characteristics. The subjects were comprised of three groups of students (N-581) at three stages of their teacher…

To determine whether teacher training has a predictable and desirable impact on the affective attributes of prospective teachers, measures of anxiety, attitude, concerns, and confidence about teaching were administered to 153 prospective teachers at the beginning of training and after student teaching. Implications for teacher training are…

A longitudinal study compared the characteristics of teacher candidates who persisted and did not persist through the early years of teaching. Gender, major, initial assurance about teaching, and time of the decision to teach were related to persistence for the 29% of 551 candidates studied who persisted. (SLD)

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if transfer students reduced the quality of 547 prospective teachers who were beginning their teacher training at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) during either the spring semester of the 1984-85 or during the fall semester of the 1985-86 academic years. Aptitude, basic academic skills, and…

This study investigated changes in outstanding teachers' concerns about teaching at four distinctly different career stages, based on F. Fuller's model of teacher development. Four samples totalling approximately 300 preservice and inservice teachers were administered the Teacher Concerns Questionnaire upon commencement of training or in early,…

A sense of efficacy, the extent to which teachers believe that they have the capacity to affect pupil performance, is related to both teaching behaviors and pupil performance. This study was designed to test the developmental hypothesis that teachers' sense of efficacy would increase during their successful progression through preservice training…

This study compared the affective attributes of a sample of beginning teacher education students in the 1990s with a sample of beginning teacher education students of the 1980's to investigate whether or not educational reform actions were accompanied by changes in the affective characteristics of individuals entering teacher preparation. The data…

This document presents a summary of follow-up evaluation studies of basic and advanced education graduates, conducted by the Office of Educational Research and Services at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) over the last few years. (The university's evaluative follow-up endeavors have been closely tied to a needs assessment model, and a major…

This study sought to identify a set of factors that teacher candidates perceived to have influenced their decisions to become teachers and then to determine the family and personal characteristics of the candidates that might be associated with these perceived influences. The subjects were 377 teacher candidates commencing the teacher preparation…

This study investigated whether or not recent educational reform efforts might be related to the level of academic skills of individuals entering teacher preparation programs. A sample of 1991 beginning teacher candidates (n=377) was compared with a sample of 1985 beginning candidates (n=358) entering the same large midwestern institution using…

Studied whether differences exist among academic, affective, and personal characteristics of teacher education persisters and nonpersisters in a longitudinal sample of 550 education majors. Five years later, 65% had persisted through teacher training. Factors predicting persistence (i.e., higher college grade point average and positive attitude…