Preservice teachers’ perceptions of important elements of the student teaching experience

The student teaching experience is often an important capstone experience of teacher preparatory programs. Student teaching is designed to provide college students who are preparing to be educators with experience in an actual classroom while supervised by a certified teacher. The purpose of this study was to determine preservice teachers’ perceptions of important elements of the student teaching experience both before and after the student teaching experience. The preservice teachers perceived the most important element of the student teaching experience was the cooperating teacher/student teacher relationship. Additionally, there was a negative change in the perceived level of importance for all students to have an SAE requirement, with accurate record books and diversity within the students’ SAEs from much importance to medium importance. When placing preservice teachers for the student teaching internship, teacher educators might consider placing a higher emphasis on the cooperating teacher/student teacher relationships. Secondly, when placing preservice teachers for the student teaching internship, teacher educators could choose internship sites that emphasize SAE programs and have diverse facilities. Finally, we recommend future research could be conducted to further explore the role of the cooperating teacher and the important aspects of the cooperating teacher/student teacher relationship.