Teacher education field practice experience scales: A first validation in the Danish teacher education context

Previous research has looked into coherence between on-campus coursework and learning in field placements in teacher education programs and opportunities to learn through enactment in on-campus course work. The aim of the study was to conduct a first validation of the Danish translation of three field practice experience scales intended to measure teacher students’ opportunities to learn through observation of other teachers, own practice and feedback on own practice of 12 key teaching activities while in field practice placement. As preparation for of a Nordic collaboration on coherence in teacher education, the three field experience scales were translated and adapted from section C6 of the elementary teaching candidate survey from the Development of Ambitious Instruction (DAI) project (www.daiproject.weebly.com). Items were adapted as to refer to which ever teaching subject the students were training, and the response scale was modified. Three Nordic translations were matched as closely as possible to facilitate later cross-Nordic studies. In Denmark a four-step translation-back-translation strategy was used. Participants were 345 Danish teacher students from one university college, who had been in at least one field practice placement. Data were collected using a targeted online survey during the month of December, immediately after the end of a field placement period, which the majority of students had been in. Data from each of the three scales were analysed using Rasch models. Each of the three field experience scales fitted a Rasch model, with no evidence against overall homogeneity of scores for low versus high scoring students, no evidence of local dependence between items, no evidence of DIF in relation to level of field practice, campus, type of teacher training program, gender or age. The reliability of the scales was excellent for most subgroups, while the targeting of the scales to the study sample was not very good, as there where too few teaching activities which occurred rarely during field practice (i.e. too few difficult items). For all three scales there were significant differences in mean scores dependent on level of field practice placement. Thus, while the scales should be expanded to cover better students’ opportunities to learn in relation to core teaching activities to be trained in the field practice placement, the very good psychometric properties of the three scales, shows promise for future Nordic studies