Choy, Doris

This paper reports a part of a longitudinal study of 170 student teachers who were enrolled in the 2004 intake of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education – Primary (PGDE – Primary) initial teacher preparation (ITP) programme at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore. It examined the changes, if any, in the student teachers' perceptions of their pedagogical knowledge and skills at the beginning and the end of their teacher preparation using a survey which was administered at these two data points. The survey instrument was found to be reliable for assessing these perceptions of knowledge and skills. The findings also indicated that the student teachers' perception of their pedagogical knowledge and skills in facilitating student learning, planning and preparing lessons, assessing students and accommodating student diversity increased significantly by the end of their teacher preparation programme. However, the level of their perceived knowledge in the area of non-teaching responsibilities remained unchanged while their perceived skills in this factor decreased significantly at the end of the programme. Implications of these findings on the PGDE (Primary) ITP programme will be discussed in this paper.

The purpose of this study was to investigate if there were differences in the levels of pedagogical knowledge and skills as perceived by the student teachers who were enrolled in the Primary and the Secondary Post Graduate Diploma in Education programme at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. 170 Primary and 426 Secondary student teachers participated in the study. The results showed that there were no significant differences at the beginning of the programme between the two cohorts. However, there were significant differences between the two groups at the end of programme, with the Primary student teachers tending to perceive themselves as gaining more pedagogical knowledge and skills by the end of their initial teacher preparation programme than the Secondary student teachers.