Possible Factors In Matching Student Teachers With Cooperating Teachers

Abstract

One common thread throughout the research in agricultural education is that cooperating teachers have been identified as being important and influential to the student teachers' success.If the interaction between student teacher and cooperating teacher is important to the student teaching process, then the matching of a student teacher with a cooperating teacher also becomes important.The purpose of the study was to determine if a relationship exists between similarity and satisfaction as perceived by cooperating teachers and student teachers of agricultural education from theUniversity ofMissouri-Columbia and theUniversity ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign.The study utilized the Mentoring Relationship Questionnaire and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® for data collection.Results indicate that student teachers and cooperating teachers differ in personality type.However, both student teachers and cooperating teachers agree that as a pair they were, in general, similar to each other.Student teachers agree and cooperating teachers strongly agree that they were satisfied with their paired assignment.Relationships exist between the standard items measuring similarity items (and similarity as a whole) and satisfaction of the paired assignment.Relationships were weaker (or non-existent) between personality type differences and satisfaction of the paired assignment.