Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions And Expectations of K-12 Schooling Locales in Saskatchewan

Abstract

The expectations which teachers hold affect their everyday decisions and, ultimately, the classroom, their instruction, the school, and the communities in which they serve. While there has been research into teachers’ expectations of locales of schooling in other parts of the world, there has been little research into the expectations that undergraduate education students hold towards specific locales of schooling within Saskatchewan. I conducted an exploratory phenomenographical study by interviewing four undergraduate students in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina to learn more about their expectations and perceptions of band, rural, and urban locales of schooling in Saskatchewan. Participants thought most about their expectations of how the locales would affect their personal lives, professional anxieties, professional opportunities, relationships within the context of teaching, and the resources they were expecting to be available. Their knowledge of these locales was either through direct first-hand experience or anecdotally through friends and colleagues, rarely through their university program. Locales not directly accessible to the participants, often band, were most often learned about indirectly, for example, through friends or family members with direct experience. The four participants, regardless of prior education or experience, preferred to teach in urban schools first, rural schools second, and band schools third.