Situational Irony: Early Field Experiences and the Teaching of Reading.

A study explored the perceptions of 155 early field experience (EFE) elementary education majors who were in one of six sections of a reading methods course at a midwestern university. Responses to an open-ended final examination question at the end of three consecutive semesters asked students to describe and evaluate the classroom reading instruction in one of their 2-week field experiences. Three hypotheses grounded in the data were developed using the constant comparative technique: (1) the majority of pre-service students sent into elementary school classrooms for an EFE perceive the reading instruction and organization they observe to be contradictory to what they are taught in their reading methods class at the university; (2) students see the reality of the elementary school classroom as basal readers; and (3) students experience large group reading instruction as common a practice as the traditional small group instruction of three or more groups. The irony and the dilemma are that what teachers teach students and anticipate they experience and use often never actually happens in real life. (One table of data is included and 47 references are attached.) (MG)