Correlation of propensity to pedagogical improvisation and subjective and professional experience of pre-service teachers

The aim of the present study was to test how the level of a pre-service teacher's professional experience auto-evaluation of self-rated student's professional field experience and his subjective pedagogical experience are related to the propensity to pedagogical improvisation and his efficiency in solving different pedagogical tasks. The theoretical background of the study is a hypothesis of pedagogical improvisation understood as a teacher's creative activity. In the quality of creative activity pedagogical improvisation should correlate to subjective experience, because it is the experience of our own autonomous and initiative activity, directed on some field (in this case, teaching). Our previous studies show that pre-service teachers are able to demonstrate quite a high level of propensity to pedagogical improvisation, but their level of professional experience is low. This fact provokes a question, whether propensity to pedagogical improvisation is correlated to subjective experience and professional efficiency. Method. We have conducted two series of empirical research. Both in the first and in the second series we used the scale "Auto-evaluation of pedagogical thinking" (Savin, 2012) for estimating the propensity to pedagogical improvisation and the level of professional experience development. In the first series (N = 74) the indicator characterizing the emotional relation to field practice - the degree of its saturation by positive emotions - was used to estimate the subjective experience of teaching. In the second series (N = 48) we used the author's scale that allows estimating the degree of person's perception of himself as the agent of pedagogical activity (he estimates himself as activity's initiator, estimates his own activity as autonomous and as leading to changes in himself and his pupils). Also in second series we used the technique of solving pedagogical tasks and estimated productivity and confidence in it. Results. Positive correlations (Spearman's coefficient) of subjective and professional experience were found both in the first (rs = 0,27, p = 0,012), and in the second series (rs = 0,38, p = 0,009). Propensity to pedagogical improvisation doesn't correlate with professional experience in both series, correlates negatively with subjective experience in first series (rs = -0,29, p = 0,008), and doesn't correlate with subjective experience in the second series. These results indicate that there are two forms of pedagogical improvisation among pre-service teachers: the improvisation that is not based on experience (subjective or professional) and the improvisation based on experience. Only the second form is creative, because it associates with the experience of one's own autonomous and initiative activity in teaching. At the same time, there is no difference between two forms of improvisation by reference to efficiency and confidence in solving pedagogical tasks.

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