A Phenomenological Study of Pre-Service Teachers' Perceptions of Completing ESOL Field Placements

Teacher Certification Programs

Essentially, teacher certification programs help to ensure that pre-service teachers develop and hone their teaching skills so that they are able to enter the workforce with the knowledge needed to facilitate successful academic outcomes for students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. Boyd, Goldhaber, Lankford, and Wyckoff (2007) stated that “ideally certification keeps poor teachers out of the classroom, while giving people with the potential to be good teachers the skills and experience they need to do their jobs well” (p. 46). As such, helping future teachers develop expertise with a diverse range of learners is increasingly important.

Furthermore, Riley (2014) suggested that pre-service teachers may need additional academic experiences focused on sensitizing future educators of any unchecked biases that they may possess towards CLD learners. This is of utmost importance as the demographics of American classrooms are changing to reflect more varied student populations. For instance, a study by Chin-Yin, Indiatsi, and Wong (2016) found that pre-service teachers perceived their lack of background knowledge about their students’ native language and culture as being a major obstacle in the classroom even though these teachers had received training focused on appropriate instructional strategies and cultural differences.