Development of an instrument measuring student teachers’ perceived stressors about the practicum

Abstract

The Stressors about Practicum Inventory, a self-report measure of perceived stressors about the practicum, was designed to provide those responsible for the training of primary school teachers with an informative, inexpensive and psychometrically sound tool. The present study describes the development and validation of the 94-item inventory in a sample of 138 Greek primary student teachers. It also investigates its initial factor structure and reliability. The scale was administered both before and after a four-week period of practicum. Content validity was examined using a panel of experts and student teachers, whereas convergent validity was assessed with the use of a measure of neuroticism. Factor analyses revealed four sources of perceived stress. No gender differences were found. However, the experience of the practicum significantly reduced student teachers’ perceived stress. All perceived stressors were moderately correlated with neuroticism, but after the practicum the size of the correlations was reduced.

Keywords:

• student teachers
• practicum
• stressors
• neuroticism
• scale

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A copy of the scale is available upon request from the first author.

2. It should be noted that MANOVA determines whether the dependent variables get significantly affected by changes in the independent variable(s), by taking into account both the interactions taking place amongst dependent variables and those taking place amongst independent variables too (in case of multiple independent variables).

3. Correlation tables are available from the first author upon request.

4. The standard measure of effect size for correlations is the coefficient of determination (r²), which is interpreted as the proportion of variance in the dependent variable that can be accounted for by the relationship between the dependent and the independent variables. According to Cohen (1988), when the effect accounts for 25% of the variance (r = 0.50) this is considered large; 9% (r = 0.30) is moderate, and 1% (r = 0.10) is small.