"I got to teach all day!" (Perceptions of student teachers)

The purpose of the study was to use journals to record perceptions of stude nt teachers during a pre-service teaching experience and determine factors that strongly affect perception. Subjects included college music students w ho were student teaching in an elementary general and a secondary school mu sic setting. Each student teacher was assigned to keep a daily journal whic h began with an expectation for the day ahead, a short description of daily activities, comments about the best and worst aspect of the day, and an ev aluation of the day. The expectations and evaluations were collected on a 1 0-point Likert scale. Best and worst aspect comments were sorted into categ ories including student academic(music), student social (behavioral), teach ing competency, teaching duty, and other. Results indicated that few differ ences were found between expectations and evaluations at any point in the s tudent teaching experience or between elementary or secondary settings. How ever, a significant interaction indicated that expectations and evaluations were lower for students teaching at the elementary level when it was their second placement. Student teachers' positive and negative comments most of ten pertained to teaching duties. Highest and lowest evaluation scores were evoked when music making was judged to be excellent or poor, respectively.