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Knowing that field experiences develop self-efficacy in preservice teachers,
the authors of this article, who are members of a university teacher preparation
instructional team, sought to find ways to continue to create meaningful opportunities
during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the following sections, we share how our
teacher preparation program continued to foster self-efficacy during pandemic times
and share the potential implications of these programmatic adaptations.

Dr. Jennifer Lemke Structures for Building Self-Efficacy in Preservice Teachers
has been an educator
for 17 years, serving as Self-Efficacy Pre-Pandemic
a classroom teacher,
literacy interventionist, The authors are faculty members in a preservice teacher preparation program
and new-teacher mentor. at a mid-sized urban university in the midwest of the United States. Prior to the
She is now serving as pandemic, our instructional team collaborated each semester to facilitate 40 hours
an assistant professor of of supervised field experience for our preservice teachers. These traditional field
literacy at the University experiences take place in a local urban school district and provide opportunities
of Nebraska at Omaha. Her for our preservice teachers (henceforth referred to as “students”) to work with
literacy interests focus
on student engagement, diverse student populations. During their 6 weeks in the field, our students typically
multicultural literature, create and implement multiple planned interactions that ensure they have ample
and literacy integration. opportunities to engage in mastery experiences and receive feedback regarding their
jenniferlemke@unomaha. teaching from instructors, instructional coaches, and their mentor teachers. Our goal
edu with this process is to ensure our students can identify strengths and areas of growth
early in order to help increase their competence and self-efficacy over time.
Although providing mastery experiences is perhaps the main goal of our field
experience, we also recognize that verbal persuasion, or feedback, is crucial to
nurture the development of our students’ pedagogical practice (Bandura, 1997;
Mulholland & Wallace, 2001). Students receive feedback from instructors and
coaches on both their written and enacted plans throughout the field experience.
The verbal persuasion is amplified because each student is provided opportunities
to receive feedback from a variety of sources who bring unique lenses of expertise
to support the improvement of our students’ praxis as an integral component of
building self-efficacy.
We recognize that vicarious experiences also increase a preservice teacher’s
self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997; Clark & Newberry, 2019). Preservice teachers can
build their “teacher toolkit” by observing others teach. In our field experience,
we embed several supports intended to scaffold the learning experiences of our
students and offer vicarious learning opportunities. Our students are typically paired
in classrooms, affording them opportunities to observe both their mentor teacher
and practicum partner as they deliver lessons. Through these vicarious encounters,
students are afforded additional insights into examples of effective strategies for
teaching, classroom management, and even relationship-building with students that
can offer them new approaches to add to their own practice.
Teaching is often seen as a personal process and developing confidence in one’s
teaching abilities can take time. The setup of our field experiences provides a structured
environment for our students to explore and implement teaching and management
strategies in a space where they can receive support from their instructors, mentors,
and coaches each step of the way. This can help them learn to manage emotions such
as stress and anxiety about teaching and remove the physiological barriers that exist
in their development and learning (d’Alessio, 2018).
Each of the components of our field experience was established with the

26 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators