Educational psychology courses are now a customary part of teacher education programs. Research, however, suggests that pre-service teachers are uncertain and hesitant in applying various educational theory and research to classroom pedagogy. The present study seeks to determine pre-service teachers’ attitudes regarding the usefulness and importance of educational and developmental theories and how their attitudes change while enrolled in a course on these topics. What makes this study appealing to international audience is that it examines two types of teacher education programs. The first type is a four-year undergraduate program whereby students are in the process of completing preliminary courses needed to begin student teaching. The second type is a thirteen-month post-baccalaureate (BA) program where students are concurrently completing their student teaching and enrolled in teacher preparation courses. By comparing these two types of pre-service teacher training programs, the current study seeks to understand in what ways higher education faculty in teacher education can enhance the linkages between in-class learning of theories and the field experience of teaching elementary and secondary students.

Investigating teachers’ thinking about educational and development theory and how they see it as relating to teaching practices is crucial to improving teacher education. Daniels and Shumow suggest that teacher educators should monitor students’ understandings of theoretical issues constantly in order to increase the usefulness of these theories in teaching practices. The present study recruited 121 pre-service teachers from two universities in North America. A survey was given on the first and last days of the course. The pre-survey included questions regarding the students’ concerns upon entering the classroom, what they expected to learn in the course, and the number of theory oriented courses they have taken thus far. The survey also asked students’ self-assessment of how well they understand educational and developmental theories, how confident they were in applying theory as teachers, and the importance of these theories to teaching in the classroom. The post-survey contained similar items with the addition of open-ended questions that asked the students to list the theories and research areas they felt were important or useful to their development as a teacher and why.

Preliminary results indicated that at the end of the course, pre-service teachers felt they had a significantly stronger understanding of developmental theories as well as greater confidence in applying theories to their future teaching. However, more inflated ratings were found for those from the four-year program than those from the post BA program. A significant decrease in their ratings of the importance of theory was found for those in the post-BA program whereas the ratings remained the same for the 4-year students. These findings suggest that even though pre-service teachers in both programs report increases in their understanding of theory, as pre-service teachers begin their student teaching, the relevance of theory declines. These findings show that pre-service teachers enrolled in two different programs show different perceptions of the value of theories. With various nations attempting to improve teacher-training programs, more work is needed to understand how the theory-practice link is accomplished in different teacher training programs.