Teacher Candidates Respond to Teaching the Junior Achievement Curriculum

Junior Achievement

The conceptual framework for the study is Junior Achievement. Junior Achievement is an international nonprofit organization that is committed to improving the life of elementary, middle, and high school students by helping them understand the relevance of personal finance, economics, and entrepreneurship in the local and global marketplace (Box, 2006, 2009; Carlin & Robinson, 2012). It was established in 1919 (Chiatula, 2015; Heilbrunn & Almor, 2014; Sukarieh & Tannock, 2009), and during the 2014-2015 academic year, it served 4.6 million students (Junior Achievement USA, 2016). Although volunteers primarily include representatives from the business community and business students (Box, 2006), collaboration between Junior Achievement, the schools, and teacher education offers benefits for all parties. Through their collaboration with Junior Achievement, teachers have the opportunity to enrich the class curriculum; the Junior Achievement curriculum is provided gratis, and the curriculum is taught by Junior Achievement volunteers (Carlin & Robinson, 2012; Heilbrunn & Almor, 2014; Junior Achievement of Greater Cleveland, n.d.). By partnering with teacher education programs, Junior Achievement obtains needed volunteers to teach their curriculum at the school sites, and teacher candidates gain needed teaching experience at the schools. Through this alliance, schools, teacher education candidates, and Junior Achievement have an opportunity to meet their goals individually and collectively.

To participate in the Junior Achievement program, teachers apply to have a Junior Achievement volunteer teach a unit in their classes. Yet, due to the popularity of the program, at some locations, teachers may be placed on a waiting list. If a teacher is selected, the teacher is matched with a volunteer or a team with typically two volunteers. The Junior Achievement program provides the volunteers with training; then, each volunteer receives a free suitcase filled with the curriculum materials for use in teaching the assigned unit (Box, 2006; Junior Achievement of Greater Cleveland, n.d.; Piro, Anderson, & Fredrickson, 2015). Although the number of lessons in each unit can vary depending on the unit topic and grade level, the units include approximately six lessons that can be taught in a traditional 30-to-45-min. class period (Junior Achievement of Greater Cleveland, n.d.). The curriculum is interdisciplinary and is designed to show the relevance of citizenship, science, math, economics, and writing in everyday life (Box, 2006; Carlin & Robinson, 2012; Junior Achievement USA, 2011a; Sukarieh & Tannock, 2009). The lessons include a variety of teaching strategies such as simulations, journaling, problem solving, lecture, and games (Box, 2006; Carlin & Robinson, 2012; Junior Achievement of Greater Cleveland, n.d.; Junior Achievement USA, 2011a; Sukarieh & Tannock, 2009). To assist the volunteers, each unit includes lesson plans and resources such as a workbook, posters, and/or games (Chiatula, 2015; Junior Achievement of Greater Cleveland, n.d.; Junior Achievement USA, n.d.-a). Although the educator’s guide provides lesson plans, Junior Achievement volunteers are encouraged to personalize the lessons with real-life examples to help students relate theory to practice (Lewis, 2007). Classes are taught under the supervision of the classroom teacher, and the teacher monitors any potential classroom disciplinary issues (Junior Achievement USA, n.d.-b). To better understand middle school teacher candidates’ views about the Junior Achievement program, the study will focus on two areas—scaffolding and personal/professional views about Junior Achievement.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding is the act of providing structural supports to promote learning (Graziano & Navarrete, 2012; Green, Chassereau, Kennedy, & Schriver, 2013), and the zone of proximal development is “the distance between the actual developmental level, as determined by independent problem solving, and the level of potential development, as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with a more capable peer” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). With the support by a knowledgeable advisor, an individual may be able to work at a higher level of expertise than he or she would be capable of on his or her own (Wass & Golding, 2014). For inexperienced teacher education candidates, their initial ability to teach a lesson is hampered because teaching involves many components (Nitsche, Dickhäuser, Fashcing, & Dresel, 2011; Scantlebury, Gallo-Fox, & Wassell, 2008). Through the Junior Achievement program, instead of trying to master too many different elements of teaching at one time, teacher education candidates can focus on teaching the content and relating the content to the students’ daily lives. Teacher candidates can use the information that they received from the Junior Achievement curriculum on how to teach lesson plans, use the information that they received in their pedagogy class on how to create and teach lesson plans, and use examples from their own lives while teaching the Junior Achievement lesson plans to experience the synergy between theory and practice as they transition from being a teacher candidate to teaching in their own classroom.

In Woelders (2007), the teacher evaluated the use of two scaffolding techniques with middle school students. The first scaffold was the use of a KWL (what you know, what you want to learn, and what you learned) chart (Ogle, 1986) while teaching students about Joan of Arc; the second scaffolding technique was the use of an anticipation guide while teaching the students about Islam. While teaching about Joan of Arc, the teacher completed the KWL chart using the whole class discussion approach, and during the Islam unit, middle school students individually completed the Islam anticipation guide. For both of these activities, the majority of the students reported that they enjoyed the scaffolding approaches. For example, qualitative comments revealed that the KWL chart in class helped them to focus on their W (what you want to learn) questions as they watched video clips on Joan of Arc, whereas the anticipation guide spotlighted the main ideas that they would be learning on Islam. The few students who objected to these scaffolding techniques disliked having to expend mental effort while learning; they preferred passive learning.

The relevance of scaffolding was seen in Bates (2008) when elementary/middle school social studies teacher candidates were asked to design a lesson that integrated social studies content and technology via a WebQuest, an inquiry-focused activity where individuals locate information at preselected websites. Among the 17 teacher candidates, 82% of them were new to web design. Due to their technical unfamiliarity, instead of focusing on the seamless integration of technology and social studies content, the teacher candidates were consumed with technology challenges. Forty-seven percent of the teacher candidates’ completed lessons included technical errors such as broken web links, and in their evaluation of the activity, 29% of the teacher candidates discussed the need for more scaffolding.

In Lee and Molebash (2014), over the course of seven semesters, a total of 200 practicing teachers and teacher candidates from unspecific certification areas learned how to digitize their personal history or their community’s history and convey this information to an outside audience. To assist the participants, during one semester, the researchers provided scaffolding on historical thinking, and during another semester, they provided scaffolding on storytelling. The authors provided qualitative evidence on how the program increased the relevance of history to daily life. From this seven-semester experience, Lee and Molebash (2014) concluded that whereas a lack of scaffolding can weaken the participants’ product, too prescriptive scaffolding can crush the participants’ creativity. Yet as the participants’ skill level grows, scaffolding can be reduced.

The aforementioned studies (Bates, 2008; Lee & Molebash, 2014; Woelders, 2007) examined the use of scaffolding with middle school social studies students, elementary/middle school teacher candidates, and practicing teachers/teacher candidates of unspecified certification areas. In these studies, the participants’ responses about scaffolding ranged from positive to negative. This study extends the aforementioned studies by examining middle school teacher candidates’ attitudes about the scaffolding used within their Junior Achievement unit.

Views About Junior Achievement—Personal and Professional

In previous studies, researchers have explored potential benefits of the Junior Achievement program. For example, Chiatula (2015) had an unspecified number of elementary teacher candidates examine premade Junior Achievement lessons, select two lessons, align them to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards, and redesign them to strengthen the connection between mathematics and different subject areas. Chiatula noted that through this process, the teacher candidates improved their ability to create interdisciplinary math lessons, relate math to everyday life, and teach lessons to elementary students.

Bernadowski, Perry, and Del Greco (2013) examined 37 early childhood teacher education candidates’ feelings of teaching self-efficacy when they were provided access to different types of learning experiences. The teacher candidates were given the option of a field experience that directly related to the language arts methods course content, a pen pal project with first-grade students, or an alternative learning activity that related to other content areas. One of these alternative field experience activities involved teacher candidates teaching the Junior Achievement curriculum to elementary students or teaching in a Science Fun Day for elementary students. The Junior Achievement and the Science Fun Day increased the teacher candidates’ self-efficacy for teaching. However, the growth in self-efficacy for teaching was higher for the pen pal project that was deliberately structured to more directly connect to the language arts methods course content.

Next in 2015, Piro et al. surveyed 26 teacher candidates from a variety of certification bandwidths and content areas on whether they felt that it was beneficial to teach a Junior Achievement unit during their university course. From the authors’ self-generated survey, the authors found that 96.2% of the participants agreed or strongly agreed that the experience was beneficial. The main reason was that they valued the opportunity to practice teaching a lesson to students in the schools. Whereas previous researchers have examined the impact of Junior Achievement on different teacher education populations (Bernadowski et al., 2013; Chiatula, 2015; Piro et al., 2015), this study focused on whether the middle school teacher candidates felt that the Junior Achievement program did or did not offer them personal and professional benefits.

Participants

The study took place at a southwestern university in the United States located in an urban city of approximately 380,000 people. Out of the 33 individuals enrolled in a middle school general pedagogy methods course, 19 individuals chose to participate in the study. The participants included 16 Caucasian females and three Caucasian males between 20 and 30 years of age.

The middle school teacher education program certifies teacher candidates for Grades 4 through 8 in two or more content areas. Three certification options are offered: (a) math and science; (b) generalist—math, science, social studies, and English language arts and reading; and (c) social studies and English language arts and reading. The study included 14 participants from the math and science certification program, four participants from the generalist program, and one participant from the social studies and English language arts and reading certification program.

Data Collection and Analysis

During the first semester of the junior year in the teacher education program, the teacher candidates take education coursework and become acclimated to their middle school placement. The study took place during the second semester of the junior year in the teacher education program, and the participants were recruited from a middle school teacher education general pedagogy methods class that examined teaching strategies for math, science, social studies, and English language arts and reading. To practice the implementation of different teaching methods, during their field experience, the course instructor gave the participants an opportunity to coteach a Junior Achievement unit at a local school with a fellow classmate. If any participants chose not to participate in the Junior Achievement opportunity, during the field experience, the course instructor provided the participants an opportunity to obtain a non-Junior Achievement field experience placement at a local school. None of the participants chose this option.

To prepare the teacher candidates for this opportunity, a representative from Junior Achievement provided the teacher candidates with a training session on the Junior Achievement program, the Junior Achievement curriculum, and the implementation of the Junior Achievement curriculum in the classroom. The course instructor gave the teacher candidates an opportunity to choose a teammate, and the Junior Achievement representative gave each team an opportunity to select a teacher/school from a list of placement options and unit topics. The available unit topics were “Global Marketplace” (six sessions for Grades 6 to 8), “It’s My Business!” (six sessions for Grades 6 to 8), “Our Region” (five sessions for Grade 4), and “Economics for Success” (six sessions for Grades 6 to 8). Then, each team received a free Junior Achievement suitcase with the curriculum materials they would need to teach the unit. A survey was administered at the end of the semester, and participation in the survey was voluntary.

The survey included multiple choice questions, which were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Open-ended questions were also included so that participants could clarify or elaborate on their responses to the multiple choice questions. Their feedback to the open-ended questions provides additional insight into their perspectives, and their responses to the open-ended questions clustered around the category of gratitude. The qualitative data were analyzed using the constant comparative method (Creswell, 2015). First, the data from the surveys were transcribed into an Excel spreadsheet. Next, the author reviewed the survey data. Key words and phrases were transformed into codes. The patterns from similar responses developed into the category of gratitude. To access the study data, please contact the author.

Scaffolding

When queried about their prior teaching experience (Table 1), 63% of the participants stated that they had taught four or fewer lessons. Thirty-seven percent of the participants indicated that they have taught 20 or more lessons. Their prior teaching experience included activities such as tutoring, teaching Sunday school, or teaching at a summer camp.

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Table 1.

Prior Teaching Experience.

Responses	n	%
Zero lessons	5	26
One lesson	3	16
Two lessons	2	11
Three lessons	1	5
Four lessons	1	5
>20 lessons	7	37

Note. All percentages were rounded to the nearest whole number.

To support its volunteers, especially individuals who are new to teaching, the Junior Achievement suitcase provides the materials that the volunteer needs to teach the lesson. By having these materials, the volunteers can focus less on memorizing the students’ names and more on teaching the lesson (Piro et al., 2015). The Junior Achievement unit includes scaffolding via table tents/name tags, lesson plans, game materials, and posters. To further support the volunteers, the teacher stays in the room during the Junior Achievement unit to introduce the volunteer and monitor classroom management (Junior Achievement USA, n.d.-a).

All of the participants rated the Junior Achievement scaffolding as helpful or very helpful (Table 2). Participants made comments such as the following: “It allowed me to be less stressed about the preparation of everything and allowed me to focus on the students.” “It helped us be prepared, made the lesson easier, and helped us connect faster with the students.” “This was very helpful because I do not have a lot of experience planning lessons, and the table tents were helpful to get to know the students.” “Having everything available did give me more time to just focus on how to implement the lesson. I was able to deliver the lesson easier.” For this group of teacher candidates, the scaffolding allowed them to focus their energies on teaching the lesson.

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Table 2.

Post Junior Achievement Scaffolding.

Responses	n	%
Very helpful	16	84
Helpful	3	16
Not helpful	0	0

Note. All percentages were rounded to the nearest whole number.

Views About Junior Achievement—Personal and Professional

Next, the survey examined teacher candidates’ views about the Junior Achievement field experience personally and professionally. In Table 3, 95% of the teacher candidates stated that participating in the Junior Achievement project benefitted them personally. They stated that “It helped me gain confidence.” “I grew as a teacher and gained more confidence in my teaching skills/ability.” “Prepared me to teach.” “The project helped me become more comfortable teaching a class.” One teacher candidate who did not benefit from the Junior Achievement experience wrote, “Not really, because I already had experience in teaching.”

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Table 3.

Post Junior Achievement Personal Benefit.

Responses	n	%
Yes	18	95
No	1	5

Note. All percentages were rounded to the nearest whole number.

In Table 4, 100% of the teacher candidates stated that the alternative field experience helped them professionally. One of them commented, “I was able to fine-tune my teaching skills that I can use later in my classroom.” The others commented as follows: “Because it helped me to gain self confidence in teaching.” “I am now more confident in my teaching, and Junior Achievement gave me experience to put on my resume for future employers.” “Helped me be more comfortable up in front of other people.” The project offered a win–win opportunity for Junior Achievement, the local schools, and the teacher candidates. Through the Junior Achievement activity, Junior Achievement is able to continue its mission, the teacher candidates received needed teaching experience in the classroom, and the students received curriculum enrichment.

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Table 4.

Post Junior Achievement Professional Benefit.

Responses	n	%
Yes	19	100
No	0	0

Note. All percentages were rounded to the nearest whole number.

Scaffolding

Attitudes and experience with scaffolding can vary (Bates, 2008; Lee & Molebash, 2014; Woelders, 2007). However, in this study, 100% of the participants found the scaffolding embedded within the Junior Achievement program to be helpful or very helpful. This finding supports the positive responses that middle school students had about scaffolding in Bates (2008).

Bandura (1977, 1997) noted that the strongest source for increasing self-efficacy is the ability to successfully master the task, and scaffolding tasks has the potential to support individuals as they develop expertise with a task. Scaffolding is considered to be a key component in effective social studies instruction (Woelders, 2007), and like the training wheels on a bicycle, the scaffolding can be removed as needed. While teacher candidates are learning their craft, the Junior Achievement program strives to provide scaffolding and allow beginning teacher candidates to focus their energy on teaching the lessons.

Views About Junior Achievement—Personal and Professional

At its core, Junior Achievement seeks to address a specific need—providing kindergarten through 12th-grade youth with a basic introduction to financial education. The Junior Achievement program is intended to support volunteers who are new to teaching, and the premade curriculum allows Junior Achievement to maintain consistency in the national distribution of the program content. Yet the Junior Achievement program offers benefits beyond kindergarten through 12th-grade youth. After participating in the Junior Achievement project, 95% of the teacher education candidates reported that they benefited personally, and 100% reported that they benefited professionally. In their comments, they discussed how the experience increased their confidence about teaching. Through their participation in the Junior Achievement project, the teacher candidates had the opportunity to improve their teaching skills and gain valuable teaching experience while providing a service to the local community.

For one of the study participants, Junior Achievement was not beneficial because she had previous teaching experience. For a more experienced educator, the premade Junior Achievement curriculum may be confining or less valuable. To provide enrichment for these more experienced educators, the Junior Achievement program offers them an opportunity to learn more about students who are in a different grade level than they have previously taught and learn more about students who are at a different school from which they have taught.

Attitudes about the Junior Achievement program have been quite varied. Heilbrunn and Almor (2014) argue that the format of Junior Achievement is tailored for middle- and upper middle-class students and a new version of Junior Achievement should be created to address the specific needs of low socioeconomic students. Sukarieh and Tannock (2009) have expressed distaste for Junior Achievement for its strong emphasis on self-reliance and the free market approach. Furthermore, Marta-Christina and Liana (2013) noted that many economic instructors view financial education as a weak form of economic education.

In contrast, studies by Bernadowski et al. (2013), Chiatula (2015), and Piro et al. (2015) have explored potential benefits of the Junior Achievement program. In Bernadowski et al. (2013), early childhood teacher education candidates increased their feelings of teaching self-efficacy after teaching the Junior Achievement curriculum to elementary students. In Chiatula (2015), elementary teacher candidates aligned Junior Achievement lessons to the NCTM standards, and after this experience, they strengthen their ability to create interdisciplinary math lessons, relate math to everyday life, and teach lessons to elementary students. In Piro et al. (2015), 96.2% of the teacher candidates from a variety of certification bandwidths and content areas felt that the experience was valuable because it offered them an opportunity to gain experience teaching a lesson to students in the schools. This very strong reaction by the teacher candidates in Piro et al. (2015) may be due to the fact that in some early field experience placements, teacher candidates may be instructed to solely observe the teacher and the class.

Limitations and Future Research

This study provided an opportunity to examine middle school teacher candidates’ views about the Junior Achievement program. Because the study was limited by the small sample size, these results cannot be generalized to all middle school teacher candidates or all teacher candidates. This study was also limited by race/ethnicity and geography. Teacher candidates of other races/ethnicities or from other regions of the United States may have different perspectives about the Junior Achievement experience. Future studies could compare participant responses from different regions of the United States. Whereas the study was limited to math, science, social studies, and English language arts and reading, it offers future research an opportunity to examine additional content areas.