Literacy, Numeracy and Health and Wellbeing across Learning: Investigating Student Teachers' Confidence

The aim of the research reported here was to examine how confident student teachers, preparing for a career in secondary school teaching, felt to meet their responsibilities to teach skills across literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing. By inquiring into their on-campus and placement learning experiences, we aimed to explore the extent to which they felt their initial teacher education programme had enabled them to teach across each area, as the Scottish curriculum and professional standards demand. A significant percentage of student teachers across all subject specialisms from our sample indicated a lack of confidence in providing numeracy experiences for their learners from within their subject area. Confidence for teaching literacy and health and wellbeing was much higher. In contexts where process-based curricula ask teachers to take responsibility for the development of learners’ skills beyond subject specialisms, research here suggests the need for detail and clarity in the planning and development of frameworks and curricula for Initial Teacher Education to support student teachers with interpreting and enacting their responsibilities in practice. Additionally, it highlights the importance of meaningful and effective vicarious and socially persuasive learning experiences to develop confidence.