Teacher Candidates Respond to Teaching the Junior Achievement Curriculum: An Exploratory Study

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. It is a potential resource for teacher education programs that seek an additional option for a field experience placement or wish to supplement an existing field experience placement. In this study, 19 middle school teacher candidates from a variety of content areas were provided a chance to coteach a Junior Achievement unit with a fellow classmate at a local school. After participating in the Junior Achievement project, 100% of the participants found the scaffolding component of the Junior Achievement curriculum to be helpful or very helpful, 95% of the participants reported that they benefited personally, and 100% reported that they benefited professionally from the experience. Junior Achievement provides teacher education programs an opportunity to view field experience from a different perspective, and through collaboration, universities, community partners, and schools have the potential to achieve more together than they can individually.