Do Specialist Student Teachers Have Opinions? The Worldviews of Geography

The paper sought the worldviews of student teachers on college education, given the expectation of the job field for beginning teachers. It explored the perceived career experiences of college students in the context cost of sustenance, and academic preparedness as specialist teacher trainees. It adopted questionnaire items to gather the views of 84 student teachers (42 pairs) on the modalities of financing the fees and personal sustenance as well as how they fared in their academic areas of studies. A cross-section of student leadership (4) were also interviewed. It used descriptive statistical tools to analyse the questionnaire items and analysed the content of interview. The paper observed that teacher education entails sets of subtle costs, which contribute to undermine teacher production and teacher quality. Specifically, the results showed that student teachers used semester breaks for short-term jobs, which affected their compliance to reporting dates and served as a critical disincentive to student teachers’ readiness, ability, and desire to participate in semester works. It suggests that the institutions should provide realistic students support systems that would mitigate the impacts of all forms of cost on students’ academic and professional development.