Ready, Set, Teach: Evaluating Pre-Service Teachers' Readiness and Teaching Performance for Instructional Enhancement

The pre-service teaching internship serves as the culminating component of teacher education programs, providing student-teachers with opportunities to apply theoretical knowledge in real classroom settings. However, challenges in readiness and teaching performance continue to emerge, necessitating further investigation. Knowing how the pre-service teachers' readiness and actual teaching performance in the real classroom relate to one another can help identify the internship program's strong points and potential areas for development. This study aimed to determine the level of readiness and teaching performance of pre-service teachers at Trinidad Municipal College during the School Year 2024–2025 and to examine the relationships between readiness and teaching performance. A descriptive-correlational research design was employed, involving total enumeration sampling, in which all 246 pre-service teachers from the Bachelor of Elementary Education (BEED) and Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSED) programs were included. Data were gathered using pilot-tested and expert-validated survey instruments and analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation coefficient to determine the relationship between readiness and teaching performance. Findings revealed that the overall level of readiness for actual classroom teaching was interpreted as “Ready,” with composite means of 3.21 for pedagogical knowledge and 3.28 for content knowledge. Meanwhile, the overall teaching performance of pre-service teachers was rated “Excellent,” with high composite means in personal traits (4.63), teaching skills (4.49), and instructional materials development (4.44). Despite these favorable ratings, the relationship between readiness and teaching performance yielded a very weak correlation (r = 0.096) and a p-value of (p=0.133), indicating no significant relationship and resulting in the failure to reject the null hypothesis. The results suggest that while pre-service teachers demonstrate adequate readiness and strong teaching performance during their internship, readiness alone may not be a strong predictor of teaching performance. The findings provide insights into the readiness and teaching performance of pre-service teachers and highlight areas that may inform improvements in teacher preparation programs.