Challenges in Practicum: Pre-Service and Cooperating Teachers’ Voices

Abstract

Novice teachers are often found to face many difficulties when they start their profession, which may be attributed to the ineffective aspects of practicum practices conducted in teacher training institutions. For this reason, one possible way to eliminate the problems of beginning teachers would be to improve the quality of practicum component of teacher education programs. In the hope that detection of the challenges may shed light on which aspects of practicum needs to be improved to increase quality, the present study exmained the self-reported challenges of PTs and cooperating teachers (CTs) experience during their practicum practices. Data for the study were collected in the spring term of the 2013-2014 academic year through in-depth interviews with eight PTs studying at the English Language Teaching (ELT) department of a state university in Turkey and three CTs mentoring this group of PTs. The responses indicated that there were serious concerns about practicum practices conducted in Turkey, and thus a revision of those practices was needed.

Keywords: Teacher education, Practicum, Pre-service teachers