Distance Teaching Practicum: Its Impact on Pre-Service EFL Teachers’ Preparedness for Teaching

Abstract

Teaching practicum performs a crucial role in initial English language teacher preparation programs in that it offers pre-service English-as-a-foreign-language teachers a great chance to put the pedagogical content knowledge they have acquired through the coursework into practice by teaching real students. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, pre-service English-as-a-foreign-language teachers in the context of the present study, had to do more than half of their teaching practicums via distance education. This qualitative case study explores 25 pre-service English-as-a-foreign-language teachers’ conceptions of the influence of distance teaching practicum on their preparedness for the first year of teaching. The data collected by emailed questionnaires were analysed adopting inductive content analysis. The results indicated they did not believe distance teaching practicum was effective in enhancing their professional learning and preparing them for the first year of teaching. In addition, they did not think teaching practicum conducted face-to-face could be replaced by distance teaching practicum.