Forming Professional Skills of a Primary School Teacher in the Reflection of Practical and Didactical Teaching

Abstract

A learner in the teacher training has a vision, which can often be in conflict with ambivalent expectations of the society. The renewing role of the teacher has also to correspond to the new perspectives of the society. The education and professional development of every teacher is regarded as a lifelong task, which starts with being formed as a teacher in teacher training. The forming process is long and many-sided in the course of which the person changes, develops, learns from their experience, i.e. their practical experience is turned into knowledge and the knowledge is applied and turned into professional skills during the studies of didactics already – this is the start of the teacher's sustainable career.The objective of the study is to explain what factors influence the preparation of primary school teaching students for the teaching practice during their didactics studies in the school environment and how these factors influence the preparation process. The main problem of the study is how the didactics studies in the school environment influence the preparation of students for their teaching practice.The combined research strategy has been used in the study in which questionnaires, students’ blogs and lecturers’ class diaries were used as research methods. This is a case study. The study was carried out in the autumn term in years 2010 and 2011. The purposeful sample consisted of 56 students and four lecturers of didactics. In the questionnaires, the learners were asked to provide their assessments on the entirety of the teaching process, preparation for the job as teachers, meeting their personal challenges in the teaching practice. In their blogs the students wrote about changes in the teaching process during their learning in a free form as their weekly self-reflections; there were assessments on their motivation, learning experience, knowledge of the job as teachers, and on the cooperation in learning and teaching practice. The lecturers kept weekly class diaries making entries about carrying out the teaching process presenting their assessments on the learners’ motivation and learning writing self-reflections as didactics specialists and supervisors. The basis for the analysis of the database under study is the theory of the principles of a successful teaching practice by I. F. Goodson (2003).The main study results were as follows: Didactics studies carried out in the school environment confirm the students’ successful managing with their teaching practices, because the students, teachers and lecturers have emphasised the following essential aspects: matters learned- experienced in the school environment help to keep students interested in the matters they are learning, to see concrete examples of the studying process in real situations; based on matters seen at school students acquire the skill to reflect, which in turn offers them a possibility to construct their knowledge. Some bottlenecks were pointed out: During the didactics studies – being at school – lessons supervised by the didactic specialist could be given already. The volume of the work of primary school teaching students during their teaching practice should also be considered. The lecturers stated that the things they saw at school offered enough material for discussions on the agreement of theory and practice.Primary school teaching students stated that the didactics studies in the school environment had given them better image of everyday routines of the teacher's job, self-confidence and courage to pass the teaching practice, and preparedness to reflect their job every day, which is the basis for the success of the teacher's job. It was stressed that such learning arrangement trains very good cooperation skills.