Fourth Year College Teaching Practice Challenges from Student-teachers', Supervisors' and School Principals' Perspectives

Abstract

The present research attempts to find out the main challenges and problems faced by university fourth year students (henceforth called student-teachers) in their teaching practice. The sample of the study are 100 fourth year students at the English department, college of basic education and college of education at Salahaddin university during their teaching practice period. For data collection, two instruments have been used: a twenty seven close-ended item questionnaire and a seven open-ended questions interview for the student-teachers. The questionnaire consists of 27 items divided into three parts (student-teachers, supervisors and administrative). The interview consists of seven open ended questions. The collected data, then, are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show that fourth year college students face three main challenges in teaching practice, lack of sufficient linguistic and teaching-related knowledge prior to actual teaching at schools, shortage of teaching practice duration, unavailability of teaching aid and administrative support from schools, student-teachers' and pupils' English level for understanding English instruction in class.