How Japanese student teachers view practice teaching: An analysis of critical incidents summaries

Abstract

In Japan, student teaching has been recognized as an important part of teacher education, both in normal schools before the Second War, and following the war, in colleges and universities. According to the policy document Regulations of Normal Schools, issued in 1925, student teaching included visits to attached laboratory schools, the observation of model teaching, the making of lesson plans and their implementation, and class and school management activities. The Teacher Certification Law of 1949 established a period of 4 weeks of practice teaching for elementary school teachers and, despite its revision in 1990, the period of student teaching in school remains the same. Until the end of the 1970s, student teaching had been rarely researched, even though it occupied a very important part of the teacher training program (Imazu, 1982, p. 13). Several research surveys relating to student teaching have been conducted since the mid-1970s.