Involving a village: student teachers' sense of belonging in their school-based placement

Abstract

Educating a student on teaching placement involves a ‘village’, just as it takes a whole ‘village’ to raise a child. Creating a ‘village’ around each student teacher gives them greater agency, a sense of belonging and being valued as a member of that professional ‘village’. Participating students, teachers and lecturers share their perceptions of experiences in the one-day school-based placement that student teachers are required to undertake in a University of Waikato distance programme. Opportunities, relationships and a sense of inclusion are identified as influencing characteristics, “the all important human infrastructure that provides the opportunity for learners to succeed” (Campbell-Gibson, 1997, p. 8) rather than any modern technologies. Findings indicate that where the school acted as the ‘village of learning’, the perceived suitability of the placement as a site for learning teaching was conceptualised through a developed sense of belonging, accomplishment and inclusion. It is argued that greater effort should be made by initial teacher education providers to locate such ‘villages’ for student teacher placements.