The Opinion of "Teaching of Vocational Subjects and Practical Training" Students on the Practice Teaching Process

Abstract

The main goal of this contribution is to present the views of students of pedagogy on the teaching practice, which is organized by the Institute of Lifelong Learning in cooperation with secondary technical schools. This teaching practice is organized by the Institute of Lifelong Learning in cooperation with secondary technical schools that agreed to be the training schools for our students. The teaching practice period lasts 14 days for each student. Students have to shadow their supervisor teacher for a specific number of lecture hours. Then they have to teach a couple of lectures on their own. The sources for this study were teaching practice diaries of students, who took part in this process and the students’ responses to the sentence completion method questionnaire that they completed after the teaching practice period. The method provided a deeper qualitative understanding of the issue. The qualitative analysis revealed four categories: teaching practice as a stressor; barriers in the teaching practice; stress reduction during the teaching practice; creating a personal teaching concept. This paper deals with the first three of these categories. The final part of the paper is a reflection on possible ways how to raise the quality of the teaching practice both for students and participating institutions.