Teaching Practice Supervisors Research Articles

Teaching Practice Supervisors' Experiences of Being Involved in Mobile App Development at an ODe-L Institution

This study used a case study to map teaching practice supervisors' experiences of being involved in developing the teaching practice mobile app (TPMA) for supervising students at an open distance e-learning (ODeL) institution. The technology acceptance model (TAM) was used as a theoretical framework for the study. Data were collected through semi structured interviews and analyzed thematically. The perceived usefulness of participating in app development is associated with empowerment and the opportunity to reflect. The participants' perceived ease of use was unfavorable, as they found downloading the app challenging and received minimal support from the developer. Even at an ODeL institution, supervisors would typically travel to visit students in teaching practice. The teaching practice mobile app would give supervisors flexibility and access to their students, as they would no longer have to travel to schools, and they could supervise their students remotely. The study recommends support for university supervisors to integrate mobile technologies into their teaching practice.

Characteristics of social support experienced by differently engaged student teachers

ABSTRACT This study explored student teachers’ experiences of study engagement and burnout by utilising profile analysis. Interrelations between the student teachers’ profiles and perceptions of their learning environment were also explored. To complement the statistical analysis, the student teachers’ social support experiences during teaching practice were explored based on interview data. Two study engagement—burnout profiles were detected among student teachers. The student teachers exhibiting the engaged in studies with a low risk of burnout profile had significantly more positive perceptions of their learning environments compared with the group classified under the reduced study engagement with an increased risk of burnout profile. Further investigation showed that student teachers most frequently reported informational support received from their teaching practice supervisors. The groups representing the two profiles showed both similar and different characteristics in the types and sources of social support. The study contributes to the understanding of student teachers’ study engagement in relation to the learning environment of teacher education. It provides practical implications for teacher educators to improve the learning environments of differently engaged student teachers, particularly during teaching practice, a central arena for student teacher learning.

Teaching is a Story Whose First Pages Matters – Four Type Narratives From The Beginning of a Teaching Career

From a broad perspective, the entire time spent in teacher training can be characterized as a period of professional growth. Specific professional growth and development are realized when the students enter the advanced stage of master's studies to independently practise their profession in their own class of pupils. The uncertainty of a novice teacher and, on the other hand, the ‘burden of competence’ gained from teacher training make this induction phase very sensitive and critical, as all the competencies they have obtained during teacher training should culminate in this specific phase. The development of a student into an independent teacher is a growth story in which each person's identity, experiences of teaching, and the knowledge structures gained from teacher training determine how they experience their growth, how their multiple skills develop, and how their individual growth story evolves. In this study, we look at the writings of primary school teacher students who have just entered working life. In their writings, the students who are in the beginning of their teaching career highlight their experiences, critical points, decisive moments, meaningful experiences, and professional growth in different ways. What can we, as teaching practice supervisors, learn from our students’ experiences? What conditions and actions strengthen or destabilize the teacherhood of a newly graduated teacher? This study examines these questions through type narratives specific to narrative research by summarizing the students’ experiences in four different type narratives.

Time to Transform: Challenges and Opportunities for Teaching Practice During COVID-19 and Beyond

Teaching practice is one of the most significant components of a teacher education program that prepares prospective teachers for a fast-changing and technology-infused world. However, in many developing countries like Pakistan, it has remained stuck in the traditional methods (face-to-face, without proper utilization of technology) which made it vulnerable during COVID-19. This study explores teaching practice methods and strategies used by Pakistani universities before and during COVID-19. It further identifies the causes behind its deficiencies to prepare prospective teachers for the challenges of the current era. Using semi-structured interviews, data was gathered from nine teaching practice supervisors from nine different universities. The study found that before COVID-19, eight universities used traditional methods and strategies for teaching practice. During COVID-19, the universities used four different approaches (online teaching practice in mock classes, online teaching practice with real students, microteaching 2.0, and teaching practice through emails and WhatsApp groups) for its continuation. Ignoring modern tools and technologies, lack of focus and attention, and a clerical approach were reported to be the main reasons behind its deficiencies to prepare prospective teachers for the challenges of the current world. The study highlights the importance of using blended modes for teaching practice, allocating some credit hours/modules for purely online teaching practice, giving more importance to it, and providing specialized training to teaching practice supervisors and cooperating teachers so that they can supervise and assess prospective teachers more effectively.

Challenges faced by Preservice Teachers in Planning and Exploring Tasks that Promote Mathematical Reasoning

Background: Mathematical reasoning is fundamental for mathematics learning from the first years of schooling. It is a challenge for students and teachers, so it is relevant to deepen ways to develop this ability with the prospective teachers. Objectives: Identify the challenges in supervised practice with a view to developing students’ mathematical reasoning, seeking to answer the following question: What challenges do prospective teachers face in planning and exploring tasks that promote mathematical reasoning? Design: It is based on a formative experiment and follows an interpretive methodology. Setting and participants: This experiment was conducted during 13 sessions of the curricular unit (CU) Didactics of Mathematics of the 2nd year of the master’s course in Pre-School Education and Teaching of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education, in a class of 25 students. The participants were four students - two pairs in teaching practice- whose selection followed the following criteria: not having any of the researchers as teaching practice supervisors and regularly intervening in class. Data collection and analysis: the data were collected through participant observation of the CU classes, interviews, and document collection. Results: Students face more challenges associated with mathematical reasoning during monitoring phases of the exploration of the tasks and their final discussion. Conclusions: These results point to the need for initial training programs to prioritise activities that support prospective teachers in the understanding of mathematical reasoning processes and that involve them in the planning of tasks and analysing practical exploration that will enhance their development.

The Impact of Teaching Practice on Female Students’ Preparation for Mathematics Teacher Education Programme in Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria

This small sample study was conducted to investigate the impact of teaching practice on female students’ preparation for mathematics teacher education programme. The design adopted was a descriptive survey research design. A sample of 30 female students was selected from 50 students who have participated in teaching practice programme for the degree programme at Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria. Data were collected through closed-ended and open-ended questionnaires administered to the sampled students, and teaching practice supervisors, co-coordinators, and heads of Departments from the school where the students did their teaching practice respectively. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and by categorising the responses of the participants according to the theme of the study. The findings include, amongst others that teaching practice beyond enhancing the students’ preparation for mathematics education programme, it helps female students to develop more interest and confidence in studying and teaching mathematics. Following the findings, recommendations for mathematics teacher education programme were made. It was recommended amongst others, that there is need to continue to use teaching practice programme to prepare pre-service teachers in mathematics education.

TEACHER EDUCATOR PROFESSIONALISM AND STUDENT TEACHER LEARNING IN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES

Of the three components constituting teacher education curriculum, namely general education, specialized education and professional education, the professional education component is arguably accorded the highest consideration in the scholarship of teaching. However, there is an emerging concern over the involvement of non-education specialists in the teaching of this component. Yet, there is little evidence of sufficient engagement with this concern in the Nigerian context. As a sequel to a study on pedagogical misconceptions by student teachers, this paper examines the impact of teacher educators' professionalism on student teachers' learning in Nigerian universities. Through the analytic method, the study engaged with data collected through the instrumentality of official records like Faculty brochures, lecture notes developed by teacher educators, systematic observations by the researchers, and semi-structured interviews involving selected participants. The qualitative study employs a constructivist paradigm that methodically situates data and analysis in the context of the experiences and perceptions of both the participants and researchers, and focusses on the main theme, namely teacher educator's knowledge as a predictor of student-teacher learning, which emerged from the data for the earlier study as collected in three universities where the present lead researcher assessed prospective teachers on teaching practice in their third and fourth years, in his capacity as teaching practice supervisor. In exposing the effect of teacher educator professionalism on prospective teacher learning, the present study revealed instances of miseducation by some of the teacher educators involved in teaching professional education courses, which substantially accounts for the student teachers' pedagogical misconceptions

Self-esteem of physical education students within didactic and educational skills depending on the mode of study against evaluation by placement supervisors

Introduction. In addition to knowledge and aptitude, practical skills are necessary to competently pursue every profession. For students, teaching practice is the first opportunity to confront knowledge and skills acquired at university with school reality. The goal of this study was the self-esteem of didactic and educational skills among full-time and extramural Physical Education students of Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz participating in teaching practice as well as the comparison of their self-esteem with the assessment of teachers - placement supervisors. Material and Methods. A total of 625 Physical Education students of Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz and the same number of placement supervisors were involved in the study. The diagnostic survey method was carried out to collect the data. The questionnaire technique was used. Results. Based on the conducted research, the following conclusions were formulated: the majority of full-time and extramural students assessed their didactic and educational skills as good or very good, both full-time and extramural students were very well prepared for teaching practice in Physical Education, and the assessments of teaching practice supervisors, in principle, were higher than the self-esteem expressed by student teachers (p = 0.0000 for the Z test).

Forenende motsetninger i barnehagelærerhverdagen

I intervjuer med erfarne praksislærere i barnehagelærerutdanningen beskriver disse en rekke situasjoner i barnehagehverdagen der personalet må velge mellom motsatte handlingsmåter der det gis gode grunner for begge motsetningene. En slik motsetning, ydmykhet – autoritet, finner vi også i Tholins Yrkesetikk for førskolelærere, som henter motsetningsparet fra en eldre rammeplan for førskolelærerutdanningen. K. E. Løgstrup kaller slike motsetninger for forenende motsetninger og skal etter hans syn nettopp beholdes som motsetninger som holder hverandre i sjakk slik at de ikke utarter seg til karikaturer av seg selv. Aristoteles teori om den gylne middelvei gir også hjelp til å finne hvilke av de to i et motsetningspar som bør gis fortrinn i konkrete øyeblikksituasjoner. Artikkelen drøfter om den gylne middelvei er en overflødig teori ved slike motsetninger som i stedet på tradisjonelt fagetisk vis kan drøftes som etiske dilemmaer.Nøkkelord: Aristoteles, barnehagelærer, etikk, Løgstrup

Reflexões sobre a formação inicial e a constituição da profissionalidade docente

RESUMO Este artigo pretende mostrar, a partir da análise de três dimensões do trabalho docente - o prescrito, o real/concretizado e o representado - a emergência da profissionalidade docente de uma aluna-professora durante a realização do primeiro estágio supervisionado. O construto teórico base do estudo é o interacionismo sociodiscursivo, no tocante à perspectiva do ensino como trabalho, e também estudos de base sociolinguística interacional para análise dos dados de forma multimodal. O corpus é constituído pelas filmagens de aulas da participante; pelas prescrições recebidas do supervisor de estágio, pelos planejamentos de aulas do estágio e pela transcrição de entrevistas com a participante, todos gerados antes e depois da realização do estágio curricular do curso de licenciatura. Os resultados, analisados de forma multimodal (englobando análise discursiva, de elementos de interação face a face e não-verbais), revelam o posicionamento da estagiária como atora de sua própria prática, mas também deixam transparecer algumas de suas dificuldades.

IMPROVING STUDENT TEACHING FOR QUALITY TEACHER PREPARATION: A KENYAN UNIVERSITY CASE

This study on teaching practice experience was conducted at a Kenyan University by researchers from both the USA and Kenya through a partnership project to build capacity through quality teacher preparation. The portion of this study presented here used survey techniques and specifically addressed the student teachers’ perspectives on the preparation processes, and ability to plan, instruct and use feedback to improve instruction in teaching practice. Stratified sampling of student teachers (n=360) and supervisor (n=240) was used. The student teacher questionnaire covered several educational components such, as professionalism, lesson material preparation, content knowledge, teaching performance skills, and reflection based on classroom observation feedback. The major findings were student teachers inability to integrate Information Communication Technology (ICT) in teaching, a gap in the teacher education curriculum on the role of ICT in teacher education, and lack of supportive supervisory feedback to the teacher candidates during teaching practice. The study recommends mapping of teacher education courses to ensure that ICT and expert feedback are covered before teaching practice by offering coursework on modern accessible ICT and facilitating rigorous microteaching experiences. Also, programs should train enough teaching practice supervisors, strategically plan school placements, and ensure timely posting of student teachers.

Cooperative Learning by Teacher Trainers as a Tool for Improving Teacher Training in Heterogeneous Elementary School Track Classes

This article presents research conducted in the Elementary School Department at the David Yellin Academic College of Education. The purpose of the present study is to use the action research approach to examine and illuminate the processes of professional development that occurred among a group of teacher trainers (teaching practice supervisor) over a series of cooperative learning sessions. The purpose of the learning sessions was to reinforce and expand the trainers’ training and teaching styles by introducing clear standards and ensuring the careful and spiral learning of tools, skills, and practical strategies suited for teaching work in the heterogeneous class. The goal of this process was to enhance the students’ ability to cope with the task of teaching in a heterogeneous class during their first few years in the field, and indeed throughout the course of their career. The findings of the research are presented according to the three periods during which the teacher trainers' learning sessions were conducted with the three participating groups: veteran teacher trainers, new teacher trainers and students. The findings reflect the influence of the cooperative learning processes on the training style of the teacher trainers, on the content taught by new and veteran teacher trainers and on the students' teaching practice.

Challenges Experienced by Teaching Practice Supervisors in an Open and Distance Learning Environment

The teaching practice programme plays a vital role in effective preparation of student teachers in teacher education institutions including the University of South Africa (UNISA). This article examines the way teaching practice supervision is conducted at UNISA, particularly focusing on the challenges experienced by supervisors in ensuring effective support to students. The article discusses the concept of supervision and the supervision process, roles and responsibilities of supervisors as well as teaching practice for professional growth. Challenges identified include students’ level of preparedness, school placement, school based mentors who are not trained to support and guide students, as well as lack of orientation programs for teaching practice. It concludes that emphasis must be on quality assurance in the supervision of teaching practice programme, to ensure that students are well prepared for the world of work. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n15p409

Student Teachers’ Perceptions about the Teaching Practice Supervisors’ role in developing their Instructional Practices

The study aimed at exploring Student Teachers' Perceptions about the Teaching Practice Supervisors' role in developing their instructional practices at the University of Jordan. The sample of this study consisted of (79) students, (40) of them were specialized in Classroom Teacher Education and (39) in Childhood Education. Data was collected using a 39- item questionnaire covering four fields: instructional planning, instructional performance, classroom management and instructional evaluation. The findings of this study indicated a strong effect of the teaching practice supervisors' role. Besides, there were no significant statistical differences in the mean scores of student teachers' perceptions due to gender and interaction between gender and specialization. However, there was a significant statistical difference due to specialization.

Student Teachers’ Perceptions about the Teaching Practice Supervisors’ role in developing their Instructional Practices

The study aimed at exploring Student Teachers' Perceptions about the Teaching Practice Supervisors' role in developing their instructional practices at the University of Jordan. The sample of this study consisted of (79) students, (40) of them were specialized in Classroom Teacher Education and (39) in Childhood Education. Data was collected using a 39- item questionnaire covering four fields: instructional planning, instructional performance, classroom management and instructional evaluation. The findings of this study indicated a strong effect of the teaching practice supervisors' role. Besides, there were no significant statistical differences in the mean scores of student teachers' perceptions due to gender and interaction between gender and specialization. However, there was a significant statistical difference due to specialization.

Bridging the gap between policy and practice: adopting a strategic vision for partnership working in special education

The desirability of parents and professionals in special education working in partnership continues to be expressed through Government policy and legislation and through voluntary sector initiatives. Moreover, partnership working attracts significant financial investment. Yet effective, working parent - professional partnerships often remain elusive in practice. In this article, Susanna Pinkus, a teacher, consultant and teaching practice supervisor who recently completed her PhD, describes her research into partnerships between parents and professionals. She bases her assertions on the daily experiences of 14 parents based in four London education authorities and attributes an absence of effective collaboration to lack of understanding about how partnerships between parents and professionals do, and should, function in the special educational context. In order to bridge this gap between the rhetoric of policy and the difficulties that are frequently reported in developing parent-professional relationships in practice, Susanna Pinkus identifies and discusses four principles as being central to forming effective partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong Student Teachers' Personal Construction Of Teaching Efficacy

This study employed the repertory grid technique to investigate how a sample of 27 student teachers in Hong Kong developed a personal sense of teaching efficacy. The analysis indicated that the third year students' perceptions were more homogenous than were those of the first year students. The results also indicated that teaching efficacy was viewed in terms of the dimensions of concern for instructional participation and learning needs of pupils, communication and relationships with pupils, academic knowledge and teaching skills, lesson preparation, management of class discipline, teaching success, teaching commitment, and a sense of self-confidence. Experiences of teaching practice, electives, pupils, and teaching practice supervisors (Electives) were the major sources for the development of a sense of teaching efficacy. Implications of how those aspects of teacher training can be more effective in engendering a sense of efficacy in the student teachers are discussed.

Reflective Classroom Practice: case studies of student teachers at work

Abstract This paper addresses the nature of reflective classroom practice in a setting where action research has been undertaken by both the student teachers and the teaching practice supervisor. It is based on a cross‐case study of the processes through which student teachers learn to teach. Specifically, the analysis focuses on how student teachers reflect on their experiences in learning to teach. The data are based on student teachers’ reported thoughts about their learning over a period of one year. The results contribute to the understanding of reflective classroom practice by highlighting first student teachers’ perceptions about learning to teach and second their reviews on classroom practice. The discussion also adds to the literature on teacher development taken from the novice‐expert research tradition. Accordingly, implications for curriculum development in teacher education are drawn.

Teachers in school as teaching practice supervisors

Teachers in school as teaching practice supervisors

A note on the free wheeling effect in non supervised microteaching students

20 Introduction One of the most noticeable aspects of the microteaching explosion in recent years has been a renewed interest in the role of the teaching practice supervisor in relation to student teachers. Traditionally, the University or College supervisor has made a few visits to see student teachers perform in real classrooms and has attempted to fulfil several roles; namely, morale booster, resource person, agent of change, monitor of progress and examiner. Needless to say this task has been very difficult due to the multiplicity of roles and the transient nature of the contact between student teacher and