İngilizce Öğretmen Adaylarının Staj Deneyimi Beklentileri ve Kazanımları

Abstract

Practicum or internship is an undergraduate level course, generally in a particular study area, which is structred to give students assisted practical exercise of a formerly or simultaneously studied theory or field. Practicum in pre-service teacher education forms one of the biggest constituent of the professional development. Before starting the actual teaching profession, pre-service teachers practice and develop themselves through practicum. Thus, practicum has to bear the required features to respond to the needs of pre-service teachers. The quality of practicum, which is influenced by several determinants such as cooperating teachers, university supervisors, and practicum schools, plays a vital role in developing student teachers. Thus, finding out what student teachers expect from the practicum process and what they attain during this practice constitute the aim of this study. Based upon a phenomenological research design, this inquiry examines the experiences of pre-service EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers (N= 20) in their practicum process. Open-ended interview questions developed by the researcher were directed to the informants in order to discover the personal constructs of the respondents. The results of the study suggest that the theoric knowledge and practices given in education faculties do not correspond to the real school settings. Related suggestions to improve the quality of the practicum are provided for the Turkish Council of Higher Education.