Learning to Learn About the Practicum: The Role of Self-Study in Program Improvement

• In Event: Collaboration on Research on Practicum Learning as Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices

Abstract

Perspectives
I have been in my present position at a large research-intensive francophone university for over 11 years now where I coordinate one programme and am responsible for the practicum component of another.

Methods
In addition to gathering data for our funded study about student learning on the practicum, I have kept a journal about my responses to the exchanges the members of the research group have had about the research, my reflections on how what we are learning as a group can be applied to my programme, and my intentions for using the research to improve practicum learning. The following questions guide this research:

1. What do I know about what my students learn while on practicum?

2. How do I understand my role within my faculty in terms of programme development and changes that I can bring to improve experiences in learning to teach?

3. How can I better understand the relationship between what I learn as a researcher and what I am able to do for programme development to improve the practicum experience at my university?

Data Sources and Results
I began this study with the false assumption that I knew what my students were learning while on the practicum and discovered that I really knew very little about this crucially important part of teacher education. I have also learned that as a programme coordinator I allow myself to be constrained by convention, by arbitrary ways of organising programme components and I do not often speak up due to a sense of inferiority in the hierarchical system and a lack of confidence in my second language communication skills (Williams & Ritter, 2010). I am learning about the importance of using empirical research as a basis to build my own credibility in order to substantiate suggestions for improvements to programmes for learning to teach. In focusing on my personal learning while taking part in a large-scale research project I believe that I understand more clearly how I am able to make sense of the data in relation to my prior knowledge of the topic. The congenial group dynamics have been an instrumental part of the analysis process, as they continue to inspire confidence and promote risk taking in interpretation and understanding

Scholarly Significance
The most important implication of this self-study is that I have learned about multiple perspectives on what pre-service teachers learn on the practicum through the lens of my own disintegrating assumptions and expectations of what should happen during this deceptively complex component of teacher education (Nguyen, 2009; Rorrison, 2010; Scherff & Singer, 2012; Turunen & Tuovila, 2012). I have done this as part of a group of five researchers from four different universities who are also coming to terms with their own assumptions about the practicum and who are attempting to bring about change in student learning while on the practicum in their own ways and within their own contexts.

Author

• Lynn A. Thomas, Université de Sherbrooke