Between Familiar and Strange: International Field Placements and Creating Space for Understandings of Good Teaching

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Preservice Teachers' Immersive Experiences in International Contexts

Abstract

Using data gathered from a small group of pre-service teachers, from a small semi-rural teaching university in Canada who participated in an international field placement (IFP), this paper explored how such an experience informs understandings of good teaching and professional practice, and problematizes the depiction of good teaching as technical application situated within a theory-into-practice paradigm. Using a Gadamerian hermeneutic lens to explore the experiences of teaching within an IFP setting using the same K-12 public curriculum as the home based university of study participants, findings showed such a context be distinctive in providing both familiarity and strangeness; an ‘in between space’ for learning that both challenged and contributed to participants’ thinking and understandings of good teaching.

Author

• Marian Riedel, Vancouver Island University