Student Teachers' Emotions, Dilemmas, and Professional Identity Formation Amid the Teaching Practicums

• In Event: 66.087 - MTCC Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: 66.087-13 - It Is What It Is: On Defining the Teacher Situation

Abstract

This research examines the emotional and ethical dimensions of identity shaping in student teachers’ teaching practicum. By interviewing six Chinese student teachers who had just finished their student teaching practice, the research examines the participants’ emotional experiences and the ethical dilemmas they encountered in their practicums. For the emotional aspect of professional identity formation, the student teachers experienced eagerness and anxiety at the beginning of the teaching practicums, shock and embarrassment once teaching, and guilt and regret towards the end of the practicums. Moreover, the researcher identified four paired ethical dilemmas that the participants were trapped within such as tensions between classroom authority and the care of teaching. Implications for facilitating preservice teacher education are discussed in this paper.

Authors

• Gang Zhu, East China Normal University

• Zhengmei Peng, East China Normal University

• Li Deng, East China Normal University

• Guofang Li, University of British Columbia

• Matthew James Etchells, Texas A&M University - College Station