“Growing Together Beyond Extended Time”: Collaborative Dynamics in Secondary Pre-Service Teachers’ Semester-Long Practicum

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Navigating Practicum in Preservice Education: Ethics, Partnerships, and Culturally Responsive Problem-Solving

Abstract

This qualitative case study challenges the assumption that extending practicum duration alone improves teacher preparation quality. While education policies worldwide emphasize temporal solutions to practicum limitations, this research demonstrates that collaborative dynamics, not temporal extension per se, constitute the essential mechanism for meaningful professional development. Examining secondary pre-service teachers in Korea's semester-long practicum, findings reveal four dimensions through which collaborative interactions enable "growing together" experiences: communal practice development, comprehensive culture understanding, relational identity formation, and learning from collaboration absence. The study provides critical evidence that practicum reforms focusing solely on duration may fail without intentional collaborative relationship design. Results offer new directions for teacher education policy, demonstrating that extended practicum investment becomes educationally productive only when collaborative dynamics are systematically cultivated rather than assumed to emerge naturally from extended duration.

Authors

• Minsun Sung, Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation

• Jonghun Kim, Konkuk University