TEACHER DEVELOPMENT (4)Practicum in Teacher Training [Archives:2006/961/Local News]

Prof. Dr. S. Mohanraj
Department of English
Faculty of Education
Taiz University
The concept of teacher training has undergone a sea change in the last century. This change can be seen in three different stages with distinct nomenclatures that have been used:

a. Teacher Training;

b. Teacher Education; and

c. Teacher Development

At the outset the three labels may seem synonymous, but each is distinct in its approach and philosophy. Let us briefly familiarize ourselves with these distinctions before approaching the topic of practicum.

a. Teacher Training is a term basically derived from the Behaviourist tradition where the focus was primarily on skills development. Teaching was considered as a skill which could be mastered with adequate practice. Virtually no difference was seen between training a soldier to handle arms and a teacher to handle a class of students.

The training identified a set of skills, each skill was further divided into sub-skills, and the trainer provided practice in each skill separately. The whole approach was thus synthetic.

As part of teacher training, a set of fourteen discrete skills were identified (Ryan A, 1967). Each skill has a set of sub-skills and a strategy called Microteaching was employed to train teacher students. This classic model of teacher was in vogue till recently and has now given place to other forms of training.

b. Teacher Education was a product of the cognitive school which was also seen as a reaction to the Behaviourist model. During this phase, the focus was largely on providing knowledge as part of training. Competence was preferred to performance.

The teachers during this phase spent more time learning about theories of teaching. This included topics like Psychology of Learning (Child Psychology), Sociological Foundations (Dynamics of Education) etc. This was an extreme swing and kept the student-teachers away from reality. (Ausubel D P and J D Novak 1978)

The training focused on helping the teacher to understand the purpose of teaching but did not provide adequate practice in teaching.

c. Teacher Development is an Applied Science model that has taken roots since mid 80s. This model focuses on developing proper attitudes towards teaching. This process takes into account both skills and knowledge input as prerequisite to attitude development. The approach is more holistic and attempts to answer three basic questions related to teaching – why, what and how.

The three models presented here do not provide any comprehensive view to evaluate them. Suffice it to say, all three models have merits and demerits of their own. The questions that we now need to answer are 'What is the place of practicum in teacher development today?'; 'How should we go about it in our training programmes?'

Practicum – its importance

The principal aim of practicum in teacher training is to provide hands on experience to student-teachers in the art of teaching. Considering this as the main aim, we see a lot of truth in the Behaviourist model, where teacher training is compared with military training. Let us see some of the tenets of military training. First and foremost principle is discipline and obedience; the second is the turnout (appearance or the way one is dressed); and finally the third principle is the need to adhere to rules and time. These three factors are equally important in the area of teacher training and in particular at the time of practicum or teaching practice sessions.

Practicum, keeping in with its aims, is a strategy designed to provide student-teachers with hands on experience. Thus it occupies a pivotal role in the entire process of teacher development. Without adequate practice in teaching, a fresh graduate assuming the role of a teacher would really be left in the lurch.

To help student-teachers properly, the course in practicum should have the following objectives. The course should enable the students to:

– become familiar with various stages of a lesson;

– use a set of skills and techniques in the classroom for teaching;

– manage classroom properly in terms of discipline and time;

– be objective in his/her assessment of learners;

– assess the classroom situation and make necessary changes in the plan; and

– analyse a lesson in the course book and determine why and how it should be taught.

Each of these aims can be considered as broad aims subsuming a set of narrower specific aims. One of the objectives not stated here but subsumed throughout the course is one of building confidence. This is an important procedure for a student teacher. Without confidence a lot of competence would still be a failure.

How to organise Practicum Courses

To organise a practicum course one needs to follow a certain procedure which involves a few graded stages or steps. Though it is essential to plan each step, due to constraints of space, and the scope of this write up, I shall discuss only the pedagogic issues, ignoring the administrative measures one needs to take.

a. Lesson Planning: The classical model for planning lessons was given to us nearly 150 years ago by Harbart. This model consisted of five steps as follows: Preparation, Presentation, Practice, Production and Evaluation. During these one and a half centuries, with the advent of several methodologies, the lesson plan format as given by Harbart has undergone little change. Educationists like Piaget and others made attempts to bring about a new format. However, universally consensus prevailed on retaining the five steps with an occasional change in the nomenclature for each step.

Harbart clearly mentions the need for looking at the lesson plan as an integrated system. At each stage or step, the teacher student should be aware of the five aspects namely, Objectives, Teacher Activity, Pupil Activity, Materials to be used and the Techniques to be adopted. There is a well established correlation among these components, and the stages should coordinate with each other. The diagram given below could help one in understanding the argument.

Student-teachers should be introduced to the course books in use at the school level and allowed to analyse them for language teaching. They should be able to state the objectives, identify the structure in focus as well as the new words introduced in the lesson. Based on this analysis, they should be trained to draft lesson plans in the given format. The student-teachers should be encouraged to draft plans in as much a detail as possible. Special care needs to be given to columns Materials and Methods.

Lesson planning also involves certain specialised vocabulary which the student teacher should learn. [For example, when a single student is asked a question or asked to repeat a word, the term to be used is 'individual student' or 'individual practice.' In Yemen the term 'solo' is used in preference to 'individual' which may not be appropriate.]

Lesson plans vary with skills and areas specifically in terms of objectives and the preparation stage. Primarily, the teacher educator should familiarise the student teacher with the following seven types of lesson plans:

a. grammar

b. vocabulary

c. poetry

d. speaking/listening

e. reading

f. writing

g. language games and activities

b. Observing lessons: Lesson plan is closely linked with observation. Observing a lesson is an equally important process and the student-teachers need to be properly trained in the art of observing lessons. Here are some tips for organising lesson observation.

i. Every student teacher must be given the responsibility of observing twice the number of classes he/she teaches.

ii. While observing the student teacher should pay attention to the following points:

– Have the stated objectives been achieved?

– Was the introduction appropriate?

– How did the lesson develop?

– Was there any innovation?

– Was the black board used effectively?

– What teaching aids were used? Why were they used?

– What was the learner involvement like? (participation)

– Was the lesson successful? (evaluated properly)

iii. Based on their observation, student-teachers should provide comments on their friends' lessons. The comments should necessarily include the following two points:

– How would I teach the same lesson?

– What did I like/not like in the lesson? Why?

In the course of training, a few demonstration lessons could be given (either live or video graphed) and the students asked to observe and comment under a teacher's supervision. The lesson plan drafted for the demonstration lesson could be circulated or displayed such that the student-teachers could benefit from it.

In order to increase the usefulness of demonstration lessons, the teacher trainer could give demonstration in small bits, such that the focus could be on the use of a certain technique, or illustrating certain set of materials etc. Video clippings will be more helpful for observation for they can be played at will and played back to confirm the points discussed. Further, the discussion on video lessons is likely to be more objective than live demonstration lessons.

Peer Teaching

This is one of the strategies to help student teacher gain confidence. The technique of peer teaching has been more popular as Microteaching. Microteaching believes in the following principles:

a. An untrained teacher cannot face a large class of strangers. So allow such a teacher to teach a small class of 10 – 12 students. These students could be his/her own classmates or peers.

b. An untrained teacher cannot teach for 45 minutes. (normal length of the classroom session in a school) So allow the teacher to teach for just 5 – 10 minutes.

c. It is difficult for an untrained teacher to use all the skills of teaching at one time. So allow the teacher to use just one skill at a time. e.g. questioning; narrating; explaining; using the black board; describing or illustrating.

When a student teacher teaches a lesson (micro lesson) after having planned it under the supervisor's guidance, he/she receives a feedback. Based on the feedback the student teacher replans the lesson and reteaches. Thus, planning – teaching – feedback – replanning – reteaching constitutes a cycle. Each student teacher can teach five or six cycles before being allowed to teach the regular students. This helps build confidence and gain some mastery over different techniques of teaching.

Let's turn our attention to the actual teaching work that needs to be carried out by the students along with techniques of supervision and the follow-up work that is needed. This will be discussed in three sections.

Actual Teaching or Teaching at School

student-teachers should gain the actual teaching experience before graduating from the faculties of education. For this purpose they need to be sent to schools to get hands on experience. In order to do this, the College of Education needs preparation which can be perceived as follows:

a. Dividing the students into groups

b. Fixing a schedule for their teaching (in consultation with the college and school timetables)

c. Liaising with schools to conduct practice teaching

d. Identifying supervisors and proctors

e. Planning teaching and other work.

a. Every Faculty of Education has a large number of students, and this is particularly true in present day Yemen. It is not possible for all the students to go to one school for it would both be impractical and impossible for nearly a hundred or more student-teachers to teach in one school. Therefore it is necessary to divide the students into small groups to facilitate proper teaching practice. The size of the group is normally restricted to 10 or 12 students per batch. Each batch would have a supervisor under whose guidance they would teach.

While dividing the students into group, often randomisation is practised. However, preference could be given to students to make a choice of given schools depending on their convenience. However, care should be taken to maintain the size of the groups uniform. Care should also be taken to keep the composition of the groups mixed in terms of student competence. This would ensure fruitful participation during discussion sessions as well as increase the scope for peer learning.

The groups should know their supervisors well in advance and should meet a few times before the actual start of practicum classes to discuss their plan of work. (This will be discussed further in section 'e')

b. Schedule for teaching. This depends on the number of lessons a student teacher is supposed to teach. In Yemen, a student teacher teaches on an average 3 to 4 lessons in each semester during the last two semesters of Level 4.

This is grossly inadequate to provide practice in various skills of teaching. A student teacher should teach a minimum of 20 to 25 lessons to gain practice in handling classes and mastering different skills of teaching. This demands a lot of time. One of the suggestions that could be offered for this is to assign no work but practicum for a period of one month during the II semester of level IV. This is not an impossible idea and more details will be provided later.

The scheduling needs to be prepared taking into account factors such as;

– the class timetable

– the school timetable

– the school calendar

The class timetable is an essential factor to see that teaching time lost during practicum sessions is kept to the minimum. Similarly school timetable and calendar matter in fixing the schedule to give an idea about the number of classes available for teaching and also planning the lessons according to the calendar (annual plan of work). The schedule has to be made known to the students and the supervisor well in advance.

c.Liaising with schools: Faculties of Education need to constantly interact with a number of local schools so as to organise teaching practice without any difficulty. In consultation with the Department of Education (which is a part of the Ministry of Education) a list of schools can be obtained. Permission can also be sought from the Department to use the public schools as practising schools. (Some Faculties of Education have laboratory schools attached to them. In Yemen there are no such schools to date.) Letters have to be written to nearly twice the number of schools than required. The letters should clearly furnish details of student requirements and a copy of the proposed dates for practicum sessions. An assurance could also be given to the school that all efforts would be made not to disturb the school calendar and best efforts would be put in to offer quality teaching. The request letter should also enclose a response form which the schools need to fill and return duly. In this response the school can feel free to express regret, should the schedule provided be not convenient to them. (This makes the reason for contacting more schools than necessary clear.) The response letters should not only give consent to participate in the teaching practice programme, but should also suggest what lessons need to be taught according to the calendar prepared by the school. The school could also put forth some special requests or provide specific information on holidays or inconveniences they may have during this period of practice teaching. Once the responses are received, the students could be assigned to various schools and the teaching practice programme could begin.

d. Identifying supervisors and proctors: Most Faculties of Education are understaffed and do not have enough personnel to supervise the lessons. Faculties of Education in Yemen are no exception. However, where available the members of the faculty should undertake this work. In the absence of such supervisors, proctors could be identified and suitably oriented for the work. Proctors could be drawn from the schools identified for practice teaching. Teachers teaching specific subjects could be requested to work as proctors. Proctors so identified could be asked to attend a one-day orientation to become familiar with the mode of lesson planning, and method of observing a lesson and offering comments and further guidance to student-teachers. This is an essential exercise by which the proctors own knowledge gets updated, and the student-teachers also get the benefit of being observed according to the training they have received.

e. Planning teaching and other work: Planning teaching here does not refer to lesson planning. This refers to the number of lessons that need to be taught and the specific lessons that need to be taught. The lessons to be taught need to be selected from that portion of the course book which is marked on the calendar (annual plan). This information would be retrieved from the response sheet which is received from the school.

The practice teaching session should also aim at helping the student-teachers undertake other work such as:

– a case study of a child

– understanding school records

– organising co-curricular activities

– conducting examinations and tests

– designing remedial teaching.

The student-teachers should become part of the school establishment during the period of practice teaching, and undertake all work that a normal teacher does. The list above mentions some of the duties performed by a teacher in the school. Keeping in view the scope of this write up, it may not be possible to discuss these points in detail here.

The objective of providing exposure to duties of various kinds is to prepare the student teacher to be well equipped for the profession he/she is being trained for.

In the course of the preparation classes with the supervisor, three essential decisions need to be taken. These are: How many lessons to teach? Which skills and areas to be covered? and How to observe?

We have already mentioned how many lessons to teach depends on the curriculum requirements as set forth by the University or the Faculty. A suggestion has also been offered on the optimum number of lessons to be taught during this programme. There is no need to discuss this further here. However, we need to mention that the number of lessons to be taught should be commensurate with the number of skills and areas to be practiced by the student teacher.

A student teacher needs to practice different teaching skills. If the student teacher is a language teacher, he/she needs to have practice in teaching the four language skills as well as content areas like grammar and vocabulary. Some lessons also need to be oriented towards language functions which help develop communication skills as well as study skills. The number of lessons a student teacher teaches should be able to provide practice in all these. While scheduling the lessons, the supervisor should take care to see that all the students get equal number of lessons, and have an opportunity to practice all the skills and areas.

A student teacher also gets to learn how to teach by observing lessons. Enough time and opportunity should be provided to observe lessons. It is best to assign a schedule of observation for students before they go to schools for practising teaching. It is optimum to have a pair of students assigned to observe each lesson. This ensures that every student teacher observes twice the number of lessons he/she teaches. Observation of lessons should necessarily follow discussion where all the student-teachers are present.

In order to help student-teachers observe the lessons fruitfully, it is necessary to provide them with a checklist. Several standardised checklists are available for use; however, a customised checklist with student needs in view may not be out of place. Here is a list of twelve essential points to be included in the checklist:

– Objectives of the lesson – were they achieved?

– How did the class begin? – did the teacher establish a rapport?

– How was the teaching item introduced? – was there a proper and relevant revision of the related item?

– What illustrations were used by the teacher? – were the students familiar with the illustrations used?

– Did the teacher use any teaching aids? – were these appropriate, and made by the teacher?

– Did the teacher involve the whole class in interaction or did he/she focus on a few select students in the class?

– What type of practice was provided? – were the exercises teacher made, or from the book? – were they adequate?

– Was there any scope for independent answers from the students? – how was the language production monitored?

– What type of evaluation was employed?

– Was there any homework given at the end of the class?

– Were the questions (both content and administrative) asked during the class appropriate and distributed uniformly?

– How was the blackboard used?

Students could be provided with dry runs to help them observe lessons during the preparation period or they could be asked to observe demonstration lessons. (This has been discussed earlier in this write up.) Based on their observations, student-teachers could be asked to offer their comments on their peer's lessons. They could also add how they would modify the lesson, if they were to teach it again. This would generate a lot of discussion and learning.

Supervision

Supervision is not an easy task and hence it is difficult to find adequate number of supervisors to observe the lessons and guide the student-teachers. Some supervisors take up the task for the monetary incentive they receive. This is fair, but this should not be the only reason to accept supervision work. It is essential to make supervision an obligatory part of the work of a teacher in the Faculty of Education. Similarly, subject teachers in schools can be assigned this work as part of their duties. Teachers deputed for this work can be compensated suitably with honorarium.

Supervisors have to be observant and offer valid comments. In order to do this they would have to work in close coordination with student-teachers. This could be a week to a fortnight before the commencement of the practice teaching sessions. During the preparation period, the supervisor could become familiar with the group of student-teachers and assess their strengths and weaknesses. Such assessment helps in assigning suitable classes to the student-teachers. Further, the supervisor should also become familiar with the school, the teachers in the school, their working style and their needs. He should familiarise the student-teachers with the working conditions in the school, and based on this she/he should help them plan the lessons. When a new supervisor is chosen to do this job, he/she may need to undergo a brief training, or can be apprenticed with a senior supervisor for a term. This training is essential.

The supervisor should prepare a teaching and observation schedule and distribute it to the group. Efforts should be made not to modify this schedule without his/her knowledge. He/she should be responsible for maintenance of discipline in the group such as attending the school regularly, following the schedule, participating in discussion, and preparing and submitting the lesson plans in time. The supervisor should see to it that all the students prepare their lesson plans well before they teach and have them checked for errors. The lesson plans should be submitted to the supervisor while the teaching session is in progress to help him/her assess the lesson properly.

A supervisor needs to be informed clearly by the faculty about awarding marks to each lesson. The marking could be atomistic. This means if 100 marks are assigned to a lesson, these marks could be awarded to different parts of the lesson such as: plan, actual teaching; promoting interaction, using blackboard, defending the lesson, using teaching aids etc. Each component could carry certain weight according to its importance, and the faculty could take a decision on this in a joint meeting of all the teachers and supervisors. Such common understanding would help assess the student-teachers objectively.

A good supervisor can make the practice teaching session enjoyable.

Follow up

A follow up programme is essential in all teacher education programmes. This could be in the form of a common meeting of all student-teachers at the end of the practice teaching programme. During this meeting the students could express the difficulties they had had. They could also talk about the positive points. This would provide a feedback to the faculty to organise similar programmes better in the successive years. This feedback would also help the student-teachers to understand their own shortcomings, and how they can overcome these in the course of their careers.

It is time to conclude this write up. Though this seems comprehensive, there are many more aspects that demand a detailed discussion. Time permitting we may take it up a little later. Responses in the form of suggestions, and feedback are welcome.

References:

Ausubel D P and Novak J D (1978) Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View. New York, Holt Rinehart and Winston.

Ryan. A (1967) Microteching. London, Longman
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