Innovation in Language Learning

Teaching practicum, as an essential component of pre-service teacher education programs, plays a very key role for the familiarization of teacher candidates to the profession. Besides, it also provides them with first-hand experience while they build themselves as teachers. Additionally, it carries great significance since it brings different parties, such as academics and mentor teachers at local schools, together to support the development and improvisation of pre-service teachers’ teaching knowledge and skills. Although it is theoretically included in teacher education curriculum to fulfill goals as stated in the preceding statements, in practice what pre-service teachers expect from this very crucial stage has not been completely explored yet. For this reason, this study set out to find what a group of pre-service English language teachers (n=10) expect from teaching practicum just before they began a 12-week process at local schools in the city. Thus, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to explore the expectations namely from; the teaching practicum itself as a course in the curriculum, faculty supervisors, and mentor teachers in practicum schools. The qualitative analysis of the teacher candidates’ responses revealed that as for the teaching practicum, the teacher candidates expected to learn more about the profession, learners, and put their knowledge into practice. Their expectations from the faculty supervisors indicated “true supervision” with an overemphasis on guidance, feedback, support, and dialogue. When it comes to mentor teachers in practicum schools, the expectations were mainly towards a demand for “good role-models” having empathy, tolerance, and respect.  As can be seen, as a process run by the cooperation of different parties, teaching practicum meant a lot more than practice to the teacher candidates. Besides, the emphasis on “true supervision” from faculty supervisors, and “good-role models” from mentor teachers could suggest how significant the two parties are, and what roles they need to fulfill in the process.