Student-Teachers’ Attitudes towards Implementations andChallenges of Practicum in Iran

Practicum, as the core of most teacher education programs, has been viewed differentlyby the educators, the educatee, school teachers and principals. These variations in viewshave affected course administration and implementation. The present study aimed atexploring student-teachers’ attitudes towards practicum implementations and challengesin Farhangyan University in Iran. For this purpose, 20 pre service undergraduate femalestudent-teachers, in their sophomore year, having their second practicum course (thereare four terms/courses of practicum lasting two years) were selected. The researcher triedto find out about the attitudes towards the course and ways to overcome the negativeattitudes and challenges faced by the student-teachers throughout the whole semester.One of the requirements of the course for the student-teachers was to write narrativejournals about all the events, views, achievements, difficulties, challenges and reflectionsevery session of the practicum course. Thus, narrative inquiry was selected as theresearch method and data analysis was carried out through coding the narrations. Theresults indicated that most of the positive attitudes centered on the participants’ learningor achievements while the negative ones revolved around their work or performance inreal class situations for their lack of experience. The challenges they faced were mostlyrelated to the school staff, namely the principal and the mentor, the participants’ lack ofcontent knowledge, skill and experience and the timing of the course. Suggestions areoffered for overcoming these challenges and negative attitudes for better administrationof the course and success of the practicum program.

Keywords:

teacher education , practicum , narrative inquiry , pre service student-teachers