The Experiences of Pre-Service Teachers Teaching Practicum During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the prohibition of close contact and this unprecedented issue has led to the abrupt closure of schools and universities across the country. Teacher education programs have taken a toll as the final year students would not be able to fully experience the working environment in a school during teaching practicum. Thus, this systematic literature review aims to explore the lived experiences of pre-service teachers teaching practicum experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, after screening from 23,084 research articles, 8 relevant articles that focus on the teaching practicum experiences of pre-service teachers during the pandemic were chosen for review in order to achieve the objective. The findings show that the pre-service teachers teaching practicum experiences can be categorised into intrapersonal development or interpersonal development. Pre-service teachers seem to have a positive perception towards the change as they understood the importance of the transition from face-to-face learning to online learning during the pandemic. Other than that, positive or negative teaching practicum experiences highly depend on the institutions as much as the pre-service teachers depend on themselves. The future agenda and implementation of the findings are also discussed.

Online teaching practicum procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkish EFL context

“…The findings of the current study bear some similarities to the relevant literature. To start with, it has been revealed that online platforms used during the pandemic period can offer unique learning and teaching experiences for pre-service English teachers as a kind of preparation for their future teaching career ( Brinia and Psoni, 2022 ; Kiok et al, 2021 ; Sepulveda-Escobar and Morrison, 2020 ). However, the participants mostly agreed that nothing could replace human interactions and preferred face-to-face education due to the opportunity of having hands-on interaction experiences and feeling real classroom dynamics ( Brinia and Psoni, 2022 ; Koşar, 2021 ; Sepulveda-Escobar and Morrison, 2020 ).…”

“…The authors concluded that although the pre-service English teachers gained awareness about digital literacy and online learning platforms, they also encountered some difficulties due to poor Internet connection and lack of participation. Finally, a systematic analysis revealed that online teaching practicum experiences during the pandemic contributed to pre-service teachers’ attitudes, readiness level, and communication skills with stakeholders ( Kiok et al, 2021 ).…”

Competences Expected and Gained during the Teaching Practicum: Analysis of Three Competence Areas Affected during the Pandemic

“…Thus, it is possible that Practicum students might have had limited opportunities to establish contact, communication and interaction with teaching staff in schools, to hold meetings with families to discuss follow-ups in tutorials or to establish links with students in schools [20][21][22][23]. On the other hand, students also appreciated positive aspects, in relation to the use of technology and the improvement of their digital competences [22,24,25], as well as regarding the possibilities offered by online learning in the educational process in any circumstance [21,23,26].…”