Voices from the classroom: Pre-service teachers’ interactions with supervising teachers

Abstract

Teaching practice is an important requirement to acquire a teaching qualification from South African universities. During teaching practice, it is customary for supervising teachers to guide and evaluate the students' performance. However, very little is known about how the interaction with supervising teachers influences the students' views about the teaching profession. Forty finalyear Bachelor of Education students at the University of the Witwatersrand gave their consent to participate in a qualitative study using open-ended questionnaires. This research aimed to explore pre-service teachers ' voices, using Denise Batchelor's (2008;2006) research pertaining to conceptualisations of voice, namely, practical, epistemological and ontological, which were used to analyse the data. The findings suggested that pre-service teachers' pedagogical choices were linked to the supervising teachers' guidance. Many of the supervising teachers framed teaching as a profession that foregrounded administrative tasks and classroom management. Some of the supervising teachers' negative perceptions of the profession caused pre-service teachers to question their choice to become teachers. Another issue was that pre-service teachers wish to feel welcomed and supported at schools, but most experienced a lack of mentorship from their supervising teachers. We recommend that supervising teachers attend workshops and courses on how to mentor pre service teachers.

The Nexus between Teaching Practice and PGCE Student-Teachers: The Perceptions of Subject Mentors on Pre-Teachers' Readiness for Teaching Career

“…Ineffective use of chalkboards denotes that the PGCE students did not give themselves enough time to go to the chalkboard room and practise how to write on the board. [30] affirm that teachers' use of the board is critical to lesson delivery especially in schools where modern technologies have not been fully integrated.…”

“…It was evident from supervisors' documents that some pre-service teachers' disposition of pedagogical content knowledge during the teaching practice did not encourage learners' development of critical thinking, problem-solving and performance skills because the teaching becomes teacher-centred instead of learner-centred. The promotion of effective learning in learners is significantly influenced by learner-centred teaching approaches [2], [3], [28], [30]. Moreover, they did not have adequate content knowledge.…”

“…[31] in their submission posit that teaching practice is a platform that can enable the student-teachers to maximize necessary knowledge, skills and competences to contribute to national economic and social development. There are various teaching practice models available to different teacher training institutions depending on the Minimum Requirement for Teacher Qualification (MRTEQ) (The Department of Higher Education and Training, [29], [30]. At the University of Zululand, a student teacher is required to do teaching practice in at least two different schools.…”

“…Mentoring of pre-service teachers by the subject teachers during teaching practic, provides a significant opportunity to these novice teachers to learn in-depth about operating school policies, procedures and regulations, as well as sharing teaching methods, learning and teaching support materials, and other professional resources that can serve as support to their professionalism in the school system [30], [34], [37]. Reference [18] opine that teaching practice experience provides real experiences to pre-service teachers where the experienced teachers mentor them on what is required in teaching and learning, the professionalism of teachers and documents to work with.…”

Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) Students’ Experience of Mentoring

“…In addition, some students felt that there was a theory-practice gap between the SBL experience and university theoretical studies. Moosa and Rembach (2018) found in their study that mentees' pedagogical decisions were informed by their mentors. The mentors foregrounded administrative tasks, which led to teaching taking a back seat.…”