Pedagogies of Practicum

References

• Butler, B. M., & Cuenca, A. (2012). Conceptualizing the roles of mentor teachers during student teaching. Action in Teacher Education, 34(4), 296–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/01626​620.2012.717​012
• Glenn, W. (2006). Model versus mentor: Defining the necessary qualities of the effective cooperating teacher. Teacher Education Quarterly, 33(1), 85–95.
• Leshem, S. (2012). The many faces of mentor–mentee relationships in a pre-service teacher education programme. Creative Education, 3(4), 413–421. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2012.34065

The Teaching Practicum in a Changing World

Globally, education underwent an extraordinary upheaval when educators were forced to adhere to government-mandated COVID-19¹ pandemic protocols in the spring of 2020. During that year, 1.5 billion students across 188 countries found themselves locked out of schools, a term which became known as lockdowns, on at least one occasion (OECD, 2021). Schools and school districts were in tumult with staffing shortages and student absences on the rise. In response, schools triaged traditional teaching and learning practices and adapted their teaching to the crisis.

School responses included shifting combinations of in-school learning, virtual learning (also referred to as remote or distance learning), or hybrid or blended learning (various combinations of in-school and virtual learning) delivery models. Many schools used communication technologies such as Zoom^TM, Microsoft Teams^TM, or Google Meet^TM, among other virtual platforms, to facilitate digital learning activities. Uneven access to and distribution of the technologies enabling virtual learning saw students from vulnerable communities (e.g., economic, racial, geographic) endure even greater impacts from the pandemic (Berman, 2020; Kennedy et al., 2022).

Such shifts in education posed significant challenges to how established systems of teacher preparation planned field-based experiences during the pandemic. Internationally, the teaching practicum is a cornerstone of teacher education in preparing student teachers (also referred to as teacher candidates, or pre-service teachers) for classroom teaching. The practicum tends to be associated with an “in-school experience” (Crocker & Dibbon, 2008, p. 32), whereby student teachers are afforded occasions, in theory, to apply the knowledge and skills acquired in their initial teacher education (ITE) courses. Field-based experiences are much more complex than simply practice teaching, providing student teachers with various opportunities to assume ownership of their professional practice as they navigate and explore their teacher identity (Cobb et al., 2018; Rodríguez et al., 2022). During these in-school periods, student teachers learn to teach while supervised and supported by experienced teacher mentors.

Owing to pandemic circumstances, it was not possible for many initial teacher education programs to secure in-person, school-based practicum learning for their student teachers. At the onset of the pandemic, it was impossible for faculties of education to determine how far to plan ahead (weeks, months, or even years). The literature, at that time, was not conducive to supporting the development of learning-to-teach experiences that were not tied to face-to-face teaching and learning. This is likely because the traditional in-school practicum has remained a persistent, unwavering rite of passage into the teaching profession. Guided by policy responses from local bodies overseeing regulatory and accreditation standards, some faculties adjusted their program requirements, including reinterpreting the in-school practicum (e.g., see Ott, Lombardi, and Hibbert in this volume). This was not, however, a universal response, particularly in countries whose ITE programs remained more rigorously regulated by the state.

Collectively, we are all recovering from pandemic trauma to our physical and social infrastructures and lifeworlds; however, in times of emergency, there can be opportunity. This volume explores cracks that appeared in the fragile walls of the traditional in-school teaching practicum as a result of education-related pandemic protocols. Exploring these fissures and the resulting programmatic and pedagogical innovations that emerged presents opportunities to reshape how we conceive the teaching practicum. The experiences of our authors describe novel approaches, learnings, and adaptations as sites of transformative learning for the teaching practicum in a post-pandemic era.

The purpose of this edited volume is to expand theory and research in the pedagogy of practicum by examining different ways teacher education programs across the globe experienced, modified, and innovated the teaching practicum in response to the pandemic. Key questions driving this volume include:

• • How did teacher education programs respond to and adapt practicum experiences in response to the pandemic?
• • What have we learned about the limitations of traditional in-school, face-to-face practicum, and to what extent were these limitations challenged by pandemic shifts?
• • What opportunities do these responses and adaptations offer, in terms of innovations in pedagogies of practicum, for the future of teacher education post-pandemic?

It has been questioned whether the forced organizational and pedagogical pandemic changes in teacher education during the pandemic can be considered as innovative and if they add any value to historical, long-standing ITE practices. By innovation, we draw on Ellis, Steadman, and Mao’s (2020) reference to “intentional change that adds value” (p. 559). We argue that the creative contributions offered in this volume cannot simply be reduced to crisis measures. In their research interviewing a global sample of ITE leaders amid the crisis, they report an emergence of an “innovative stance” to initial teacher education practice that, it is hoped, will persist post-pandemic (p. 567). This innovative stance, evident throughout the chapters in this book, provokes ITE practitioners to reflect on the changes that occurred in response to pandemic measures, and consider what transformations, if any, they would like to see continue and develop.

This collection brings together contributions from around the world, including Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales. The success of the teaching practicum relies on a diverse range of actors including researchers, chairs of teacher education programs, teacher educators, practicum/field coordinators, faculty supervisors, mentor teachers, and student teachers. The various voices and experiences of these actors come together in this volume to help us to better understand the complexities faced by those engaged in the implementation of novel approaches to practicum in differing contexts.

When we started working on this collection, we did not anticipate such a high level of interest from prospective authors. We received more than 35 proposals which we narrowed, with difficulty, to the 17 chapters that follow in this volume. We believe this interest speaks to the significance of the teaching practicum as a dominant methodology in initial teacher education globally, as well as the lack of resources that respond to challenges and opportunities for innovation and reflection in this area of teacher education. This volume begins to attend to this gap.

In the following section we introduce and review the theory of practice architectures, which offers perspectives grounded in education research, from which we can view the unique constructions of practice during practicum experiences.

Practicum Experiences and the Theory of Practice Architectures

As has been mentioned, the teaching practicum is a long-standing component of teacher education programs. The teaching practicum presumably offers sound pedagogical learning, so much so that Darling-Hammond and Baratz-Snowden (2005) refer to the experience as “the most pervasive pedagogy in teacher education” (p. 42). Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many student teachers seemed to agree with this sentiment, citing practicum as one of the most valuable learning experiences in their teacher education (Martin, 2017; Russell, 2017).

Mattsson et al. (2011) suggest that a teaching practicum emphasizes “… performance and ‘doing’. Practice knowledge is situated, context-related and embodied. It relates to what particular people do, in a particular place and time” (p. 4). Embedded within the teaching practicum (as knowledge and practice) is a web of interrelated practices that serve to initiate student teachers into the teaching profession. The theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014; Mahon et al., 2017) is a helpful lens to frame the complexities of the teaching practicum and to help us re-imagine how practice teaching experiences might evolve post-pandemic.

Kemmis et al. (2014) offer a definition of practice that supports this volume’s sharing of various teaching practicum experiences under pandemic protocols and beyond:

A practice is a form of socially established cooperative human activity in which characteristic arrangements of actions and activities (doings) are comprehensible in terms of arrangements of relevant ideas in characteristic discourses (sayings), and when the people and objects involved are distributed in characteristic arrangements of relationships (relatings), and when this complex of sayings, doings and relatings “hangs together” in a distinctive project. (p. 31)

Taken together, practice is composed of sayings, doings, and relatings as part of a whole. Sayings, doings, and relatings converge in practicum spaces inhabited by pre-service teachers within both tangible (e.g., schools, classrooms, students) and intangible dimensions of those spaces (e.g., teacher education program requirements, school-based norms, subject area discourses).