Since education is performed through specific meetings with teachers and students, teachers would play a significant role when the education is started, processed and further completed. In training such an important teacher, teaching practicum has so ...
Since education is performed through specific meetings with teachers and students, teachers would play a significant role when the education is started, processed and further completed. In training such an important teacher, teaching practicum has so much special meaning that it is called the flower of the preliminary teacher curriculum. However, most of the scholars say that the current secondary teaching practicum is not sufficiently meaningful in terms of the operation compared to its importance and value. This research, therefore, was intended to present solutions for the effective operation of teaching practicum by exposing the perceptions and contradictions of the secondary teaching practicum among practicum schools, colleges of education, and administrative institutions all related.
The research issues to achieve the research objectives in this study are as follows.
Research Question 1. What is the activity system of teaching practicum in practical schools, colleges of education, and administrative institutions?
Research Question 2. What are the contradictions between the desirable structure and the actual implement of teaching practicum?
Research Question 3. What are the solutions for overcoming the contradictions?
This study has conducted qualitative research using the framework of Cultural Historical Activity Theory from Engeström's third-generation to identify the perceptions of each subject in relation to the teaching practicum. In order to carry out the research, data were collected by interviewing practical school teachers, professors and officials of education colleges, supervisors and researchers at the education office from May to September 2019, and data collected were analyzed using the inductive analysis method, which is the typical method of qualitative research, to derive the results of the study.
In this study, the results of the analysis formed the activity systems of the practical schools, colleges of education, and administrative institutions for the teaching practicum, and revealed the common primary and secondary contradictions within and among each subject, including the tertiary and quaternary contradictions for some of them. Practical schools, colleges of education, and administrative institutions commonly had a "know-you" attitude and unsubstantial collaboration as primary contradiction. In this regard, the rules concerning teaching practicum were unclear, and division of labor was abnormally conducted, causing secondary contradictions. There were subsequent contradictions such as ‘a wide variety of guidance’ at schools, ‘the neglect of teaching practicum’ at colleges, ‘limits of indirect and documentary support’ at administrative institutions. In addition, the requirements of each subject toward other subjects were aggregated to suggest comprehensive measures to overcome the contradictions such as recognizing the importance of teaching practicum, organizing and operating a transcendent consultative body, establishing a system of ‘collaboration’ between education colleges and practical schools, and improving the teaching curriculum of education colleges.
The results of this study show that improvement in teaching practicum requires more concrete effort from not just a single institution, but overall systemic cooperation. It also suggests that the leading role of the administrative body in improving the teaching practicum is needed, and furthermore, we can see the requirements for need analysis to be conducted in colleges of education.