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and among themselves while planning the lesson and after they
had taught the lesson, (d) their evaluation of the observed lessons
taught by the cooperating teachers and their peers, and (e) their
evaluation of their own teaching after each lesson. When they had
completed the practicum, all of them returned their diaries (126
entries altogether) to me. After initially analyzing the diaries,
I contacted the student teachers via email for further discussions
of some important points in the diaries.
Methods
Because the purpose of this study was to gain understanding of
preservice teachers experiences in the practicum and how they
made sense of those experiences, I employed a qualitative
approach, which requires an interpretive science in search of
meaning, not an experimental science in search of laws (Geertz,
1973, p. 5). This qualitative approach emphasizes the importance
of the context-specific nature of the learning-to-teach process
during the practicum. The study was, therefore, grounded as
being data driven, emphasizing the emerging emic themes rather
than guided by predetermined, or etic, themes (Denzin & Lincoln,
2000; Merriam, 1988; Patton, 1987). Moreover, it viewed context
and behavior as being interdependent and intertwined.
As stated earlier, data were generated through the student
teachers diaries and email discussions. Diaries have been widely
used to examine the idiosyncratic variables in the process of
teacher learning to teach (e.g., Numrich, 1996). Through student
teachers diaries we gain an intimate view of organizations,
relationships, and events from the perspective of one who has
experienced them him- or herself and who may have different
premises about the world than we have (Bogdan & Taylor, 1975,
p. 7). Thus, student teachers diaries helped me gain insights into
how they learned to teach during the practicum. Follow-up emailbased discussions with individual student teachers helped me gain
further insights into some issues emerging during the process of
diary data analysis.
Within the qualitative approach chosen for the present study,
the emphasis during data collection and analysis was on
understanding and interpretation (Farrell, 2001). Both diaries and
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FINDINGS
Appropriating the Cooperating Teachers Methods
The student teachers in this study seemed to be keen to learn how
to teach by appropriating their cooperating teachers teaching
models, instead of finding ways to translate the theories and
teaching methods they had learned at the teacher education
institution. Hung Nguyen, the only male student teacher in the
group, admitted benefiting a great deal from the cooperating
teacher in terms of (a) effective warm-up techniques, (b) flexible
use of lead-in activities, (c) techniques of teaching vocabulary and
pronunciation, and (d) dealing with discipline problems in the
classroom.
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Hoang Thi had more to say about the tension between the
methods of teaching she had learned in the teacher education
program and what the cooperating teacher actually did in the real
classroom. Although she was critical of the cooperating teachers
use of Vietnamese and poor pronunciation, Hoang Thi realized
that the cooperating teachers lesson justifies that teaching
methods should be appropriate for the students. She added that
the techniques demonstrated in the training video differed greatly
from what her cooperating teacher actually did in the classroom.
In the follow-up email she explained that her teacher educator at
the college taught that the teacher should use only English in the
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classroom. She also clarified that in the training video, the trainer
was an native English speaker and used only English in the
classroom.
Struggling to Survive Classroom Realities
In their diaries, all the student teachers showed the challenges
they experienced in the real classroom. They tended to feel
shocked by the students unfriendly attitudes, low participation,
and low proficiency in English. Phan Tu described that she was
experiencing quite strange feelings when some boy students
showed their bad attitudes to her on her first encounter with
them. Although Hung Nguyen did not have similar problems
with students behaviors, he felt frustrated about the students
lack of English proficiency and mixed abilities, which caused
him to translate what I said [in English] into Vietnamese and
be unable to focus on all the students. Like Hung Nguyen,
Hoa Lua experienced the tension between her belief about the
use of English in the classroom and the students limited
proficiency:
I found myself in a dilemma. In learning English, it is necessary
that the students understand some classroom commands and
simple interactions in English. However, we had to use Vietnamese frequently because the students did not understand
English. When the cooperating teacher required us to use
English frequently in the classroom, the students did not
participate.
The tension between their beliefs and expectations and the real
classroom situation frustrated the student teachers. Phan Tu
described one lesson she taught:
The students were enthusiastic but there were so many new
words in the lesson, which made it hard for the students to do
the exercises. It took more time than I had expected, and consequently, I did not have enough time for the rest of the lesson.
Again, I was unable to finish the lesson plan. I was really frustrated because I had prepared very carefully for the lesson and
had been convinced that the lesson would be a success . I did
not know why things did not happen the way I had expected
them to. I was really down.
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In the email discussion, I asked her why she had not selected
words that were useful for the task completion. She replied that
the students vocabulary was terribly limited and if she had not
taught all the unknown words, the students would not have
been able to do the task. Hoang Thi found herself in a similar
situation of students nonparticipation in classroom activities:
I started the lesson with a game called Look and Say. It seemed
OK at first. But when I called on a boy student, the problem
emerged. He just stood there in silence touching his head
despite my prompts. I called on another student. The whole
class became dead quiet. Nobody volunteered.
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I asked Hoang Thi in my email to her why she had not asked
the cooperating teacher to clarify what she really meant. She
replied that there was no time and she was too shy to ask.
However, the student teachers acknowledged that the
cooperating teachers feedback was helpful to them. In his last
entry, Hung Nguyen wrote that he felt more confident about
teaching after the practicum thanks to his cooperating teachers
frank feedback on his teaching. Similarly, Hoa Lua stated in her
email that she had learned how to present vocabulary and that a
reading lesson should start with prediction activities followed by
students reading, and then checking comprehension from her
cooperating teachers feedback.
The Pressure of Assessment
As noted earlier, the assessment, which is credited, is left entirely
to the cooperating teacher; the supervisor from the teacher training
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When the practicum period was over, all of them wrote that
they received positive grades and assessment from their
cooperating teachers, which made them really happy.
DISCUSSION
The purpose of the practicum is to provide student teachers with
an opportunity to translate into practice the skills and knowledge
they learned in the teacher education program so that they can
become effective teachers in their future career (Richards &
Crookes, 1988). The findings of the study support previous studies
(Brinton & Holten, 1989; Farrell, 2001; Numrich, 1996) in that
they indicate that student teachers were more concerned with
appropriation of their cooperating teachers rather than finding
ways to apply theory and teaching ideas from previous course
work (Richards & Crookes, 1988).
The findings also indicate that the student teachers viewed the
practicum as a learning experience for their future career (e.g.,
how to plan a lesson, how to present vocabulary, how to sequence
classroom activities). As student teachers, their concern with time
constraints, the management of classroom disciplines, the flow of
instruction, and the delivery of the lesson plan is natural and
understandable. However, what was missing from this learning
opportunity was the student teachers conscious and critical
reflection on how they dealt with aspects of teaching. It can be
interpreted that their primary concern was using the students and
the classrooms as instruments in implementing and completing
their lesson plan (Farrell, 2001, 2007) for assessment. When the
delivery of the lesson plan was not as smooth as they expected it
to be, they tended to feel frustrated (Farrell, 2007; K. E. Johnson,
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an evolving collection of carefully selected or composed professional thoughts, goals, and experiences that are threaded with
reflection and self-assessment. It represents who you are, what
you do, why you do it, where you have been, where you are,
where you want to go, and how you plan on getting there. (p. 11)
CONCLUSION
This study reported the experiences of a small group of EFL
student teachers in a short (6-week) placement in a school they
had never been in before. The results of the study suggest that it
remains merely a great expectation rather than an achieved
reality that the practicum provides the student teachers with a
good learning opportunity to become effective teachers. The
findings of the study also postulate that rigorous research is
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks go to the five student teachers for their
enthusiastic participation in this study and to Ms. Nguyen Thi
Ngoc for her valuable help during my data collection process,
without which the study would have been impossible. My
special thanks are due to the three anonymous reviewers for
their valuable comments on the early versions of this article. I
am grateful to Dr. Roger Barnard. I would also like to thank
the TESOL Journal editor for her constant support and
encouragement.
THE AUTHOR
Le Van Canh is a senior lecturer in applied linguistics at Hanoi
University of Languages and International Studies, where he
has been involved in English language teacher education for
more than 30 years. His research interests include teacher
education, teacher cognition, teacher identity, and context-based
pedagogy.
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Bailey, K. M. (2006). Language teacher supervision: A case-based
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Bogdan, R., & Taylor, S. (1975). Introduction to qualitative research
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Brinton, D., & Holten, C. (1989). What novice teachers focus on:
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