This paper considers how student teachers, mentor teachers and university tutors who participate in collaborative settings for joint reflection on practical teaching situations during students' practicum perceive their roles and opportunities for learning in these settings. We are also interested in how the participants experience this kind of…

This study confirms the role of genuine conversation as the enabler in good mentoring of pre-service teachers. The practicum plays an essential role in moving the pre-service teacher beyond learning about teaching to the practice of teaching. Yet the benefit of the practicum is often constrained by relational tensions, disappointment and…

This article reports the findings of a small-scale, follow-up investigation into the transfer problems encountered by first-year teachers in China, and the interactions that emerged among the teachers' preconceptions of teaching, university teacher preparation programmes and teaching school contexts in their first year. Participants were surveyed…

In 1999, all student teachers at secondary I level at the University of Bern who had to undertake an internship were asked to participate in a study on learning processes during practicum: 150 students and their mentors in three types of practicum participated--introductory practicum (after the first half-year of studies), intermediate practicum…