This book shares a range of examples where international students have undertaken a work placement, practicum, internship or participated in work integrated learning. Contributions reflect on the successes and challenges that this particularly diverse group of students experience when undertaking work placement programs in a variety of…

The title of the 2014 Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA) conference was "Teacher Education, An Audit: Building a platform for future engagement." One of the conference themes was "Professional Experience: What works? Why?" I seized upon this theme and the title of the conference as it afforded me an opportunity to…

Traditional teacher education's supposed failure to prepare prospective teachers for classroom realities (the transfer problem) is a widely discussed topic in the teacher education literature. Previous studies have focused on causal relationships between teaching and such factors as pre-service teacher education programmes, contextual factors in…

Differential student achievement has particular significance in New Zealand as it has one of the largest gaps between high and low achievers among all OECD countries. Students from low socio-economic status (SES) communities, who are often Maori and Pasifika, are heavily over-represented in the low achieving group, while students from wealthier…

Understanding the role of the practicum in the PI (professional identity) construction and reconstruction within a pre-service teacher is crucial, since this is a remarkable moment in their initial training. This moment provides new feelings and challenges, and it represents the transition from students (pre-service teacher) to teachers…

The teaching practicum is a pivotal event for pre-service teachers to experience the transition from being students to being teachers. This paper examines the emergence of "unruly pupils" as a central concern for pre-service English language teachers in their teaching practicum. The inquiry relates the pre-service teachers' perceived…

The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) was used to assess the daily events and emotions of one program's master's-level family therapy trainees in off-campus practicum settings. This study examines the DRM reports of 35 family therapy trainees in the second year of their master's program in marriage and family therapy. Four themes emerged from the…

Critical reflective teaching has been a goal of English teacher preparation program. Although many English educators have promoted and carried out reflective teaching in their methodology courses, success of such practice has been limited, not sufficiently reflecting what has been desired. Questions have been raised whether reflective teaching…

This article describes the results of a qualitative multiple case study investigation of the experiences of preservice teachers during a teaching practicum in Hong Kong. The study uses in-depth interviews with pairs of student teachers and their school-based supporting teachers to understand how the former positioned themselves as particular types…

The research reported here investigated pre-service English language teachers' perceptions of newly arrived immigrant children from Mainland China in Hong Kong. Seventeen participants, who had at least 10 weeks of experience working with these immigrant children during teaching practicum, participated in focus group discussions and shared their…

Drawing on activity theory, this qualitative case study examines the emotional experiences of Maria, a preservice teacher of English as an additional language (EAL) during the practicum in an Australian secondary school setting and the factors shaping these emotions. Data included interviews with the preservice teacher before and after the…

Teacher preparation plays a critical role in ensuring that teachers are prepared to lead and impact student learning from the first day they are responsible for student learning. The best way to ensure that every teacher is "profession-ready" from their first day as a teacher-of-record is for preparation programs to incorporate teacher…

Context: The PRACTICUM Institute has developed large-scale international programs of on-line continuing professional development (CPD) based on self-testing and feedback using the Practicum Script Concordance Test© (PSCT). Aims: To examine the psychometric consequences of pooling the responses of panelists from different countries (composite…

This paper presents research on the benefits of service learning for pre-service teachers in the final year of their concurrent education program. The purpose of the research was to determine whether liberatory learning (Chambers, 2009) occurred for those students during a four-week service learning placement in organizations other than schools.…

Fieldwork exists as a component of many library schools' curricula. Site supervisors, students, and the schools themselves all play a role. A final part of most fieldwork experiences involves the use of an evaluation form filled out by a site supervisor about the student. In this study, forty seven evaluation forms were collected and analyzed…