Teaching experience 20 (TE)

All students on the B. Ed course in the WSoE participated in a three-four week teaching experience twice a year, usually in May and September/October. On TE, students attended schools and worked closely with a supervising teacher observing and teaching his or her classes. Despite being experienced teachers, the research participants were required to do TE. This section discusses three aspects of TE. Firstly, the importance of the role of the supervising teacher is outlined, examining what the literature discusses about this role. The reason that was important for this study was that many of the participants focused on this relationship in the TE reflective journals. These reflective journals were an important research tool and I discuss them briefly in this section. Thirdly, another research tool, the TE

observation forms are also described.

3.9.2.2.1 The role of the supervising teacher on Teaching Experience TE

The literature on TE acknowledges the importance or the relationship between supervising teachers21 and student teachers. These studies provided useful insights for an examination of the shifts in how the teacher-students in this study teach literacy negotiated their relationships and either learned from or resist what the supervising teachers’ modelled. Importantly though, these insights would be

complicated by the fact that this interaction was between the research participants,

19

A pseudonym

20 _{I refer to the time the student teachers go into the field to work in schools as part of their training as}

Teaching Experience. This is referred to variously in the literature as a practicum or field experience as well.

21 _{I use “supervising teacher” to refer to the teacher in the school who works with the visiting student-teacher}

as a mentor. The literature also refers to these teachers variously as mentors, collaborating teachers or “knowledgeable others” (Gelfuso & Dennis, 2014).

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who were mature, experienced teachers and their supervising teachers. I could find no studies that had investigated a relationship between mature teacher-students and their supervising teachers and this was also a gap that this study aimed to fill.

Studies show the importance of supervising teachers in helping students develop positive attitudes about the profession (Astika, 2014) and in providing emotional support and feedback (Cohen, Hoz & Kaplan, 2013). Interpersonal skills are

important as are the emotions that arise from the relationship between mentor and mentee (Beck, Kosnik & Rowsell, 2007; Kosnik & Beck, 2003; O’Dwyer & Atlı, 2014). Difficulties could arise in this relationship when there are cultural differences

between the supervising teacher and the pre-service teacher as this could lead to different interests, expectations about teaching styles, interaction with students and educational philosophies (Astika, 2014; Cohen et al., 2013; O’Dwyer & Atlı, 2014). Some student teachers have difficulty managing a dual identity of student and teacher (Schoeman & Mabunda, 2012). They could feel stressed and threatened when supervising teachers are not supportive (Ferguson & Brink, 2004) or when supervising teachers treat the students as replacement teachers (Mukuredzi & Mandrona, 2013). There are often difficulties in building trust (O’Dwyer & Atlı, 2014), and supervising teachers are sometimes so busy and focused on their learners that they do not have time to mentor pre-service teachers meaningfully. Alternatively, the supervising teacher might be so focused on the nurturing role in their relationship with the pre-service teacher that they shy away from critique. Generally, supervising teachers often lack the necessary preparation to enable high-quality and appropriate support of student teachers (Clarke, Triggs & Nielsen, 2013).

Pre-service teachers and in-service teachers need to be given the opportunity to practice teaching in different schools and classrooms as this provides opportunities to notice aspects of teaching which were not explicit or visible before (Grow, 2011; Walton & Rusznyak, 2013) to develop awareness of diverse work conditions and cultures (Kabilan, 2013) and to see the link between theory and practice (Cohen et al, 2013; Huber, Hutchings & Gale, 2005; Mtika, 2008). Learning comes from experiencing a tension in the differences between how one teaches and what one observes on TE (Horn, Nolen, Ward & Campbell, 2008). As a result, TE should provide opportunities for pre-service and in-service teachers to challenge their personal philosophies and teaching practices. If this does not happen, they will just

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perpetuate (reproduce) what they see supervising teachers do (Gouda & Banks, 2006; Wilkington, 2005) or they will tend to fit in rather than assert themselves (Astika, 2014). In my study, all of this was complicated by the fact that the participants had deeply-entrenched practices and a strong dispositional teacher identity which was already well-established because of their years of experience. All of their observations and reflections on TE were made through the lens of

experienced teachers rather than as developing teachers (Grow, 2011).

3.9.2.2.2 Reflective journals on TE (2009-2012)

Students kept a reflective journal as part of their learning experience on TE every year and this was assessed in their fourth year. The participants granted me permission to use their TE journals (see Appendix B). A limitation of this was that after 2009, I was no longer in regular contact with the participants so I did not get access to journal across all four years from all participants. This made it difficult to track shifts in how all the participants spoke about teaching literacy.

3.9.2.2.3 Observation forms from TE

When students were on TE they were each mentored by a tutor22 who visited each student twice during TE observing their teaching. Tutors completed observation forms, wrote commentaries on the lessons and discussed these with the students to help develop them as teachers. These observation sheets also formed part of the research data and were useful in comparing the participants’ espoused teaching practices with those observed by the tutor. The research participants gave me

permission to use these observation sheets (see Appendix D) and the Wits TE office arranged access to them. A limitation of using these was that the teacher-students were not always meticulous about filing them and so there were some gaps which made it difficult to compare what they had said about their teaching with what was observed by the tutors.