CONTRIBUTORS
Amani Karisa
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Moses W. Ngware
Theme Leader, Human Development
Introduction
School practice, also traditionally referred to as “teaching practice,” is the practicum aspect of teacher education when student teachers work with professional colleagues to supervise and support them, shaping their practice to appreciate the full scope of a teacher’s role in a school environment. Given its impact on student learning and teacher retention, it is considered the most highly valued component of teacher preparation
worldwide.
School Practice Experience in Africa
The practicum experience, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), has prevalently been described as obsolete and theoretical, with inadequately supervised school placements and pre-service/student-teacher experiences described as cases of “sink or swim”. Studies show that most pre-service teachers work under the same inadequately incentivized classroom teacher within the host school for the entire duration of the practicum, hampering exposure to diversity of teaching expertise. Indeed, studies of both primary and secondary school student teachers have revealed that most of them did not feel supported during school practice. This has been attributed to the authoritarian and technocratic interactions as well as dominantly negative feedback from classroom teachers in the host schools as well as supervisors from the colleges. This was aggravated by the pervasive tendency of classroom teachers to abscond their duties to the student teachers, leaving them largely on their own during school practice. In Cameroon, for example, a study found that schools took advantage of school practice to schedule in-service training for classroom teachers (Wohlfahrt, 2018). Moreover, limited incentives for college supervisors coupled with large numbers of supervisees
hampers practicum supervision outcomes. Moreover, the hierarchical relationships between college supervisors and classroom teachers, accentuated by the grade- awarding power of the former, compromised the quality of feedback informed by both wisdom of practice and wisdom in practice from college supervisors and classroom teachers, respectively.
Adopting Collaborative School Practice Models
Evident is the isolation in the pre-service teacher experience coupled with hierarchical power relations among the student teachers, classroom teachers and college supervisors, which compromises the optimization of practicum outcomes. Taking up collaborative approaches to practicum teacher preparation as we argue, can mitigate this. Indeed, scholars have developed several collaborative practicum models to illuminate best practices in this regard. This is corroborated by the findings from a systematic review of research, which revealed five promising approaches that have informed successful practicum Teacher Professional Development (TPD) in SSA—namely:
1. School-based mentorship
2. Communities of practice
3. Peer-observation
4. Reflexive practice
5. Practicum placement in diverse contexts
While the success of those approaches was attributed to aspects such as bridging theory and practice, hands-on experience, reflection, psychosocial support, diverse feedback, and blended learning, the prominence of collaboration as an aspect that shapes promising practicum TPD programs across the approaches as revealed in the review based on studies from SSA confirms scholarship from other contexts (Hastings & Squires, 2002; Jones, 2008). The shift from a unidirectional approach toward a model that is more collaborative and reflective has been foregrounded, as evidenced in the approaches expounded in the sections that follow.
School-based Mentorship
School-based Mentorship (SBM) foregrounds collaboration between practice schools and teacher training institutions during practicum. It is based on interactions amongst a mentor (typically an experienced school teacher), a mentee (student teacher), and a college supervisor to facilitate the acquisition of teaching and school management skills. Studies on SBM in SSA have lauded the collaboration between universities/colleges and schools as effective in delivering qualified teachers through bridging theory and practice. SBM provides opportunities for student teachers to learn by observing teachers (learning from practice) and also presenting lessons under the supervision of mentors (learning in practice), availing opportunities for modeling a spectrum of competencies, including lesson planning, delivery, and assessment. Further, it allows for poor and disadvantaged learners to study while student teachers gain teaching experience. This has been used in Zimbabwe (Maguraushe, 2015) and South Africa (Richter, 2016), where pre-service teachers were recruited as assistant teachers to plug
the teacher shortage. More specifically, SBM has the potential to enhance the preparation of student teachers of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), given the experiences of practicing teachers/mentors who (unlike teacher educators) are at the center of donor-funded evidence-based in-service FLN programs.
Communities of Practice
Lave and Wenger (1991) coined the term “Communities of Practice” (CoPs) in studying apprenticeship as a learning model. The mutual cooperation between student teachers, practicing teachers, and college supervisors as members within a CoP engenders collegiality, providing a platform for greater commitment in providing regular feedback and mentorship to pre-service teachers. In South Africa, for example, well-coordinated responses from effective CoPs enhanced classroom management, particularly given the untenable levels of violence in South African schools (Msimanga, Mabalane, Ramaila, &
Ramdhany, 2021). Further, as Van Wyk and De Beer‘s (2019) study illuminated, student teachers who did not know how to handle scientific apparatus improved drastically throughout the year with more interactive CoPs. Further still, as studies, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrated, online CoPs ensured continuous communication amongst student teachers and teacher educators, providing opportunities to share resources and experiences about teaching as well as facilitating collaboration and a sense of accountability. CoPs have the potential to enhance the preparation of student teachers for FLN, given possibilities for sharing a wealth of teaching and learning materials such as primary-grade curricula texts and leveled readers.
Reciprocal Peer Mentoring
Contrary to hierarchical relationships overriding traditional mentoring practices, Reciprocal Peer Mentoring (RPM) engages peers in an essentially mutual relationship to support each other’s personal and professional development. RPM entails a recurrent process of planning, observing, collecting data, providing feedback, and reflective analysis. The shortage of teachers in schools within SSA has forced them towards alternative forms of recruitment, ranging from hiring contract teachers at a lower cost to the use of peer-student mentors to provide supervisory gaps during practicum. Studies have shown that peer teaching sessions nurtured free interaction, fostering collegiality as well as benefiting both the peer teacher and peer observers through opportunities to improve teaching practically. Moreover, student teachers were able to find more time for classroom observation with their peers than university supervisors or
classroom teachers. Peer feedback approaches remain most valuable in contexts like SSA, where costs are likely to limit the number of times a teacher educator and/or mentor teacher can observe a student teacher’s lessons.
Reflective Practice
Reflective practice is the intentional act of inquiring into one’s actions and thoughts in light of a perceived problem. Studies emphasize that student teachers must not be taught how to act but should be guided to reflect on their actions. The reflexive practice has been taken up in its diverse forms largely in South Africa and used to support the development of socially just student-teacher dispositions through uncovering and challenging deep-seated assumptions that perpetuate social injustices. Guided journal activity, for example, called for a weekly reflection on the lessons, which led to student teachers’ adjustments in teaching techniques. This was informed by the reflective guiding questions on what worked well and otherwise, making it possible for self- assessment of teaching performance to continually improve practice. Reflexive practice remains relevant for preparing teachers for FLN, given studies showing that teachers who reflect on their teaching of mathematics broaden their view of how well to teach the subject, thereby improving students’ learning.
Practicum Placement in Diverse Contexts
The increase in diversity of learners, including those with special needs, socioeconomic, linguistic, gender, and race, has informed the importance of integrating pedagogic responsiveness to diversity in pre-service teacher education programs. Through co-teaching in contexts like the USA, students with additional learning needs remain in regular classrooms and gain access to both mainstream as well as specialized teaching and learning. However, this remains elusive in resource-constrained contexts, especially in SSA. Practicum placement of student teachers in diverse contexts provides an opportunity for them to gain inclusive pedagogical skills. This approach is critical in developing contexts such as SSA, where budgetary and infrastructural constraints require that general classroom teachers provide access to learning for all learners in the class without the support of special education specialists. South Africa’s teacher education policy for example, requires pre-service teachers to be exposed to wide-ranging and dissimilar contexts of schooling to learn to teach inclusively. Practicum
placements in contrasting contexts have the potential to support the preparation of student teachers to foster FLN within inclusive classrooms. Indeed, studies show that FLN abilities are diverse, justifying the imperative to prepare teachers with competencies to foster FNL in ways that support the diverse FLN abilities.
Conclusion
Collaboration, which cuts across the five promising approaches to practicum in SSA as informed by a systematic review of the literature, has been fronted as key to overcoming some of the problems associated with the practicum. Gaps between theory and practice, for example, can be bridged through partnerships/collaboration between schools (practice) and institutions of teacher education (theory) to ensure hands-on practicum experience. Moreover, collaboration allows for the provision of valuable psychosocial support, especially for student teachers, to cope adequately, given the pervasive negative isolating experiences encountered during school practice in SSA.
Further, non-hierarchical collaborative arrangements have the potential to optimize practicum outcomes given the leveraging of the wisdom in practice from the classroom teachers as well as the wisdom of practice from the college supervisors. Similarly, the current knowledge of practice, as discussed in the pre-service teachers’ lectures, can be leveraged to enrich the classroom teachers’ practice. On the whole, a collaborative practicum model can form a bedrock to anchor best practices and/or what works for practicum in SSA, disrupting pervasive narratives of practicum as a lonely struggle for pre-service teachers in SSA.
Funding source
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supported this work. In addition to funding, the Foundation provided support in reviewing and editing the manuscript.