Practicum experience in teacher education

Abstract

Teacher education programs are designed to develop professionals who are prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century classrooms and workplace. To this end, the teacher education program must aim to develop the knowledge, skills and attributes of pre-service teachers to prepare them to teach effectively in the schools systems. It is, therefore, argued that the academic program of the teacher education should be coupled with an important and integral component called school -based experiences i.e. practicum which provides students with supervised experiences and help the student teachers to understand the full scope of teachers role. Many have also suggested that these experiences are very powerful in shaping pre-service teachers as they are real in contrast to the artificial environment of the tertiary education courses. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to address the need of and justification for school based practicum experience. Attempt was also made to show the current debates and future direction of practicum in teacher education.