Exploring the Role of the Teaching Practicum on Pre service Teachers’ Beliefs

Abstract

Beliefs about teaching and learning have a significant influence in every teacher’s teaching pedagogy. This qualitative case study took place within an English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching program in a public university in Colombia. It aims at exploring the experiences of five pre-service teachers undergoing their teaching practicum to understand its role in the participants’ beliefs about teaching and learning. Exploring beliefs has become relevant since they affect teachers’ practices and decisions in their classrooms. Therefore, as teaching practicum advisors in this EFL teaching program, we see in this experience a tremendous potential for personal and institutional pedagogical growth.The pre-service teachers were interviewed at three different moments during the study and were asked to write weekly reflections and a final reflection at the end of their teaching practice. The findings indicate that the relationships between pre-service teachers and their teaching practicum advisor, cooperating teachers, and their teaching contexts, take part in the pre-service teachers’ teaching experiences, and influence their beliefs. The study concludes that the teaching practicum serves as a catalyst for beliefs manifestation before and during the teaching process, where tensions between the pre-service teachers’ beliefs and the teaching reality take place. The teaching practicum also plays and important role in reinforcing and transforming beliefs due to factors such as the teaching context particularities, the role of the cooperating teacher, and the role teaching practicum advisor.