EVALUATION OF THE PRESCHOOL TEACHING PRACTICE I-II COURSE ACCORDING TO THE VIEWS OF THE PRACTICE TEACHERS AND THE STUDENT TEACHERS

Abstract

It is stated that one of the most important stages in the training of a teacher is that teacher candidates gain practical teaching experience in schools (Ünlüönen & Boylu, 2007). Together with the lecturers in the faculty, the people who will contribute to the training of the teacher candidate and guide the teacher candidate in the school dimension of the process, namely the application part, are the practice teachers. MoNE defines the practice teacher as "the teacher who has a teaching formation in the practice school, selected from among the experienced teachers, guides and counsels the teacher candidate in gaining the behaviors required by the teaching profession". Practice teachers should be open to collaboration, willing to introduce teaching-learning processes, and sharing (Coşkun & Yalın Uçar, 2012). Since the application students gained their first professional experience under the guidance of the practice within the scope of the Teaching Practice course, the practice teacher should understand the importance of this process and know his responsibility. Teacher candidates find the opportunity to apply the knowledge they have acquired at the end of their 4-year undergraduate education in a real environment for the first time. Based on these points, the aim of this study is to evaluate the opinions of preschool student teachers studying at the same university and practice teachers about their practices in preschool education institutions within the scope of the "Teaching Practice I-II" course. This research was carried out to determine the opinions of 10 pre-school teachers working in 5 state kindergartens randomly selected from Küçükçekmece, Bakırköy and Ataköy districts of Istanbul province and 10 preschool stundent teachers studying at a foundation university in Istanbul on Teaching Practice I-II courses. Within the scope of the research, two data collection tools, "Teacher Interview Form" and "Student Interview Form", were used. The teachers and student teachers were determined by using the "snowball sampling" method. In the research, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a total of 20 people, including 10 preschool student teachers and 10 practice teachers. While the student teachers found the education they received at the university as theoretical and they could not implement activities that might interest children in the classroom, the practice teachers stated that the presence of teacher candidates in their classrooms provided an advantage especially in terms of supporting them in art activities, but they did not find their classroom management dominance sufficient. While the student teachers found their communication with them good, they stated that the student teachers should improve themselves in the activity implementation processes.