Practice Teaching in EFL Teacher Education:

How Much Autonomy for Student Teachers?

 

 

I Ketut Seken

 

 

This paper addresses some important questions related to practice teaching in the context of EFL teacher education in Indonesia. Holding that practice teaching contributes substantially to teacher qualification, it reviews the major step so far taken to realize this particular portion of educational program. By teacher qualification is meant the teacher’s mastery of a set of actual abilities and skills performable with in an EFL teaching and learning context. The teacher’s ability to develop toward an autonomous professional is central within this set in the sense that he/she should become the creator of his/her own teaching, be critical and innovative, and be responsible for what is happening in his/her class.

It is argued that under the present educational policy and practices, the practice teaching has not been adequately geared to such teacher qualification. Observation on several classes in which student teachers were teaching and information concerning many aspects of their experiences collected through interviews and questionnaire have shown that it has not essentially been heading toward qualification of an utonomous teacher with the required creative and innovative abilities. It has also been indicated that the student teachers’ motivationh and attitude toward practice teaching is not sufficiently supportive to their efforts in the undertaking. Some of the etacher educators supervising the practice teaching were not really working hard enough while some other were too heavily engaged in other tasks. Toward a solution to this worrying situation some ideas are developed and certain concepts are offered to be reviewed.

 

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Seken, I K. (2006, April). Practice teaching in EFL teacher education: How much autonomy for student teachers? Paper presented at the 41^st RELC International Seminar, Singapore.