Problems And Strategies For Practicum Of ME Candidates

In China,the admission of Master of Education(full-time)started in 2009 with the objective of cultivating applied personnel of teaching for elementary education.Therefore,teaching practicum experience,as the vital period in which practical teaching abilities get developed takes an important place in the training of Master of Education.This thesis explores problems confronted by Master of Education in English Teaching during their teaching practicum by means of questionnaires for ME candidates of five universities of Shaanxi province,and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in the process of teaching practicum,namely the ME candidates,school mentors,university supervisors,students and intern school administrators.On the one hand,ME candidates can regard the findings of the survey as references and make preparations for practicum ahead of time.On the other hand,corresponding strategies and suggestions are put forward so as to improve the effects of ME students’ practicing program.Specifically,the research questions of this study are presented as follows:1)What problems do ME candidates encounter during their teaching practicum?2)Why do these problems occur in the teaching practicum of ME candidates?First of all,according to the results of questionnaires and interviews,it is shown that the most prominent problems faced by ME candidates during teaching practicum are insufficient professional supervision by university supervisors due to the lack of compulsory guidance tasks for supervisors and geographical reasons of long distance.However,most of ME candidates feel relatively satisfied with the guidance from school mentors because of their educational researching abilities that can help their mentors in researching tasks.Furthermore,profound professional knowledge and matured interpersonal skills also benefit ME candidates in the process of getting along with mentoring teachers in the school placement.Thirdly,there is no fixed regulation on the management of ME candidates by intern schools and universities,which leads to a series of problems like not having access to school stuff except for teaching,over-weighted workload and financial pressure.Therefore,problems concerning with intern schools take the second place in which financial pressure stressed out ME students most with the second lowest mean of 3.26.Fourthly,because of inadequate training of designing and implementing lessons before and during teaching practicum,challenges related to implementation of lessons especially for the poor classroom management skills are reflected by ME candidates both in the results of questionnaires and interviews.Last but not least,issues dealing with students like being unable to estimate students’ English proficiency correctly and lacking experience of dealing with disruptive students are all confronted by ME students in the course of teaching practicum.Aiming at the most prominent problems,the author summarizes three suggestions for ME candidates based on the interviews:1)transferring the identity of students into teachers before and while practicum,2)making use of the opportunities in universities of developing researching abilities before undertaking teaching practicum and 3)saving money in advance to cover the living expenses during internship.Integrating the research results and previous studies,the researcher summarizes suggestions and strategies for universities and intern schools to refine teaching practicum program as well.Firstly,universities should regulate the compulsory supervision of supervisors so that the advantage of ME candidates can be realized.Secondly,the partnership between intern schools and universities should be maintained to align the cultivation of ME candidates.Moreover,intern schools are supposed to found a structural management system for ME students and at last,courses related to practical skills like classroom management skills can be strengthened and school mentors need pay more attention to help ME students with their managing skills in real teaching context.