5. Implications for improving the effectiveness of student teachers’ practicum and field experience    26
5.1 The implications for the universities    26
5.2 The implications for the student teachers themselves    27
5.3 The implications for the schools which provide the practicum    28
6. Conclusion    30
References    31
Appendixes    33
1. Questionnaires    33
2. Interview    37
3. Reflections    38
1. Introduction
1.1 Background
As is widely known to the public, the educational practicum is a vital component in student teachers’ education in many normal universities. It is always regarded as the most important step for the student teachers to become the real qualified teachers. During the educational practicum, the student teachers can possess the chance to go to school as a real teacher and also acquire the actual practical experiences which they can never learn from the textbooks. Not only can they improve their teaching standards and skills, but also they can obtain comprehensive developments, like knowing better how to deal with the relationships between students, the parents and the colleagues. Being closer to the schools and real students, the student teachers usually will become much familiar with their future work. Then as a result, the adjustments for changing into real teachers will also be shortened. However, with such numerous benefits which could be gained, the educational practicum, while being put into practice, do not meet their primary intentions or gain the results as expected. At the meantime, the student teachers, the professors and the schools make plenty of complaints about the practicum, wondering whether it is effective or just a waste of time. Nowadays this unsatisfying situation has already aroused the public and the scholars’ attention and concerns. So does this kind of problems also occur in our Hangzhou Normal University? Is the student teachers’ practicum effective in JHY Honors College? Or what other factors occurring in the practicum contributes to the ineffectiveness of the practicum for our students? This paper will do a comprehensive research to investigate the current situation of JHY Honors College’s student teachers’ practicum and disclose some potential problems.
1.2 The Necessity of Educational Practicum
According to (Edward S., et al, 2011)’s views of knowledge, the knowledge can be pided into two main parts, the procedure knowledge and declarative knowledge. The procedure knowledge cannot be taught or acquired merely by the language teaching, and it can be only transmitted by the experience gaining from the real life. Different from the declarative knowledge, on the journey of learning the procedure knowledge, people need to carry out repetition and exercises as much as they can. What’s more, for the student teachers’ development of becoming a qualified teacher, not only do they need to have a good command of the declarative knowledge, such as the subject matters, but they also need to master the procedure knowledge, knowing how to teach students and solve the subject matter, and how to deal with the emergent problems both in and out of class. However, this kind of procedure knowledge cannot be learnt from the textbooks and educational theories, but only from the personal and authentic practice. As a result, the educational practicum which can provide both the declarative knowledge and procedure knowledge is of vital importance for the student teachers to master the pedagogical abilities in their development. Thus, the student teachers need to make good use of the educational practicum. When they are in the schools, they will have real chances to experience the life a teacher, to perceive the change from being a student to a teacher, to apply what they have utilized into practice, to deal with the actual situations through their own abilities, to solve the problems that cannot be met in the textbooks. Only in this way can the student teachers gradually cultivate the professional awareness, emotion and skills. And with the teacher morality gradually coming into being, those student teachers eventually will become qualified and preeminent teachers in the future. 师范生教育实习有效性的研究(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_50896.html