Opportunities to enact practice in campus courses: Taking a student perspective

ABSTRACT 

The aim of this article is to explore similarities and differences in teacher candidates’ perceptions of their opportunities to enact practice in university courses in five teacher education programmes, located in Norway, Finland, USA, Cuba, and Chile. Paper and pencil surveys were distributed among candidates (N = 488) to measure their perception of their opportunities to enact practice in campus courses. Across programmes, the students report the least opportunity to examine transcripts of classroom talk or student discussions. They report the most opportunity to talk about their field placement and to plan for their teaching. Using Analysis of Variance, differences between the programmes were studied. Students in a programme which has explicitly made efforts to connect theory and practice over a period of 15 years do report more opportunities to enact practice. Students from a programme that has been constantly working on improvements but not a major redesign conceptualised around coherence, report experiencing fewer opportunities to enact practice. We conclude that teaching practices closely linked to pupils’ understanding might be in need of additional attention in teacher education programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher education
• enactment of practice
• student perspective
• teacher candidates

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Oslo students are also allowed to enter the programme if they obtained 180 credits with 60 credits in their subject (1 credit equals 25–30 h of studying) which is similar to the minimum credits necessary to obtain a bachelor’s degree.

Additional information

Funding

Research reported in this paper from the ‘Coherence and Assignment Practices in Teacher Education’ study is funded by a grant from the Norwegian Research Council [Grant #212289].

Notes on contributors

Esther T. Canrinus

Esther T. Canrinus is an associate professor at the Department of Education, University of Agder in Norway. Her research focuses on the improvement of teacher education, motivation in education, and teachers’ professional development. She is, furthermore, interested in teachers’ social networks, their professional identity, and classroom behaviour. She has been a collaborator in the CATE (Coherence and Assignments in Teacher Education) study.

Kirsti Klette

Kirsti Klette is a professor at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Oslo. Her research interests include teaching and learning, teacher quality, classroom studies and comparative teacher education. She has been the PI for several international and comparative projects. She was the principal investigator of the CATE study along with Karen Hammerness, and is the principal investigator of a large-scale classroom video study” the Linking Instruction and Student Achievement (LISA) study, both funded by the Research Council, Norway.

Karen Hammerness

Hammerness is the director of Educational Research and Evaluation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Her research focuses upon the pedagogy and practice of teacher education in the US and internationally. She is particularly interested in the preparation of teachers to enact teaching practice as well as preparation for specific contexts for teaching (such as urban settings). She along with Kirsti Klette was the principal investigator of the CATE study.

Ole Kristian Bergem

Ole Kristian Bergem is a researcher at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Oslo.He is the National Research Coordinator for TIMSS, Norway, but is also involved in other international research studies, such as CATE. Currently he is involved in a classroom video study, LISA.