Understanding field assessment of pre-service teachers on school practicum

Abstract

Every nation or society prides itself of the quality of its citizenry. Education enlightens citizens to think rationally and to be responsible people. The notion of enlightened citizens through education as an agent for revealing and perpetuating the characteristic of a successful society, is the impetus for most countries to adopt the education for all upon attaining democratic rule. It is against this backdrop that governments have to develop or improve their education systems to enhance their citizens’ social and economic development through quality education. However, there are important questions that need to be answered in order to achieve quality education. One of the questions in many people's minds is that of how quality education could be enhanced? Our answer is that quality education could be enhanced by focusing on improving teacher education. One of the contentious areas of teacher education is what knowledge teachers should acquire and how this knowledge is assessed to ensure that teachers have indeed been sufficiently empowered to teach in their respective fields of specialisation. This paper focuses on interrogating different approaches that institutions and specifically higher education institutions are applying to assess the competencies of pre-service teachers to offer quality education. The paper zooms in on various methods used in the field assessment of teacher practice; the assessors whom are used for the said purpose, as well as the effects the outcomes of such assessment could have on the eventual quality of teacher preparation.

Keywords:

• quality education
• teacher knowledge
• field assessment
• assessor
• mentor