Connection between theory and practice in teacher education: Students’ perspectives

Abstract

Teacher education has often been criticised as fragmented and the lack of connection between courses taught in teacher education programs and the actual classroom practices of teachers in schools. This divide between teacher education and the reality of practice in schools is sometimes referred to as the “practice shock”, which is experienced by many novice teachers when they transition from student to teacher (Caspersen & Raaen, 2014; Smith et al., 2013). This challenge of disconnection is by no means new and has persisted in teacher education (Schuck et al., 2018). Teacher educators have pointed toward scarce opportunities to practice, study, or rehearse actual teaching as a major cause for this divide between theory and practice (Kennedy, 1999). In fact, research on teacher education in the past decades indicates that a key feature in teacher preparation is providing student teachers with learning and practice opportunities that are grounded in actual teaching. Large-scale studies indicate that teachers that have such opportunities to learn in the context of teaching practice prove to be more effective teachers (Boyd et al., 2009; Hammerness & Klette, 2015).

In the last decade, Icelandic teacher education has undergone extensive reform. The legislation passed requires a master’s degree for teacher certification. In 2013 the first cohort of teacher candidates graduated from a 5-year program. Changes have also been made to field practice in teacher education, regarding its length and implementation. The latest changes took place in 2019. These changes gave candidates the option of paid internships in schools in their final year of study. Despite rapid changes and reform, little research has been devoted to the nature of Icelandic teacher preparation or the specific factors that effectively prepare prospective teachers for the teaching profession.

The purpose of this study was to examine to what extent student teachers at the University of Iceland (HÍ) and the University of Akureyri (HA) view their teacher education programs as coherent and grounded in practice. Data were collected in two teacher education programs in Iceland. Collectively, these programs are responsible for the education of over 95% of Icelandic teacher candidates each year. The programs differ extensively regarding size and content, but they have their most extensive field practice in the candidate’s final year of study.

A total of 178 student teachers in their last year of study completed a questionnaire survey designed to better understand the pedagogical aspects of teacher education (see Hammerness and Klette, 2015). The survey was translated to Icelandic by a subject matter expert and back-translated to English and compared to the original version to prevent bias caused by differences in translation. The focus of the current study is on four scales intended to measure the following: (1) “opportunities to enact practice”, measured with 10 items, (2) “opportunities to connect various parts of the program”, measured with 5 items, (3)”coherence between courses”, measured with 8 items and (4) “coherence between field experience and courses”, measured with 3 items. The scales all proved to have good internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha ranging from 0.72 – 0.85.

Our results indicate that student teachers get quite a few opportunities to practice teaching methods in their programs. For example, they feel they get ample opportunities to create lesson plans and discuss their experiences from their own student teaching but report few opportunities to see and work with real examples from lessons, like watching or analysing videos of classroom teaching. Such opportunities can make a difference in preparation for the teaching profession because it enables student teachers to envision good teaching and provides the opportunity to systematically adopt such practices (Jenset et al., 2018; Penuel et al., 2020). Our results also indicate that the student teachers generally perceive a reasonable amount of coherence between courses. In contrast, student teachers in the HÍ program reported experiencing greater connections between the theoretical and practical parts of the program than students in HA. A lack of connection between theory and practice is a cause for concern. It is also a well-known international problem in teacher education. It is often criticised for failing to connect what student teachers learn in their program to actual field work of teachers (DarlingHammond, 2017; Moon, 2016; Zeichner, 2010).