The Evaluation of the Final Stage of the Teaching Practice Program by the Students of the University of Western Macedonia

Teaching practice is an integral part of the teachers’ education program met in every Department of Primary Education. Through this, prospective teachers acquire a wide range of experiences from their contact with school, both by observing and by conducting lessons, while they focus on the practical as well as the theoretical aspect of their studies.

In the Department of Primary Education of Florina, teaching practice program is divided into three phases, initially in the form of observation (Phase I) and then with personal hourly teaching in the classroom (Phase II). Phase III is the conclusion of the teaching practice and aims at acquiring direct experience of the daily work and life at school, at developing prospective teachers’ ability to self-evaluate their work as well as at becoming aware of their pedagogical responsibility towards students through teaching a school class for about two weeks.

This paper presents students' views on the extent to which the main objectives of Phase III are met, on how significant it is in guiding and supporting their work and on the difficulties, they have encountered in conducting it. This research approach is part of an on-site long-term research which examines the overall teaching practice program, using all prospective teachers (126) throughout their studies as a control group, and questionnaire and semi-structured interview as research tools, providing us with both quantitative and qualitative data.

By analyzing the research data, we find that students: a) consider Phase III one of the most important parts of their practical training, b) acquire direct experience of everyday school life, c) develop the ability to reflect on and self-evaluate their work, d) design and prepare teaching under real working conditions, e) develop the ability to deal in a personalized way with children with particular teaching problems, while f) they encounter significant problems with the time-consuming process of preparing the next day's lesson plan.

Teaching practice is an integral part of any basic teacher education program. As a particular educational activity, it forms a field where theory meets practice, while at the same time it develops and promotes to prospective teachers the processes of observation, planning and evaluating teaching [1]. It contributes decisively to the familiarization of the student-prospective teacher with the professional field and the work of the teacher and, as a way and place of connecting theory with practice, it is considered necessary for a complete initial education and preparation of the teacher for entering the profession and it is therefore included in any current teacher training program [2].

"Teaching Practice" can be defined as any planned and methodological educational activity, which aims to link pedagogical theory to teaching, to familiarize prospective teachers with their future profession, the conditions and circumstances of the educational work at school and within classroom" [3].

Teaching Practice is an integral part of the basic education of prospective teachers today both in our country and internationally. In each basic teacher education program, teaching practice, as a particular educational activity, aims to minimize the so-called "shock" of practice or the otherwise called “transition shock" [4]. This is achieved when it involves both the early awareness of the prospective teachers and especially their systematic close contact with school and their initiation into the teaching process, from planning to evaluation of its results [5].

Its main feature is its organization at levels or phases, which are divided into the academic semesters, usually in the last four of them. During its implementation, at first, the familiarization of students with school life and class through the observation of behaviour and teaching is attempted, then the specialization in teaching primary school subjects, and finally the program is completed either by teaching a particular subject for a certain number of hours, or by fully undertaking the class for one or two weeks [6].

At the Pedagogical Department of Primary Education, University of Western Macedonia, Florina. Teaching practice holds a fundamental place that is consistent with the principles of the curriculum. Its organization and contents are related to the Department's basic objective, which is to make the graduates competent scientists and professionals. Its main characteristic is its correlation with Didactics, the branch of Pedagogical Science which has the teaching training (theoretical and practical) of the students as its objective. It begins only in the third semester of their studies to be completed at the eighth, forming an integral part of their studies and it is divided into three distinct phases, with distinct objectives, contents and ways of organization.

Phase I (Introduction to the Theory and Practice of School and Instruction) aims to introduce the student into the theory and practice of school and teaching, with relevant theoretical lessons in the University and with systematic observation at school.

Phase II (Didactics of Primary School Subjects) aims at the theoretical training of the student for teaching the primary school curriculum and at the development of their abilities for planning, teaching and evaluating the teaching of these subjects. There are two sub-categories, the "Compulsory Didactics", which all prospective teachers attend and "Elective Didactics", from which students choose to attend only two of the five offered courses.

Finally, Phase III (Training Teaching for Two Full Weeks in a Primary School, with Theoretical Preparation and Feedback) is the culmination of the Teaching Practice. Initially, the theoretical part takes place at the University, with general instructions and suggestions, and then follows the practice with teaching at school units which aims to introduce the prospective teachers to the normal, everyday work and life at school, where they are responsible for pedagogical and didactic work in a classroom, for about two weeks [7].

During the third and final phase of the teaching practice, the prospective teachers, having already acquired theoretical knowledge and understood basic pedagogical concepts, theoretical forms and teaching methods through the theoretical courses of the previous semesters, undertake the full supervision of a class for about two weeks, trying to plan, implement and evaluate the daily teaching of the subjects they are expected to teach.

To what extent does Phase III manage to help students gain direct experience of everyday work and life at school, develop the ability to prepare a teaching plan under real working conditions as well as to reflect and self-evaluate their work daily? Did the prospective teachers encounter any problems or difficulties during their teaching? If so, what were they and where do they come from? How important is, finally, Phase III for the guidance and support of their work and for the successful completion of the Teacher training program?

The research method chosen to examine the teaching practice program was case study. This method constitutes a way of approaching reality, an investigation process that is also, at the same time, the final product of the investigation [8]. Case study is an empirical approach that holistically explores a system in its natural environment, which can be a situation, an individual, a group, or an organization [9,10].

The quantitative research approach was selected and applied and the questionnaire was used as a data collection technique. It aimed to reflect the views of students on the importance of the role of Phase III in the Teacher training program and how it helped them, as well as to identify the difficulties they encountered during their teaching.

A pilot questionnaire was initially administered to a limited sample of students. After editing and applying the necessary corrections, the final questionnaire was distributed. The questionnaires were addressed to prospective teachers who completed Phase III at the end of the spring semester of the academic year 2016-17. They were completed by 126 students who participated in the Teaching practice and contained closed-ended questions (of a 5-points rating scale). The concept of hierarchical scales (Likert-type scales, semantic differential scales, Thurstone scales, and Guttman scales) concerns how the responses regarding the grading of items [11], as well as their intensity, and distance from the limitations of bifurcated questions [12] can be addressed. Hierarchical scales are very useful mechanisms for researchers since they incorporate a degree of sensitivity and variability of response, while, at the same time, yielding meaningful quantitative data [13]. In addition, some open-ended questions were included where participants developed, based on their own experiences, personal views on the operational and organizational issues of the Teaching practice program.

At the end of students’ teaching practice, data were collected and subsequently analyzed. Qualitative data resulting from the open-ended questions were categorized and then coded for thematic analysis after careful assessment by the researcher [14]. For the optimal organization of the collected qualitative research material, content analysis was the method chosen since it “is a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts to the contexts of their use” [15].

Regarding the analysis of the quantitative research variables, descriptive statistics were calculated using IBM’s SPSS v.24.0 statistical analysis program. To investigate the correlations between the students’ responses to selected questions and to process the research data, Kendal’s tau-b statistical test was used and the observed level of significance (p - value) was calculated using the Monte-Carlo simulation method [16]. For all statistical tests, the level of significance was preset at α = .05 (p ≤ .05).

Phase III of teaching methodology and practice takes place in the last semester of students’ studies and is the jewel in the crown of all the efforts they have made in the past years. Through research, we aimed to investigate how helpful it was to students for gaining experience of daily work and life at school.

From the answers we received (Table 1), we observe that a little more than half (70 students, 55.6%) responded "extremely", 33.3% (42 students) of the respondents "very" and 11.1% (14 students) "moderately". It is worth noting that there is a lack of negative opinions and that the 88.9% of the answers were at the top positive points of the scale, "extremely" and "very", which shows us the broad and significant acceptance and influence of Phase III in enlarging the experiences of the educational processes that take place in school unit as well as the importance of the role of the teacher within it. The positive, weak intensity and statistically significant correlation (tau = 0.266, p < 0.001) strengthens the research data.

 Equally positive were students' views on the question of whether it helped them to develop the ability to prepare a teaching under real working conditions, using the knowledge they had gained from the previous phases of teaching methodology and practice and the other courses of the curriculum. 98% of the respondents (123 students) answered from "moderately" to "extremely", with "moderately" being less preferable (16%, 20 students) compared to “very” (40.8%, 51 students) and “extremely” (41.6%, 52 students), while only 2 said it was "slightly" helpful (1.6%) and once again, there was no negative answer (“not at all”) (Table 2). This is also confirmed by the positive, moderately intense and statistically significant correlation (tau = 0.426, p < 0.001) observed between the variables of how important a part of the Teacher Education program is the final phase in helping students develop planning skills of teaching under real working conditions.

We observe, therefore, that there are no problems in planning and organizing daily teachings because the Teaching Practice Program is graduated in a way that the prospective teacher is gradually introduced into the classroom and involved in the educational process. Each phase completes the next one, having though its distinct goals, and prepares the students for the future, offering them all the skills they need to meet the requirements of their teaching role among others.

 One of its fundamental objectives is the students’ development of their ability to reflect on and daily self-evaluate their work. The extent to which they consider that Phase III helped them with this, is shown by their responses to the corresponding question where 99.2% (125 students) claims that it has helped them "moderately" to "extremely," with 38.1 (48 students) responding "extremely", 42.9% (54 students) “very” and 18.3% (23 students) “moderately”, while only one said that it helped him/her "slightly" (0.8%), and again, no one responded “not at all” (Table 3). Thus, we find that the process of reflection and self-evaluation of teaching is widely accepted by the participants of the program, recognizing their importance and undertaking it for themselves for the first time without the help or guidance of the supervising professors and postgraduate scholars, which was the case in the previous phase. The above conclusion is further strengthened as a positive, weak intensity and statistically significant correlation is observed (tau = 0.192, p = 0.012).

Then we asked the students to tell us whether the last part of the teaching practice helped them to develop their ability to respond individually to the needs of children with special learning or behavioural problems within the classroom. Also in this case, the majority (87.3%, 110 students) claimed that it helped them "moderately" to "extremely", while 12.7% (16 students) of the respondents answered "slightly", again with no one answering "not at all" (Table 4). However, for this specific objective of Phase III, despite having high rates of positive opinions, the response "extremely" gets 21.4% of the total answers, "very" 38.9% and "moderately" 27%.

In relation to the previous objectives set, this one does not seem to have the same impressive degree of acceptance because either not all the students’ met cases of pupils with particular learning and behavioural problems during their teaching work or when they did meet, they had the assistance and guidance of the special education teacher, with their individualized teaching, who co-exists within the classroom and is authorised and responsible for those pupils. However, in some cases, although learning and behavioural problems had been encountered, prospective teachers couldn’t deal with them as well as they would like, probably because they were unable to manage their teaching time and spend the extra time required for these individual cases, but certainly, they did not have the necessary experience to handle special situations, even if they did everything they knew and had learned from their previous teachings and from the compulsory theoretical courses they had attended. It needs patience and longer experience for someone to be able to deal with all the cases that will arise during the educational process, which will happen over time and through teaching.

 Within this two-week period when they will be fully responsible for a classroom, they will seek to implement, in the best possible way, all the didactic theories they have been taught and capitalize on their previous experiences from the first two phases in order to respond as good as they can, to teaching and to the other requirements of the concluding part of the teaching practice.

It is inevitable, however, during this attempt, for them to encounter a variety of problems and difficulties which arise from both planning and preparation, and from the educational process itself. We attempted to highlight the most important and to see whether and how they influence the work and the efforts of the prospective teachers.

Initially, we focused on the problems they encountered in preparing and organizing their lesson plans for all the subjects they would teach in a day. The majority of students (69.1%, 87 students) argued that they had "few" or "no" problems, while the remaining 30.9% (39 students) said that they encountered "a lot of" to "several" problems with the exception of only one prospective teacher (0.8%) who replied that he/she experienced "too many" problems .

One can observe that most of the students claim that they do not face particular problems in the preparation and design of their lesson plans, and this indicates the effectiveness of the previous Phase in their practical training (Phase II) where through sample teaching, hourly teachings on every subject and model lesson plans, students have gained experiences, qualifications and the appropriate tools that help them plan and organize their teachings in a sound and effective way. This is also confirmed by the respective correlations of the variables where there is a positive, moderately intense and statistically significant correlation (tau = 0.406, p < 0.001) between the difficulties in organizing the lessons plans and mastering the subject (difficult material, many demands) (Table 5).

But how much time do prospective teachers need to prepare and organize their lesson plans for a single day’s subjects? Is it a time-consuming process or it can be completed in a short time? Posing the question to the students who participated in Phase III, we saw that the vast majority (92.9%, 117 students) answered that it is an "extremely" to "moderately" time-consuming process, unlike the 7.1% (9 students) who answered "slightly" or "no" and that the preparation of the lesson plans for all the subjects can take a lot of time, despite the fact that the students do not encounter many problems, according to their previous answers. This is confirmed by the positive, moderately intense and statistically significant correlation (tau = 0.304, p < 0.001).

We can safely assume, therefore, that the prospective teachers need quite a lot of time to design and organize lesson plans for school subjects at this stage of their studies. This is mainly due to the volume and abundance of teaching subjects, since they often have to prepare five to six lesson plans, for different subjects within one day. Of course, their inexperience in this demanding process also plays an important role, as they were used to having plenty of time (about one week) to organize a single teaching in one cognitive subject (Phase II) and now they are expected to deal with the fact that they have to make five or six lesson plans in just a few hours (Table 6).

It is very important, during teaching, for the teacher to have the proper instructional materials, adapted to the needs of their pupils but also to their particularities. So, do our students encounter problems in finding and selecting the right instructional materials for their teaching?

A little more than half (56.4%, 71 students) responded that they encountered "too many" to "several" difficulties in finding, selecting and using the right instructional materials and tools for their teachings, while the remaining 43.6 % (55 students) claimed to have encountered "few" or "no" difficulties.

We realize, therefore, that instructional materials and media seem to be a problem for most of the students, and this is because not only they don’t know where to look for them, but also, if they fail to find them, they should make them themselves, which involves purchasing materials and increasing costs as well as additional workload, at a time when there are already too many obligations for the time-consuming preparation of lesson plans. In addition, in most schools, the tools that prospective teachers can use during their teaching are non-existent or minimal, and they cannot meet their demands, forcing them to adjust the design and the plans they had in mind (Table 7).

After examining the design and preparation of the lesson plan, as well as the search for the instructional materials, we are looking to the actual teaching and the problems encountered by the prospective teachers during the lesson in classroom. Thus, we raised the question of what problems do prospective teachers encounter in regards to classroom management, i.e. disciplinary problems on the part of the pupils, but also in regards to the space, where various issues of its appropriate arrangement arise, for the needs of teaching and of the methods used (e.g. a group layout of desks for applying the group cooperative learning method).

Most of the respondents (66.7%, 84 students) said they encountered "few" or "none" discipline problems, while 33.3% (42 students) encountered from "enough" to "too many" and also confirmed by the positive, moderately intense and statistically significant correlation (tau = 0.332, p < 0.001). The fact that the vast majority of students argued that they do not encounter particular difficulties in classroom management during their teaching is due to the teaching experience they already have from previous semesters since it is not their first time to teach in classroom. Even this little contact with school and children helped them to manage their pupils, their particularities and to understand faster their needs and the way of learning they have become accustomed to by their teacher.

Additionally, the compulsory Education Sciences courses they were required to attend played an important role qualifying the prospective teachers for effective class management, since they have provided the theoretical knowledge of how to be able to deal with problems of discipline and behaviour which students then implemented within classroom. However, at some point everyone encounters disciplinary issues, some more significant than others, which, even if you have observed the pupils many times earlier, even if you have made a good preparation on the instructional materials you will use, they still may arise because of various events that you cannot predict and prevent, but it is important to be able to manage them before they become too extensive and overturn your preparation and lesson plan (Table 8).

The second major problem faced by prospective teachers during their teachings is the management of teaching time. This is something that is often affected by external imponderables and when it emerges, the student is called upon to find an immediate solution in a very short time. To the question, how often they encounter problems in managing teaching time, the majority responded "slightly" or "never" (74.6%, 94 students), 18.3% (32 students) responded "moderately" and just 7.2% (9 students) of the respondents said "very" or "extremely" often. Once again, we find that the previous teaching experience of prospective teachers from Phase II and the sound preparation and organization of the lesson plans are reflected in the research data with three out of four students not encountering problems with managing their teaching time or encountering few. In the rare cases that this occurs, it is important that the prospective teachers deal with them quickly and adapt their teaching in such a way that they can make up for the lost teaching time without changing their objectives and their lesson plans.

Essential prerequisites for the student to overcome the problems of managing classroom and teaching time immediately and painlessly while they teach are the acquisition of teaching experience and the experience of relevant situations, the sound preparation of the teaching plans and the flexibility during the lesson (Table 9).

After the issues that emerge during teaching which students are expected to resolve, we then tried to investigate whether and how difficult it was for the participants in Phase III, one of the basic processes of their daily routine, reflecting on their teaching. More specifically, we focused on how time-consuming reflecting on their teaching day is, and also whether the supervising professors give too much emphasis on it.

In the first case, half of respondents (50.0%, 63 students) argued that it was an "extremely" to "moderately" time consuming process, with the remaining half (50.0%, 63 students) responding "slightly" or “no” time consuming. In more detail, most of the responses were "slightly" (38.9%, 49 students) and "moderately" (29.4%, 37 students), showing us that students had difficulties with the time they spent in reflecting on their teachings, but these were not enough to prevent the right and complete preparation of next day's lesson plans. This is reinforced by the positive, moderately intense and statistically significant correlation (tau = 0.371, p < 0.001) that exists regarding the achievement of one of the main objectives of the final phase of teaching practice, that of developing the ability to reflect and daily self-evaluate the work of students and how much it helped them to improve and better organize the next day's lessons.

We also note that the procedure they were expected to complete, was undertaken for the first time entirely by themselves, since in the previous phase of teaching practice, this specific role was shared by students, postgraduate scholars and of course the supervising professors of the corresponding Didactic courses. So, while we might have expected to see higher rates of positive answers, however this was not confirmed, because of their experience with previous teachings which enabled them to cope with the reflection without any particular problems (Table 10).

Through the study of the relevant literature and corresponding research, the importance of teaching practice within teacher education curricula at the university level becomes readily evident [17,18]. Its contribution to connecting theory to practice, applying the theoretical academic knowledge learned in the classroom within a real-world classroom environment, and the continuous cooperation between universities and schools is an essential and effective element in the professional training of preservice teachers, and for teachers in general [19].

In the current study, we attempted to present some of the fundamental objectives of Greece’s teaching practice program, through the perspective of those directly involved, i.e., preservice teachers studying at the Department of Primary Education of the University of Western Macedonia.

By analysing and presenting the research results, we can assert that Phase III of the teaching practice seems to adequately support the teaching work of the Department’s prospective teachers and guide them to the successful completion of the teacher education program. Through this, they gain direct experience of daily work and life in school, develop the ability to plan their teaching under real working conditions, using knowledge from the previous phases of teaching methodology and practice, from the rest of the curriculum, but also from personal experience and training as well as the ability to implement their teaching plan in a methodical, efficient and flexible way. In fact, comparing with previous researches made in the department [20], we find that the rates of positive opinions are higher, which means that the final phase of the teaching practice has been improved and it is has become more acceptable and acknowledged by the participants.

In addition, it seems to help students develop their abilities to deal individually with children with particular learning or behavioural problems within classroom by applying pedagogical methods based on their previous theoretical knowledge as well as to improve the processes of self-evaluating and reflecting on their teaching on a daily basis.

However, it was found that a significant part of the prospective teachers encounters several and important difficulties during their weekly teachings. Most of these have to do with the time they need to plan and organize the lesson plans of the school subjects at this stage of their studies, and this is mainly due to the volume and the plethora of subjects they have to teach, since they need to prepare five to six lesson plans for different subjects within one day, with the lack of experience being a obstacle. Moreover, the difficulty in finding and using the right instructional materials tailored to pupils' needs and particularities is a matter of concern to students both because of the shortage of infrastructure at schools and of the insufficient available time for creating them by themselves but also of the high cost of purchasing the necessary materials.

Other important issues, but to a lesser extent, are the time-consuming process of reflection and self-evaluation of the teaching, which, as noted above, prospective teachers undertake on their own for the first time, the management of teaching time and of classroom, when there are often imponderables that you can not anticipate and organize in advance, while there are no significant problems with designing the lesson plans and achieving the subjects objectives, since the students’ past experience from the previous phases and their involvement in the educational process, helped them considerably.

We see, therefore, that during Phase III of the teaching practice, prospective teachers face a lot of difficulties and, compared to previous researches conducted in the Department [1,20], on the top, there are still the issues of the time-consuming preparation and of the availability of instructional materials. It would be possible to simplify the process of organizing and preparing the lessons so that less time would be needed for their recording, without altering their quality, thus leaving more free time that could be used either to find or to create the instructional materials. In addition, the university could facilitate students by providing them with some of its logistical resources for the duration of the teachings and, why not, even assigning some money to the participants of the Teaching Practice to cover a part of the required expenses.

Furthermore, students could attend the classroom they would teach more than once and well before they start their teachings in order to organize and prepare the classroom (objective learning conditions) in their own teaching style, but also to have a better and more complete view of their future pupils (subjective conditions). Finally, since it is impossible to eliminate the reflection on the teachings, we could consolidate it to a single, daily one and not a separate one for each lesson held, thus saving enough of the prospective teachers’ precious time.

Summarizing the results of the survey, we note that the majority of the students who participated in Phase III of the Teaching Practice consider it a very important part of the teacher education program because through the achievement of its objectives it helps prospective teachers to gain experience of everyday life at school, develop the ability to design and reflect on a teaching and face learning problems under real working conditions. Nevertheless, a significant part of them continues to encounter several difficulties, which we have to take seriously and address them in our efforts to improve the Program. And as the students themselves declare, through this experience: "I realized how the ideas and contents proposed by the school can be implemented, in conjunction with the real conditions in school."

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