Derya Akbana, that is me, an English language teacher. I have gained experience of sixteen years in teaching English to students from preschool to high-school levels in different regions in Türkiye. Now, I am teaching at a public primary school in Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye. Email: dier_ja@hotmail.com

Yunus Emre Akbana is, not by coincidence, my husband. He is an Assistant Professor at the ELT department of Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University in Türkiye. He holds BA, MA and PhD degrees in ELT and his research focus falls into the scope of developing language teaching materials and instructional designs informed of global issues. He helped me write this reflective article as an invaluable conversation partner adding his perspective as a supervisor in the teaching practicum, especially in the conclusion.  Email: yakbana@ksu.edu.tr 

 

My journey in a nutshell

When I was majoring in the ELT department of Anadolu University between 2004 and 2008 for my BA degree, I took teaching practicum classes both in my second and fourth year. As a sophomore student, I first observed my mentor teacher’s teaching. Later as a senior student, I taught and was observed by my mentor teacher. I remember the excitement that I felt on the first visit of my supervisor and then my dedication to teaching as a teacher candidate. I still find this experience invaluable in that it sparked my commitment to my profession extensively due to the energy and motivation in teaching. In this paper, I feel further excited to attempt to unravel today’s teaching practicum system in my context, explain my background experience in the practicum, voice on my emerging experience as a mentor teacher and reflect on this enjoyable journey as part of my continuous professional development. My observations I have made as a mentor teacher encouraged me to write this article.

 

Background information: The teaching practicum

Several processes are taken for determining a practicum school in Türkiye. Initially, the university based in a city makes a list of senior students to act as teacher candidates in the practicum schools. Then, the city directorate of national education identifies the schools which employ teachers with certificates of teacher candidate training. Finally, the schools are affiliated with the students. Having considered this process, the teaching practicum is the context where the school environment for learning how to teach is ensured.

The practicum teaching includes three stakeholders. The first one is the student but also defined in different terms such as a pre-service language teacher (PSELT), also called a teacher candidate, or a senior student. In our case, the senior student is the one majoring in the fourth year of the English language teaching program at the Faculty of Education. In some cases, the students majoring in English language literature, linguistics, translation and interpretation or cultural studies may take a teaching certificate, which necessitates their field visits with the same format of teaching practicum I explain here. However, the distinction is that they are not from the faculty of education. The second one is the mentor, my current position, acting as the classroom teacher. The mentor acts as a role model for the PSELTs initially and then observes and supervises them clinically in the real classroom setting. The last one is the academic supervisor, who checks and observes the PSELTs’ pre-professional development in collaboration with the mentor. An academic supervisor is in charge of the professional development of 12 PSELTs while a mentor is for six students. 

 

Background experience in the practicum

The fall term of the 2023-2024 academic year allowed me to gain my first mentoring experience. To be eligible for the mentoring program, a teacher must hold a certificate of pre-service teacher training to run a practicum mentorship. I attended a training program delivered under the authority of the Turkish Ministry of National Education through the online channel of the Educational Informatics Network (EIN; EBA in Turkish original). The main purpose of EIN is to offer a network of resources and support for teaching (https://www.eba.gov.tr). By the practicum mentorship training program in EIN, I took a total of 24 class hours from two university professors, whom I found very diligent in equipping us with the required knowledge and skills to mentor the PSELTs. The program included asynchronous courses introducing the concept of clinical supervision model (Gürsoy et al., 2016) by which the teachers can assist the teacher candidates effectively on how to give and take feedback, run the classroom observations and grow as quality and equipped teachers. In the end, I had to take a test. Upon successful completion of the training program, I took the right to train teacher candidates as a mentor. 

 

The teaching practicum experience

In the fall term of 2023-2024 academic year, I mentored six PSELTs over twelve weeks. The timeline covered the first four weeks in the form of observing me, classroom students and the school environment by the PSELTs, and then the delivery of the classes by PSELTs under my observation. This process required a satisfactory collaboration between me and the PSELTs, and the academic supervisor as well. The syllabus in Table 1 below shows the details.

 

Table 1. Practicum Syllabus

Table 1 shows the syllabus for the fall term of the 2023-2024 academic year. It was provided by the university. The students needed to follow the activities weekly. In an overall view, while the syllabus mainly requires the PSELTs to meet and observe their mentor teacher in the first four weeks, it guides them to deliver classes in the remaining eight weeks under the observation of the mentor teacher. The whole process was supervised by the academic supervisor, who visited the school four times in which he held a meeting at the beginning and then joined the classes to observe them in collaboration with me. Now, I would like to report on the PSELTs’ overall development from several perspectives. Please note that the names of PSETs throughout this report do not account for their real names to ensure anonymity.

 

Classroom management

In my opinion, classroom management requires both theoretical knowledge and practical experience to delve into the context of a school because I strongly believe every classroom has its dynamics as the impetus for creating satisfactory learning environments. The PSELTs had difficulty in the beginning in terms of building authority intrinsically. In the feedback sessions, one PSELT reported “If I have no authority over the students, then I cannot manage them and they won’t accept me as their teacher” (Hülya). The view was also common in other PSELTs in that the “Teacher is the authority in a classroom and it is like being a father at home” (Elis). Hülya refers to the anxiety of not being accepted by the students while Elis points to a vivid simile, which is the father being the strongest character at home in the traditional Turkish culture. I was fortunate to learn their views in the fifth week because it allowed me to change their mindset by referring to the unnecessary need for an authority role which has a strict characteristic. After all, the students already accept the teacher as their leader who can lead and guide them to the appropriate language use. They were persuaded by following a learner centred approach, where the teacher would act as a prompter and a good organiser in the following weeks.

Apart from this, I suggested to them a set of ideas. To list, they should establish clear expectations from the students, use positive reinforcement for students to develop more desired behaviours, be consistent in the classroom rules and procedures, engage the students with activities catering to their different learning styles, build relationships on trust, respect and empathy, follow classroom routines such as entering the classroom, initiating warm-up activities, making transitions between the stages of pre, while and post activities, develop collaboration to foster a sense of belonging and teamwork within the classroom, demonstrate kindness and fairness with their interactions with the students and be flexible in terms of meeting students’ needs being open to feedback. They put special emphasis on developing such assets and skills with extra caution to lingering around the class more by touching students’ attention and using a higher pitch of intonation and sounding while giving instructions and keeping all awake for learning. Briefly, I saw all the PSELTs having developed feelings of behavioural engagement and willingness to succeed among the students in the final week.

 

Time management

I delivered the coursebooks and shared the curriculum and syllabus for 3rd graders with the PSELTs. Each week, we checked them and identified teaching topics. I asked them to exploit the coursebook in a way that meets each classroom’s dynamics because every classroom is different considering students’ individual differences. They came up with different activities with materials all aligning with the lesson objectives and the learning outcomes informed by the concept of multiple intelligences. Therefore, PSELTs needed to prepare lesson plans accordingly with special attention to the timing of activities for students’ engagement, selecting the appropriate resources, and aligning the lessons with the learning objectives to cover the curriculum.

The lesson plans mainly included four stages; warm-up, pre-stage, while and post. PSELTs allocated timing for each and then tried to comply with them; however, at the end of most classes the majority of them said “I am sorry but I could not run one more activity that I listed in my plan because the students wanted to spend more time on the games (Ali)”. Although students love playing games, it became a challenge for the PSELTs to manage timing in playing games. Seeing students willing to engage in the games may sound favourable and demanded by almost all teachers in a classroom learning environment. However, lesson planning requires more attention in terms of time allocation for each activity in the planning stage.

Put in a different perspective, another PSELT said, “Since the students did not fully comprehend the ‘emotions’, I could not guide them into the game activity and it took more than the time anticipated” (Pınar). However, Ali indeed mentions in favour of the students’ willingness to engage and get involved. In this case, Ali should have started the game activity earlier, by which the students could learn the ‘emotions’ by inductively making discoveries of learning. Sometimes students may show unwillingness to attend classroom activities, this could be also another hindrance to managing timing. We also discussed it but we concluded that since the students welcomed the PSELTs because of their energy and dedication to teaching them, they did not experience such problems a lot. As a result, timing is significant for running a lesson plan smoothly. The PSELTs became aware that timing seemed a challenging issue in their professional development because there could always be several factors that cannot be easily controlled and would cause changes in actual teaching. 

 

Student engagement

From the very beginning, we always attached a particular emphasis on student engagement because we believed it was the key to learning happening in the classroom. Engaging young learners in a task was not challenging for the PSELTs because they prepared catchy games, songs and nurseries usually. Also, young learners showed willingness to participate in collaborative tasks. However, there were several students who did not show interest in learning English in general. Getting their attention on the activities took more time and effort for the PSELTs in the fifth, sixth and seventh weeks. This was evidenced by the following words: “I was anxious when some students did not want to get involved in the activity and I tried to encourage them but they showed no attempt today” (Elis). “Some students do not want to speak in English. When I asked the reasons to one of them, he told me that he would sound ridiculous and others would make fun of him” (Egemen). Elis refers to inactive students while Egemen touches upon speaking anxiety among young learners. After observing students, PSELTs found a good code of conduct by showing more interest in them and encouraging them by giving trust and confidence. This was normal because the students had different teachers and may feel the fear of failure; however, the nature of activities they ran in the classrooms triggered their motivation, and willingness to attend and have fun through learning English.

The academic supervisor also reported some remarks in his observations: While PSELTs engaged the students in learning, they also managed it through comprehension checks, evaluating their learning by providing timely and constructive feedback considering different learning styles and abilities. Young learners love learning by doing and also being in a technologically driven classroom. The PSELTs supported their learners by doing kinesthetic activities. They also integrated the use of smart boards with catchy videos and interactive games, which enhance learning opportunities among the students easily. The PSELTs also ensured that Syrian students engaged in the activities with other Turkish students in harmony in the classroom. This is significant to offer engagement that leads into inclusive learning environments. In addition, the PSELTs should always keep up with advancements in teaching strategies to bring relevant learning opportunities for the students to practise collaboratively in classroom learning. 

 

Conclusions (through the lens of the academic supervisor)

The academic supervisor’s involvement in the teaching practicum was facilitative and collaborative to lead both the mentor teacher and the PSELTs into longer term autonomy (Smith & Lewis, 2015). The contextual support system that the mentor teacher is in enables a community of teacher-learners by building a constructivist learning environment for teaching (Jonassen, 1999). It is clear from this paper that the mentor teacher discovers her own excitement within the emerging experiences of the PSELTs by flashing back to her initial experience when she was a PSELT. Now, her experience as a mentor teacher has unravelled another piece of excitement and motivation for her profession. Mentoring can lead to the strengthening of relationships when the stakeholders are intrinsically motivated to reflective practice (Dikilitaş & Wyatt, 2018). The mentor teacher’s whole professional journey can be practised within the framework of continuous professional development catering to the identities that a teacher can build on. Here, a mentor teacher identity has emerged and this can transform the teacher role into a guide for pedagogical support to PSELTs. Next is the ability to continuously reflect on the guide role.

The way that the PSELTs conducted classroom management, time management and student engagement pinpoints the progress that they cultivated their teaching skills in dealing with disruptions, conflicts, and lack of student motivation. The teaching practicum usually helps PSELTs combine their theoretical “knowledge of classroom context, lesson plan content, instructional pedagogy and their students” (Chien, 2015, p. 342). Having experienced several problems with not meeting the timing management on the lesson plans has taught the PSELTs the importance of adapting lesson plans spontaneously, materials and assessment by giving learners feedback. However, to enable PSELTs to accommodate various learning styles requires more and more experience in teaching. As evidenced in Çelik and Zehir Topkaya (2023), such preparedness to teach usually depends on the availability of guidance, support, supervision, negotiation and feedback from the mentor teacher. This, in turn, allows mentor teachers to develop their own teaching when they are ready to reflect on the teaching practices of their PSELTs. To bring some alternatives to the problems the PSELTs encountered here in this paper, they needed to consistently improve their lesson planning considering time management, in particular. However, the students’ willingness to get engaged in activities preferred by learners such as games became more demanding for the PSELTs to manage their classroom teaching time. In comparison to older learners, young learners should not be overlooked in that they are more willing to get engaged in language learning, they have a lower affective filter, they are less anxious [though one student claimed he had speaking anxiety] and more intuitive (Johnstone, 2009).

In a nutshell, the particularities of the mentor teacher’s previous lived experiences as a student shed light onto Derya’s initial experiences in growing as a mentor teacher. She has grown into a guiding role for pedagogical support for the PSELTs and their pre-service professional development in a school environment blended with theoretical and practical knowledge.
 

References

Chien, C. W. (2015). Pre-service English teachers’ perceptions and practice of field experience and professional learning from expert teachers’ mentoring. Teachers and Teaching, 21(3), 328-345. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2014.953817

Çelik, H., & Zehir Topkaya, E. (2023). Pre-service English language teachers’ state of preparedness to teach and its sources in field experience. Bartın University Journal of Faculty of Education, 12(2), 372-389. https://doi.org/10.14686/buefad.1059588

Dikilitaş, K., & Wyatt, M. (2018). Learning teacher-research-mentoring: Stories from Turkey. Teacher Development, 22(4), 537-553. https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2017.1403369

Gürsoy, E., Kesner, J. E., & Salihoglu, U. M. (2016). Clinical supervision model in teaching practice: Does it make a difference in supervisors' performance? Australian Journal of Teacher Education (Online), 41(11), 61-76. https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2016v41n11.5

Johnstone, R. (2009). An early start: What are the key conditions for generalized success? In J. Evener, J. Moon & U. Raman (Eds.), Young learner English language policy and implementation: International perspectives (pp. 31-41). Garnet.

Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (Volume II) (pp. 215-240). Routledge.

Smith, M. K., & Lewis, M. (2015). Toward facilitative mentoring and catalytic interventions. ELT Journal, 69(2), 140-150. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccu075 

 

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