The Practicum: The Place of Experience?

Across the international teacher education literature, the practicum appears time and again as a key component of initial teacher education programmes. Whatever terminology is used to describe it, the practicum continues to be viewed by the majority of pre-service teachers across a range of international contexts as the most important factor in preparing for the teaching profession. While the practicum remains highly valued, it is also highly scrutinised and contested, with different stakeholders weighing in to debates about the place of practice in philosophical, pedagogical, procedural, and policy terms. This chapter considers these international debates and explores the various implications for practice from different perspectives and approaches. Questions have long been posed by different stakeholders about the place of practice, for example: “At what stage of their teacher education programme should pre-service teachers engage in practicum or professional experiences in schools?”; “Which schools should they attend and for how long?”; “What should they do while they are there?”; “What will they learn?”; “How will they learn it?”; and, “Who will assess whether sufficient professional learning has been achieved and demonstrated?” This chapter presents a researched perspective on these questions, including rich descriptions of the different views, models and approaches that have emerged in response to the age old dilemma of how best to prepare teachers for diverse contexts and of the purpose and place of practicum within their initial teacher education.