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Student Teachers’ Emotions, Dilemmas, and Professional Identity Formation Amid the Teaching Practicums

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Abstract

This research frames student teachers’ professional identity formation through the lenses of emotions and dilemmas based on semi-structured interviews and emotional journals. Utilizing grounded-theory analysis method, this paper reveals a pattern of the emotional trajectories that the six student teachers experienced from the beginning to the end of the practicums: eagerness and anxiety at the beginning of the teaching practicums, shock and embarrassment immediately after the student teaching, anger and puzzlement at the middle of the internship, helplessness and loneliness toward the end of the practicums, and guilt and regret after the teaching practice. Furthermore, the participants were faced with four dilemmas: (1) tensions between classroom authority and the ethic of caring, (2) acting as a community member or an “outsider,” (3) working as an office assistant or a “real teacher,” (4) conflicting pedagogies regarding teaching different academic performance levels of students. All these dilemmas contribute to the complexity of the teaching practicum in China. Finally, implications for teacher education, especially for preservice teachers’ pedagogy of identity and ethical professionalism, are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Note In terms of the gender issue of this study, first, most of the preservice teachers in China are female. Accordingly, it is difficult to recruit a male participant. Second, after the first author posted the research participant recruitment, only the female student teachers contacted me. Therefore, the lead author had to focus on the female participants in this paper. For the future research direction, the authors will consider the gender issue by incorporating more male student teachers.

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Acknowledgements

This study was sponsored by the Peak Discipline Construction Project of Education at East China Normal University.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Institute of International and Comparative Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Li Deng & Gang Zhu

  2. Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Guofang Li

  3. Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA

    Zhihong Xu

  4. Center for Urban Education, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, USA

    Amanda Rutter

  5. Department of Educational Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA

    Hector Rivera

Authors
  1. Li Deng
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  2. Gang Zhu
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  3. Guofang Li
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  4. Zhihong Xu
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  5. Amanda Rutter
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  6. Hector Rivera
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gang Zhu.

Appendix

Appendix

Interview Protocol

  1. (1)

    How do you perceive your role and responsibilities during the practicum?

  2. (2)

    How do you develop your repertoire of pedagogies in the practicum?

  3. (3)

    How do you construct your professional relationship with your mentor?

  4. (4)

    What is your first-time teaching experience? How do you feel about it?

  5. (5)

    What is your relationship with the placement school? How does it affect your identity perception?

  6. (6)

    Do you have any compeTina commitment in practicum? How do you feel about it?

Emotional Journal Written Instructions

Please narrate your first-time teaching experience which contains explicit emotional words. You can also discuss how this experience affect your professional identity perception.

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Deng, L., Zhu, G., Li, G. et al. Student Teachers’ Emotions, Dilemmas, and Professional Identity Formation Amid the Teaching Practicums. Asia-Pacific Edu Res 27, 441–453 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-018-0404-3

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