i
English Education Department UMY
A Skripsi
Submitted to the Faculty of Language Education
In a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Siti Nur Paddilah
20120540046
English Education Department
Faculty of Language Education
Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta
Abstract
Teaching practicum is a teaching practice program for future teachers to get a vision about what and how teaching is. Teaching practicum has some factors which influence practicum to be successful or failed. The goal of this research is to find out the influencing factors of teaching practicum at the English Education Department (EED) of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY).
The design of this research is qualitative approach. The data were collected by interviews. The researcher used face to face interview and phone interview. The participants of this research were three students of different batch. There were two female pre-service teachers and one male pre-service teacher.
The results of this research showed that there were three factors affecting teaching practicum success, namely personal, school and university factors. Personal factors consist of gender and personal pressure. Both of them are
influence on pre-service teacher’s success on practicum. School factors consist of mentor, background of the school, classroom and assignment. Then, university factors consist of supervisor and teamwork. According to all participants, the most influencing factor is the school factors.
Chapter One
Introduction
This research discussed factors affecting pre-service teachers’ success on teaching practicum at English Education Department (EED) of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY). The researcher was conducted to find out teaching practicum in every class of each batch. This chapter presented five points. The first point is the background of this research. The second point is the problem of the topic. The third point is the research question. The fourth is the purpose of this research. The last one is the benefits of this research.
Background of the Research
A professional teacher is the basic need of every country because the central of education is teachers (Naz, Abida, Munir, & Saddiqi, 2010).
Professional teachers need to improve their teaching quality. Professional teachers will be able to manage classroom activity, but only high-quality teachers are capable of being the central of education. Naz et al. (2010) argued that improving quality of a teacher can be done by improving the quality of education. A trained teacher can be a high quality teacher if the training is successful.
ability and themselves. The assessment will also give the pre-service teachers more teaching experiences which will help them to be the professional one.
Practicum is needed by service teachers. Practicum will help pre-service teachers to be the professional one (Walshaw, 2009). Practicum will give pre-service teachers more chances to experience directly a class environment. During practicum, pre-service teachers will practice what they got from their college into a real class environment.
Vanslyke-Briggs, Hogan, Waffle and Samplaski (2014) said that practicum has some advantages for pre-service teachers and the university or institution. The first advantage is for pre-service teachers. Practicum provides an experience and an idea of pre-service teachers’ future occupation through
interaction with the faculty supervisor and students. Pre-service teachers are able to apply their teaching ability, compose lesson plan, and manage effective and efficient meetings.
Teaching practicum is important preparation of pre-service teachers before they apply what they already got from their college into real work environment (Goh, Wong, Choy, & Tan, 2009). Teaching practicum can be the field work for the pre-service teacher to imagine their future job. It helps them to get some vision about how teaching looks like.
Teaching practicum experiences influence students’ success or failure.
the next teaching practicum. Rees et al. (2013) gave a note that pre-service
teachers who teach in the same grade in previous teaching practicum will be better than those who did not. In this situation pre-service teachers already know the characteristics of the students, the topic or material which will be delivered, and time management. They know everything about the class from the previous teaching practicum.
Teaching practicum gives visual learning for pre-service teachers (Chien, 2013). In this time, pre-service teachers will practice what they already got from the college and apply to the school. There are some factors of teaching practicum that can help pre-service teachers to be successful, namely the location and background, stress levels, teaching experience, and confidence levels.
Gregory (2014) found that the location and background of the students will affect teaching practice. The accesible is related with the school sondition and location. Then the background is related with the students condition. How is the accesible of the school, how is the facilitation of the school and the background / condition of the students are affect on teaching practicum. Accessible and
facilitated school will accelerate teaching processes as it will help pre-service teachers perform their practicum.
that can help pre-service teachers finish their practicum smoothly if they can handle their stress on doing that.
Stress levels, according to Geng, Midfort and Buckworth. (2015), is one of influencing factors that can affect into pre-service teacher. Geng et al. (2015) found that early childhood, primary or secondary school gives lower impacts to the stress level. The successful practicum will affect the future job. Geng et al. (2015) also found that teaching practicum is the most stressful activity during
pre-service teachers’ study. When pre-service teachers are stressed, they are unable to
control their mind and the situation.
Teaching practicum has some influencing factors. Stress is one of the factors (Celix, 2008). There are some factors caused by stress such as personal factors, communication factors, evaluation factors, external factors, lesson
preparation factors and teaching itself. According to the result of Celix’s (2008)
research, the most influencing factor among those is personal factors.
Celix (2008) showed some reasons why personal factors become the most stressful. There are eight reasons about it; they are: sticking balance between the practicum and personal commitment, fear of failing during practicum, fear of using superior approach, fear of using different methods (approach or techniques), personal pressure (expecting too much about the class), having better or worse pronunciation that the real teacher (mentor), imitating another teaching style, and limit sources. Those are the factors on personal area that make pre-service
Goh et al. (2009) mentioned teaching practicum is an effective way to
increase students’ confidence. Goh et al. (2009) also found that second practicum
will increase students’ confidence from the previous practicum. This way helps
students’ preparation to face the real work after graduating. They are more
confident after having practicum in a class. Identification of the Problem
The English Education Department (EED) gives pre-service teachers the teaching practicum activity. This department provides three stages for three batches. Every stage will take place in different year and location or school. For example, teaching practicum at the first year will take place at an elementary school. The second year will take place at a junior high school. Then, teaching practicum in the third year will take place at a senior high school.
In fact, the current researcher is one of pre-service teachers at the EED of UMY. The researcher already got teaching practicum in all stages. Based on the observation and the experience of the researcher, the researcher found that pre-service teachers at the EED of UMY had different experiences. Every teaching practice gave different profits and showed different factors for pre-service teachers. The researcher also faced some factors that have been mentioned in the background of this research.
The first practicum for the researcher was at the second semester. At that time, the researcher did the practicum without firstly being coached. The
students directly taught at elementary schools. Thus, the first teaching practicum seemed lack of communication between the supervisor and pre-service teachers. There was no coaching or some explanations about teaching practicum. The researcher and other pre-service teachers did the practicum blindly.
The second practicum was at a junior high school. There was a coaching at the beginning. The communication among the supervisor, a mentor from the school of practicum, and students was good. The coaching was conducted for two months. It was quite clear and satisfying. The rule, lesson plan, and even the teaching materials were discussed better. Everything was running well except the teaching practicum itself.
Junior high school students were not interested in learning English. The English class that pre-service teachers held did not run well. The students who attended were only about ten students of each class. The students were lack of motivation, lack of interest, as well as uncontrolled class, and they seemed like avoiding the English class. They did not even bring a note book and dictionary.
Teaching practicum at this time was a bit frustrating for pre-service teachers. Indeed, the mentor told us backgrounds and characters of the students at the beginning of coaching. When this second teaching practicum was over, pre-service teachers shared their experiences. Most of them felt that this teaching practicum ran better than the previous teaching practicum. Pre-service teachers got new experiences about managing class and assessing students.
coaching ran well. Everything about teaching was discussed better. Even the
lesson plan, materials, and students’ characteristics were discussed better with the
mentor. The mentor explained really well. The mentor even gave a consultation section.
Similar to the teaching practicum before, there was no big problem during coaching. The problem came during the teaching practicum. The students were
lack of discipline. As the researcher’s own experience, the first class was at 7 a.m.
to 8.30 a.m. but the students did not come at that time. They came at 7.30 a.m. so that the first meeting was totally ruined. There were a lot of materials that cannot be discussed at that day.
At the second day of teaching practicum, there was miscommunication between me and the mentor. The mentor made a new schedule for pre-service teachers, and I did not get the newest one so that the mentor was calling me directly at that day. Fortunately, I already made the lesson plan and the material, but I was 30-minute late. Although it was quite late, the class ran better than before.
The next day until the last day the practicum ran better. There were peer observations and sharing about teaching practicum among the pre-service teachers. There result was good. Some of pre-service teachers found the new techniques about controlling students and managing time. Some of them found another fun during teaching. This practicum was the best practicum during
These personal experiences happened to other pre-service teachers. They shared their practicum experiences among them. Then, they found a lot of similarities happened during the practicum. Based on those experiences, the
researcher wants to know deeply the factors that influence students’ success in the
teaching practicum.
This topic has relations with EED students. The first relation is the EED of UMY provides teaching practicum which always takes place in the even semester. The second relation is that the researcher is one of students at the EED of UMY and she did the practicum too. Those are the reasons why the researcher chose this topic and the setting.
Limitation of the Research
There are lots of factors that have been mentioned in the background. To make it more specific, the researcher focused on teaching practicum at the English Education Department of UMY. The reason why researcher took the limitation on teaching practicum at the EED UMY is that the researcher wants to make the research more focus. Besides, in another university, teaching practicum has different techniques and rules.
Question of the Research
Based on some explained problems, the research question is: What are the
factors affecting students’ success on teaching practicum at the EED of UMY?
Purpose of the Research
The purpose of the research is to find out the factors affecting pre-service
Significances of the Research
This research will help other pre-service teacher to know teaching practicum deeper. Here are the benefits of this research for different sides.
Pre-service teachers. This research will help pre-service teachers to know more about teaching practicum and some factors affecting pre-service teachers’ success on teaching practicum. They can get a little description about what and how they will do the practicum. Besides, pre-service teachers can develop the successful factors so that they can handle the negative factors on teaching practicum easier.
Mentors and supervisors. This research will give a little description of how the mentors and supervisors influence pre-service teachers. Therefore, the mentors and supervisors can evaluate the teaching practicum by the factors that the researcher mentions in this researcher.
University. This research can become the program evaluation for the university. The university can revise some rules or something related to teaching practicum to make a better program in the next year.
Other researchers. This research can inspire other researchers about teaching practicum. It will help them who have concerned with teaching practicum for their research paper.
Outline of the Research
Chapter Two
Literature Review
This chapter shows some literatures that are related to the title of this research. There are three topics in this chapter. The first one is literature about teaching practicum. Second one is the other one is literature about the factors of teaching practicum. The third one is conceptual framework.
Teaching
Teaching is carrying a responsible to help pupils learn. This responsible lead a teacher to give an acitivity inside or beyond classroom. There are some acitivity on teaching such as leading a discussion, review material, listening and assessing students, explaning, evaluating student’s papers, planning and creating
and supporting environtment for learning (Ball & Forzani, 2009).
In other hand, teaching is creates a situation to challenge students t test their knowledge by solving some problem, make a product, performance and reporting or anlyzing a topic, concept or idea (Buttoms, Presson and Jhonson, 1992 as cited in McTighe and Seif, 2004).
Teaching Practicum
complete their teaching practice (Mellvile, Campbel, Fazio, Stefanille, & Tkaczyk, 2014). Mellvile et al. (2104) also found that a biography factor is the most powerful factor that influences the practicum. At that time, practicum can be the alignment between practical knowledge and reform-minded.
Practicum is the only way in which pre-service teachers are able to have their own experience in real class (Aydin, Demirdegon, & Tarkin, 2012). At that time, pre-service teachers learn how to teach carefully for the next teaching practicum. It helps them to be more experienced in teaching. Their own
experiences will guide them to teach better. They will able to handle, estimate and evaluate their own practicum.
Teaching practicum as pre-service teachers’ experiences is a key for improving educational system (Asplin & Marks, 2013). This key should be supported by all educational system. It starts from school partnership, internship (coaching and teaching practicum at the EED of UMY), pre-service teacher placement, and field experience which should be considered by both university and department.
Sinclair as cited in Walshaw (2009) said “successful pre-service teachers are those who work within a professional community of shared knowledge of and shared thinking about pedagogical practice, and who are assisted both practically and emotionally through personal and systematic support” (p. 555).
Additionally, based on the researcher’s experiences, successful pre-service
teachers are they who enjoy teaching, can explain clearly, and can control the class. They are the pre-service teachers who got support and guidance from the mentor and the supervisor. They have a good team work among pre-service teachers as well.
Teaching Practicum Factors
Personal factors. Pre-service teachers’ distress influences the individual who will be a teacher, the profession, and the educational system (Gardner, 2010). There was a higher level of stress in all age groups, but no significant result from gender. The thing that influences them to be stressed is age. The research shows that the pre-service teachers who are over 24 years old had higher levels of stress.
Deasy, Coughlan, and Mc Namara (2013) found that teaching is kind of stress job. Kyriacou cited in Gardner (2010) reported that “37% of teachers were stressed. Their investigation, conducted with a large sample of teachers in
Western Australia, revealed that 45% of Australia secondary-school teachers were
psychological distressed” (p. 19-20). Deasy et al. (2013) found some stress
reassures. They rank those factors; workload is the first stressor, exam is in the second rank, and it is followed by assignment in the third one.
The others factors of stress during teaching practicum is caused by some factors such as being afraid of failure, being afraid of using different method or technique, having personal pressure, thinking of being better or worse than the English teacher or mentor, and having too much campus project and personal commitment (Celix, 2008). Those fears will lead pre-service teacher to be failed.
Bullock (2012) argued “most teacher candidates seemed to feel the heavy burden of the marks they felt they would receive on official practicum assessment
forms” (p.153). Bullock (2012) found that pre-service teachers assume that the
theories they got can be applied in teaching practicum in a short time. Thus, this expectation makes them frustrated when it is not as quick as they think.
The next factor is gender as it influences the psychology. Contrary to Gardner (2010), Denhere (2011) found that female pre-service teachers are more stressed during teaching practicum rather than the male ones. It is because females are more emotional when they face some problems during teaching practicum. They solve the problem emotionally while male students focus on strategies. This study took place at Zimbabwa Ezekiel Guti University. There were 72 male and 81 female respondents for this study.
School factors. Hirschkorn (2009) argued that the key of successful pre-service teachers is their mentor. A mentor is the one who guide pre-pre-service teachers. The role is as a model teacher to be copied by pre-service teachers. The
teachers are capable of teaching. The mentor gives a limit to do or to avoid some action. Good communication between the mentor and pre-service teachers can decrease stress and some teaching problems such as controlling class, managing time, and delivering materials.
The role of the mentor here is to help pre-service teachers face the real work place. The mentor can be the best supporter for pre-service teachers at the beginning of their profession (Kell & Forsberg, 2014; Chandler, Chan, & Jiang, 2013). The mentor is the one that already know the school and teaching. That is the reason why pre-service teachers need to keep good communication with the mentor.
Pre-service teachers can ask some helps about implementing curricula, managing class, managing time or another issues related with teaching to the mentor. The mentor can also share negative or positive experiences about the practicum, and this experience also affects the result of teaching pre-service teacher (Tarman, 2012).
Ssantamu-Nambiru (2010) said that a good communication between pre-service teachers and supervisors will help pre-pre-service teachers to be the successful one. Pre-service teachers can discuss problems that they face during their teaching practicum time. Supervisors can share what they have already got from their teaching experience before. They can give some suggestions about teaching practicum.
where they have field experience and university affects the enthusiasm of pre-service teachers. Inline with Tarma (2012), Ryan, Jones and Walta (2012) found that rural and regional show different benefits for pre-service teachers. The regional places have more facilities or staffs that can support teaching practicum itself rather than rural location.
Ryan, Jones, and Walta (2012) also found another factor that helps teaching practicum to be successful. Ryan et al (2012) metioned that the other factor is communication. The study explained that the communication among pre-service teachers should be good too. Being connected is good for pre-pre-service teachers. They can share their experiences and get another experience by sharing it.
Besides communication among pre-service teachers, the communication between school and university also influences pre-service teachers. Widen, Mayer-Smith, and Moon cited in Sokal, Woloshyn, Funk-Unrau (2013) reviewed 97 reports on teacher education programs and found that high quality practicum experiences by high levels of collaboration between the university and school were essential to foster conceptual changes in pre-service teachers.
Barney and Pleban (2006) categorized four relevant keys of pre-service
teachers’ teaching practicum such as classroom management, classroom
that will be used. Student learning is about physical education that pre-service teachers give to the students. Enjoyable experience is a long term memory about what they get and have fun during class.
Workload is one of many factors that influences on teaching practicum (Deasy et al., 2013; Garder, 2010). Most of the interviewees said that they have a lot of tasks to do in teaching practicum such as making the lesson plan, arranging the material, and managing time. Everything should be well-prepared for the teaching practicum.
University factors. One of many factorsinfluencing the teaching practicum of pre-service teachers is the supervisor from university (Chandler et al., 2013). Chandler et al. (2013) mentioned the supervisor’s roles for pre-service teachers. The supervisor can be the guide to prepare what pre-service teachers need for teaching practicum.
Paulo (2014) found:
“The supervisor has the following functions: i) to participate in the design
grade of the students, taking into account his/her on own and the Cooperating Teacher’s assessment, and the grade awarded in the public defense of the Final report of Supervised Teaching Practice.” (p. 19)
Pre-service teachers who have a good relationship with the supervisor and are known as a knowledgeable person by other pre-service teachers tend to use teaching method or any ideas they learned from university rather than pre service teachers who are not getting close enough to their supervisor (Asplin & Marks, 2013). It proves that supervisor can be an advisor for their pre-service teachers. The pre-service teachers should feel free to share their confusion during teaching practicum. In this situation, the supervisors can be called as “the expert” because they got the experience first.
There next influencing factor is tewamwork. Teamwork is the factors came from university. this factors is different with the previous factor. This factors were affected by pre-service teacher ot the supervisor. Teamwork showed how the relationship, teamwork and communication among pre-service teacher. As mentioned by Tarricone and Luca (2002), teamwork is some people who are working together in coopoerative environtment to achieve a team goal by sharing knowledge and skills. In line with Tarricone and Luca (2002), pre-service teacher in were place as a team. They were asked by university to teach in a group not individually.
Conceptual Framework
teachers are asked by the university to teach in a school. They will be supervised by the lecturer from the university and guided by the mentor. The mentor is a teacher from the school who asked by university to guide pre-service teacher. There should be a good communication among pre-service teachers, the supervisor and the mentor.
Teaching practicum probably takes place during the students’ study. At the
English Education Department of UMY, teaching practicum takes place during their full-time study. Usually, this program is conducted at the middle or the end of even semester. They will firstly be coached by the mentor/guide from the school in the odd semester.
There are some factors influencing the teaching practicum. The factors are personal factors, school factors, and university factors. The personal factor is a factor faced by pre-service teachers and coming from themselves. As mentioned by the previous study, stress is one of the problems caused by the personal factor.
The other factor is school factors. School factors are the factors caused by the school or the place where the pre-service teachers conduct the teaching
practicum. The study has mentioned some problems on school factors, such as the mentor, the students, location and condition of the school and the students, and workload.
relationshp among pre-service teacher, and relationship between the supervisor and the mentor really influence the pre-service teachers during their practicum
22 Figure 1. Teaching practicum factors.
Chapter Three
Methodology
This chapter discusses the methodology used in this research. This chapter consists of four sub-chapters. There are research design, setting of the research, participants of the research, data collection method and data analysis. Research design discusses the design and the reasons why the researcher used this design. Setting and participants of the research discuss where the research was conducted and who the participants in this research were. Data collection method describes the way to collect the data. Data analysis explains steps of analyzing the data. Research Design
This research used qualitative research method. According to Garson (2001), qualitative approach is an empirical approach. It means that qualitative approach can be used as a method for an experience research. The reason why researcher choose this aproach is because the researcher want to dig out pre-service teachers experiences as well. The point of this research is to know some possible factors affecting pre-service teacher success on teaching practicum that are shown up during pre-service teachers’ practicum experiences.
Setting and Participants of the Research
the researcher’s experience and observation, the researcher faced some problem
during practicum. The researcher was curious about the possible problems faced by other pre-service teachers. The second reason is this research is under
researched. It will be the first research teaching practicum in this department. Participants. The participants of this research were three students of English Education Department. There were two requirements for the participants. The first requirement was each participant should have finished teaching in different levels to make more reliable interview result. Second requrements was the participant should in different batch.
The participants were use pseudonym. Pseudonym is the fake name, so all of participants was namely fake. The reason why the participants used fake name
was the researcher want to keep the participant’s privacy. They were Rita, Dina,
and Toni.
The first participant was Rita. She was at the 6th semester and she had finished her teaching practicum. She taught at elementary, junior and high school already. The second participant was Dina. She was in 4 th semester and she has not finished her teaching practicum yet. She only had practicum at elementary and junior high school when the researcher interview her. The third participant was Toni. He was in semester 2 nd. He is the youngest among all participants. He has finished his practicum at elementary school only. He was the only male
participant
Data Collection Method
The data were collected by interviews. According to Sharma (2010), interviews are more accurate than another data collection method because interviews can reveal lines of thought that often miss while doing survey data. In line with Sharma (2010), Creswell (2012) said that interviews provide information that can be found directly while you are doing an observation. Also, interviews allow the participants to describe the detail of the information.
The interviews used 6 guidelines. There were a couple follow-up questions which were unlisted in the interview guideline. The follow-up questions were different in each participant/interview. The follow-up questions depended on the participants’ answers to the researcher question. Hence, the follow up questions were the development from interview guideline in which the researcher felt it was necessary to ask deeper.
As mentioned in the first requirements before, the interviews were done after all the participants finished their teaching practicum at some levels. The reasons from the requirements were because the researcher wanted to make the data more reliable and valid. Besides, the researcher wanted to make the participants’ score their teaching practicum from the first up to the last day, to judge which one was more successful.
face to face interview. According to Cresswell (2013), interviews could be done by phone, mails or face to face. Interviews can reduce the time and both of the researcher and participants do not need to travel to meet up (Irvine, 2010). Considering that the first and third participants stayed in a different province so that this type of interview as really helpful for the researcher.
Before the interview, the researcher made an interview guideline and prepared some possible tools needed while doing the interview. The interview guideline consisted of some questions related to the teaching practicum. The possible tools were notebook and a voice recorder. The notebook used to write list of the questions to be asked to the participants. Voice recorder used to record the proses of interviews. The interviews were conducted in the Indonesian language because it is the first language of the interviewees and interviewer. Thus, it is understandable for both of them.
Data Analysis
After the data were collected, the researcher analyzed the data. This step is called data analysis. There were some steps in data analysis. First, the researcher transcribed the interview. Transcribing means transforming the audio or record of the interview or conversation into a written script (Hancock, Ockleford, &
Windridge, 2009).
researcher. All the participants agreed with the transcription sent back to the researcher.
The third step was coding. “Coding refers to the process of assigning numerals or other symbols to answers so that responses can be put into a limited number of categories or classes” (Kothari, 2004, p. 123). There were three coding: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. The steps were used to classify the results of interview.
Each coding had different points. Open coding was organizing the
Chapter Four
Findings and Discussion
This chapter presents about findings and discussion. The findings report the interview results from the participants. Then, the discussion contains the
researcher’s discussion of the findings related to the literature review. This
chapter reveals the answer of the research question. The research question is what the factors affecting pre-service teaches’ success on teaching practicum at the English Education Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta are.
Findings
In this chapter the researcher present how is the participants answer the question that asked by the researcher to get the research question answer. Therefor, the result from the enterview had been categorized by the researcher into some finding. There were 8 findings that would be explained by the
researcher. The research has categorized the finding into 3 categorized, which is personal factors, school factors and university factors.
Factors affecting pre-service teachers’ success on teaching practicum.
practicum program at the elementary, junior and senior high school. It was different from the second participant. She has not completed the practicum yet. She only taught at an elementary and junior school. Then, the third participant was the youngest among the participants. He took the practicum program only at an elementary school. Thus, his experience was not as much as the elder one. For more information, the data will be discussed below.
Finding 1: Pre-service teacher’ stress. This finding reported the result of interview related with stress. There were two participants who were respond this part. They are Rita and Toni. Rita and Toni gave different respond about stress. Rita is female pre-service teacher and Toni is male pre-service teacher. Rita was a bit stressed and Toni was relaxed.
She argued that she was not stressed as she mentioned “No, it is fine. I did
not feel stressed” (R.1.26). However, when the researcher clarified her statement,
she changes her mind as she said “I feel a bit stressed when I taught at an
elementary school. The kids were uncontrolled. They ran everywhere. It was difficult to deliver the topic,” (R.1.27). Then, when having the teaching practicum
at a junior high school she felt stressed as well. “It was because the time was limited. I got 3 times only. Usually there should be 4 meetings” (R.1.28). The last
practicum was at a senior high school. Rita felt the stress. This time was caused by the students. They were not disciplined. “It was the first meeting. It was too early for them. They ignored the first and second class as usual. Then, the worst was that my class was the first and the second class so that there were 6 students
The third participant was Toni. He was the only male among the
participants. He argued that the practicum was fun. Indeed, he liked it. “I did not
feel any stress. It was fine” (R.3.12). He told the researcher that the practicum was
fun. “It was fun. Teaching elementary kids was easy but sometime it was difficult
too. It was good” (R.3.1).
Those respond reported that they have different feeling about their teaching practicum. Rita was stressed and Toni was relaxed. They also mentioned the reason why she / he is stressed or relaxed. Even Rita has completed her teaching practicum at all level but she was stressed still. This condition is quite different with Toni. He has not completing his teaching practicum at all levels. He was finished teaching practicum at one level only and it was Elementary school.
Finding 2: Mentors. Mentor was second finding. This finding was reported how far mentor was influence on teaching practicum. All participant were responded this section. Rita, Dina and Toni responded this section quite same. All aof them agreed that mentor was quite influence in their practicum.
She said that the mentor was incredible. “The coaching was good enough. The mentor told us how to teach elementary students. The mentor guided us well”
(R.1.13). “The mentor was not good enough. The mentor did not observe us while we were teaching. The mentor taught us how to make the lesson plan only”
(R.1.14). “The mentor at the senior high school was good. The mentor guided us
really well and taught us how to make a good lesson plan as well. The mentor
response as well. She said, “The teachers were enthusiastic” (R.2.13).“The
relationship with the junior high school was not good. I felt that the mentor was a
bit ignoring us” (R.2.16).“The Elementary mentor told us school’s condition, the
facilities and the students’ condition as well” (R.3.15).
Those response was reported that mentor was quite influence for teaching practicum. Teaching practicum could be good if the mentor have a good
communication and guide pre-service teacher well, but the practicum could be failed if the mentor have bad communication and the pre-service tacher were not guided well.
Finding 3: Location and Background. Location and background was related with school condition, which is rural or regional, accessable or not, facilitated or not. Sometimes the school in rural have limited access and not facilitated as well. The accesible and facilitation were influences on teaching practium. Accessible school and facilitated school will ease pre-service teacher.
“One of the problems comes from school was that we needed more rooms
for practicum” (R.2.9). “The class was outdoor” (R.2.10). “There was not any
white board for teaching. Pre-service teachers needed to talk a loud, like screaming, to make the students hear while they were teaching” (R.2.12).
without any facilitation. She tought with no white board or other facilitated. This experiences told that if the school facilitated well the teaching practicum could run well. Facilitation was really influence on teaching practicum, teaching practicum coud be failed when teaching practicum were did like Dina experiences.
Finding 4: Classroom. This finding reported how was classroom could influence on teaching practicum. This finding were collected by all respond from all participant. Even they have different experienes but,they agreed that
classroom was quite influenced on teaching practicum.
“Each practicum gave me different experiences because I taught different
students in different batch, teaching at an elementary school, a junior high school,
and a senior high school was different” (R.1.1). “Pre-service teachers went around
controlling each group of junior high school students” (R.1.6).“I had different
experiences. I was teaching at an elementary school for my first teaching practicum and there were so many kids. I taught them in a group. There were about four to five pre-service teachers handling 20 s students at a class. Meanwhile, at a junior high school I taught 10 students only with other 2 pre-service teachers” (R.2.1). “Then, at a junior high school, the students were
guidable. But, sometimes they were still hard to be guided. They were busy with their own activity when I commanded them to do a task or when I gave them discussion time which was working in a group. They discussed the other thing out
they were still kids. It was the hardest thing but fun” (R.3.2). “The problem was
that they liked running and they cannot seat quietly. It was the problem” (R.3.4).
This response were reported that classroom is influence by some factors, such as class management, student’s condition, class experiences and class
preparation. This finding is categorized into classroom factors because all caused was happend in a class. From this respond pre-service teacher could learn how to manage the class, the students, and class preparation by the previous experiences. Learn from the experiences and try to do somthing better for the next teaching practicum.
Finding 5: Assignments. This finding reported that assignment could be one of factors in teaching practicum. Thi finding related with pre-service teacher task to attract students in class. The way or the method and teaching material that pre-service prepare before the class is begin.
“Elementary students are happy while playing. I designed the class with
singing, playing games, or doing something. Thus, they got the materials while playing. Alhamdulillah, it worked so that I just stressed at the first meeting”
(R.1.30). Then, second participant explained, “It might come from us, the
pre-service teachers. We should prepare the material better, maybe with ice breaking”
(R.2.24).
class. The teaching practicum could be the success teaching practicum if the pre-service teacher did the assignment well. They could prepared teaching material, lesson plan and managing time a long day before teaching practicum. They could discussed with the mentor first, so teaching practicum could be really help to be success. In other hand, if pre-service teacher could not have a good preparation about the lesson plan, taching material and time management, they could be failded on their teaching practicum.
Finding 6: University Factors. The next finding was how far university influences teaching practicum. This finding was responded by all participants differently. Some of the respond university role in pre-service teacher practicum. There were participants agreed that university was influence on their teaching practicum, and there is one participants who stated that university role was not influences.
“Yes, they did. They did not give any problem actually. It was just about
scheduling, the schedule on submitting assignment and the date of practicum”
(R.3.16 -17). , “Yes, if university did not exist, we (pre-service teachers) would not teach too. Everything about practicum was taken care by the university such as looking for the school and arranging all licenses. We just came and taught”
(R.3.21). “For me, teaching practicum is kind of field experience, University did not have any relation so that it is all on us. We created the lesson plan and taught
by ourselves” (R.2.14).“Emhh from university, I think the university did the best.
Those responds was reported that university has a role in pre-service teacher teaching practicum. The role was to connecting pre-service teacher with school as teaching practicum place. University also facilitated coaching that guided by the mentor from the school. Teaching practicum will be success if the university take this role well, but teaching practicum could be failed if the university did not take this role as connector between school and pre-service teacher.
Finding 7: Communication. This finding was reported about how farcommunication between pre-service teacher, mentor, supervisor and among pre-service teacher as well. This finding collected by responds of all participants. All participants were agreed that communication could be one of factors affecting on pre-service teacher’s success on teaching practicum.
. “The communication was really good. The mentor observed us while we
were teaching” (R.1.24). “The relationship and communication were fine”
(R.2.17). “The junior high school mentor was a bit ignoring us. The mentors did not seem like caring about us. The evaluation was at the end of practicum and the mentor never asked about the problem that we faced during the practicum”
(R.1.23). “The communication with the elementary school mentor was not good
enough” (R.3.24). “It is because I never got any information by the mentor
personally. It was the leader only who got the information” (R.3.25).
“There were four meetings at that time, but I did not know when and where.
happened to not only me but also some of my friends. The supervisor did not explain how coaching looked like and it was only four meeting so that I thought it
was not enough for coaching” (R.1.19). , “It was good for me. If the lecturer said
there was observation then the lecturer told me where and when the observation was held. I shared the information to others. And, if there was a due date of the task, the mentor told me as well” (R.3.22).
“It was how we scored our practicum. By sharing, I knew that my students were
different. It was the result from sharing” (R.2.27). The third participant explained
the communication as well. He said, “It was easy, there was WhatsApp. We just
typed and sent, and they would read immediately” (R.2.27). Then the third participant said, “If the communication with the school got any trouble, we could
not teach. If the school was free and we did not the information but we came to teach, it means we got a problem, right?” (R.3.28-29).
This finding reported that the communication was really affect on their teaching practicum. No matter with the mentor, supervisor and among pre-service teacher the communication was influence on their teaching practicum. They all experienced both of good and bad communication with mentor, supervisor and among pre-service teacher. So, all communication should be good, no matter with the mentor or supervisor even among pre-service teacher as well. All information should be shared as soon as they receive it. If there were a lot of bad
Finding 8: Teamwork. The following finding was teamwork. This finding was reported who far teamwork is influence on pre-service teacher teaching practicum. All participans were agree that their teaching practicum have done in a group, and they even share all experiences, and solving some problem in
discussion.
“There were four pre-service teachers at a class. It was in the elementary
and junior high school. In senior high school, there were four pre-service teachers as well, but during class activity there were only two pre-service teachers”
(R.1.16). “For me, Alhamdulillah, I got good friends and good teamwork. We
helped each other such as making lesson plan and solving problems together” (R.1.17). . “It was in the second semester. In the first practicum, we had 4
members that one was the teacher and the others were the controller. If there was a student asking something, it was the controller’s job to answer” (R.2.7). “At the
beginning, we made the materials by ourselves, then we met up and discussed which one was better and appropriate for the next teaching, which one was
chosen” (R.2.8). “Yes, we shared. But, the result was the same. They shared their
experience and they told me that the kids were annoying” (R.3.30).
well. They would work individually and teaching practicum could be failed because their teaching practicum was grouping not individual.
Discussion
Teaching practicum factors. The researcher found the factors affecting
pre-service teachers’ success on teaching practicum. There are some factors
categorized by the researcher. The categories were made based on the responses of the participants. There are personal factors, school factors and university factors
The first factor was about stress. At the beginning, the first participant, who was female, said that she did not get stressed, but when the researcher clarified, she told the researcher that she was a bit stressed because of some problems mentioned on findings. Then, the second participant was female as well. She did not mention any stress. The third participant was male and he totally did not feel any stress. He enjoyed the practicum and teaching. The responses answered the question of how far stress influences their practicum and what the reasons of being stressed are. Those responses were quiet interesting and those
responses were in line with Danhere’s (2011) findings of stress. He argued that
female pre-service teachers are more stressed during practicum than male ones. His study was at Zimbabwa, Ezekiel University with 71 male and 81 female participants.
The second factor is about mentors. Based on participants’ responses, all
elementary school. The mentor guided pre-service teachers well. Pre-service teachers and the elementary school mentors had good relationship and the pre-service teachers were guided well by the mentors. The mentors really helped the pre-service teachers during the practicum.
If we looked back at the literature review, Kell and Forshberg (2014) and Chandler et al. (2013) found that the mentor is the one who is capable of guiding and helping pre-service teachers during their practicum. The mentor can be the one from school side who have already known the school location and condition, and the students so that the mentor helps pre-service teachers to get more
information of what and how teaching practicum at that school is.
Mentors can be the professional one, but sometime they act careless about their role as mentors. Finding 2 mentioned that Rita and Dina met a mentor who did not really care about pre-service teachers. They were ignored by the mentor at the junior high school. Tarman (2012) agreed that not only about the positive experience of teaching practicum but also the negative experience can be shared by the mentor during the practicum day and it can affect the pre-service teachers’ practicum. Thus, the role of mentor here should be the positive one to help the pre-service teachers get better experiences during practicum.
influence how school facilitates the students and pre-service teachers. Somehow regional areas give some advantages such as more facilities and staffs that are able to support the teaching practicum.
The fourth factor is classrooms. Even though the classrooms are included in school factors, classrooms have some categories on it. There are managing class, classroom experiences, students’ condition and class preparation. All
participants mentioned those categories in their class experiences. All of them
learned and prepared the next class by learning how today’s class ran. Barney and
Pleban (2006) stated that four relevant keys of practicum are classroom
management, classroom preparation, student learning and enjoyable experiences. All the relevant keys were mentioned by all participants.
The fifth factor is assignments. Assignments consist of lesson plan, teaching material, and time management. There are assignments that should be done by pre-service teachers. The first and second participants had the same responses to this factor. They prepared the materials as their assignment for every meeting. It was in line with Rees, Pardo, and Parker (2013) that every pre-service teacher’s class, grade and material or topic will affect their experiences.
The seventh factor is communication. The finding has explained the communication among pre-service teachers-the mentor, pre-service teachers – the supervisor, pre-service teachers – pre-service teachers. Finding 7 mentioned that all participants agreed that communication in all sides influence their practicum. They experienced that all kinds of communication with the supervisor, the mentor or other pre-service teachers were trouble.
According to Ryan et al. (2012) communication is one of the important factors for practicum. Being connected among pre-service teachers is a good thing. According to Widen et al. cited in Sokal et al. (2013), strong
communication among pre-service teachers, the mentor, and the supervisor will affect positively the result of practicum.
Ssantamu-Nambiru (2010) and Ryan et al. (2012) proved that communication among pre-service teachers and the mentor should be good enough so that they can care of each other. Pre-service teachers can discuss the problems or ask the solution to the mentor. They will have good teamwork with good communication. The mentor can fill the role as a mentor willingly.
The eighth factor is teamwork. All participants experienced the practicum in a group. They taught in a team. They learned how to teach from other groups or classes. They, indeed, shared their experiences and solved the problems by
and implementation of learning design. One of the characteristics of the successful teamwork is opened communication and positive feedbacks. The participants’
experiences are in line with Tarricone’s and Luca’s statement.
Chapter Five
Conclusion and Recommendation
This chapter consists of two sub-topics. The first one is conclusion and the second one is recommendation.
Conclusion
Teaching practicum is a good program for pre-service teachers. It is provided at the English Education Department of UMY. This program comprises two sections. The first one is coaching. It is the program introduction of what and how teaching practicum at school will be. The next one is teaching practicum itself. It is the real teaching for pre-service teachers. During coaching until teaching practicum, pre-service teachers will be guided by one mentor (a teacher from the school) and supervised by the supervisor (a lecture from the university).
This research used qualitative research design. It was conducted at the EED of UMY with three participants from different batch. This research data were collected by interviews and the data were analyzed by coding. The coding has three steps, namely open coding, axial coding, and selective coding.
The first one is personal factor. This factor consists of stress,
assignments, personal pressure and gender. There was only one participant who felt somewhat stressed. It was female and she already found the way to solve it. The third participant is male. He did not get stressed at all. He enjoyed the class even though he said that the students were really kiddy. The second participant was female and she did not mention any personal pressure.
The second factor is school factors. All of the participants agreed that the school influences the practicum success. School factors consist of the mentor, assignments, and classrooms. The mentor is related to the relationship and
communication among pre-services teachers and the mentor in learning context. Assignments were related to pre-service teachers’ class preparation such as materials, lesson plan, teaching methods or strategies. Classrooms are related to the students and class condition.
The third factor is university. It is related to the supervisor and teamwork among pre-service teacher. The supervisor has relationship and communication in learning context. It shows how supervisor influence the teaching practicum. The next finding is teamwork. Two of three participants agreed that they did the practicum in a group. They prepared the class or materials in a group. They shared the problems and the information. They had good
Recommendation
Based on the results of this research, the researcher provides some suggestions. There are suggestions for pre-service teachers, the school and mentors, the university and supervisor, and other researchers.
Pre-service teachers. The researcher suggests the next pre-service teachers to be more updated on the practicum or coaching information. They should reinforce their communication among pre-services, the mentor, and the supervisor. The information should be shared as soon as possible.
School and mentors. School and mentors should facilitate pre-service teachers. The school should care of pre-service teachers and should give facilities at least a room for teaching. Then, the mentors can guide pre-service teachers, give evaluation after each teaching practicum, observe pre-service teachers while they teach, and give feedbacks of their teaching.
University and supervisors. The university and supervisor should share the information with pre-service teachers, create good communication so that everyone feel free to ask or discuss practicum problems, and spend time observing pre-service teachers’ teaching progress.
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