The practicum model in Teacher Education studies of the University of Girona: connecting theory and practice

• Mariona Masgrau-Juanola ^[1] ; Víctor López-Ros ^[1] ; Josep Maria Serra-Bonet ^[1] ; Margarida Falgàs-Isern ^[1]
  1. [1] Universitat de Girona

     Universitat de Girona

     Gerona, España

     
• Localización: Search and research [Recurso electrónico]: teacher education for contemporary contexts / coord. por Juan José Mena Marcos, Ana García-Valcárcel Muñoz-Repiso, Francisco José García Peñalvo, Marta Martín del Pozo, 2017, ISBN 978-84-9012-769-8, págs. 535-543
• Idioma: inglés
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• Dialnet Métricas: 2 Citas
• Resumen

  • We introduce a research that aimed to build bridges between theory and practice during the students’ internships at schools, helping them to use academic concepts and references to analyse their practical observations and initiatives at schools. The main goal of this project was to create and develop a specific model of practicum in order to provide these pathways for connecting theory and practice.

    It was developed at the Faculty of Education of the University of Girona during the 2015-2016 course and involved 12 teacher education students, 12 school mentors from 5 different schools, and 4 university mentors.

    With this aim, some pedagogical strategies were used. During the previous year, the students worked at the faculty with real practical situations in order to reduce the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical experience. During the practicum, a double mentoring model was applied: students were assessed by a school mentor and an university mentor and they were invited to analyse with them their observations and argue their decisions, using theoretical references. Although dialogue learning was the main strategy to promote reflection, both mentors wrote a record of each of these meetings and students and teachers also had to write a diary, in order to have data and analyse the impact of these meetings in the students’ training. First analyses show that this pilot model improves substantially the traditional model, since it promotes valuable reflections among students.

    This Practicum model has been developed by the research project “The connection between theory and practice knowledge in pre-service teacher’s training: methodologies based on Real Practice Situations”, funded by AGAUR (Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain), which aims to improve the practicum model of the Teacher Education Studies.