Significance of School Experience-based Teaching Practicum and Quality in Teacher Education
Every flourishing society has debated about 'quality education'. This debate cannot produce final answers because the aims of education are tied down to the nature and ideals of a particular society. The latest notion of education is "happiness" (Noddings, 2003). Educators have associated happiness with qualities such as rich intellectual life, rewarding human relationships, love for home and places, sound character, good parenting and preparing for a job of one's interest. Even educators recognize that students are whole persons; temptation arises to describe the 'whole' in terms of collective parts and make sure that every aspect, part, or attribute is covered in the curriculum. At this point a question arises: "How can teachers incorporate the above-mentioned curriculum in order to fulfill the needs and interests of the whole child?" It requires skills, understanding about needs of child (Nodding, 2005).
In the context of professional development programmes for teachers, a good amount of time is spent in teaching practicum, it is not only meant to practice teaching skills, it is a continuation of teacher education in another setting - a genuine classroom and school setting for student teachers to practice and to understand the context of school setting as 'whole' and teach the child through holistic approach. The professional development institution teaches and train teachers to interact with students as 'whole person' and treat schools as 'whole community'. Teaching the whole child requires that we accept students for who they are rather than what they are. Like other professional preparation programmes, School Experience-based Teaching Practicum (SETP) or On Site Teaching
Practicum is the most effective form of teacher preparation programme. To be relevant to the demands of a teacher's job, the SETP ought to correspond to the roles expected of a teacher, besides the role of a classroom instructor and facilitator of learning. A teacher these days is also expected to understand the child's needs and interest, perform the role of a counselor, researcher, organizer of curricular and co-curricular activities, community mobilizer as well as developer and manager of resources. The trainee teachers should be placed in a school for a long time to understand the culture of the school, take observations of school teachers, and participate in co-curricular activities like PTA and other school-related activities. The school head and a senior teacher of the school (mentor) should be adequately prepared to guide and supervize the trainees' performance. The teacher education institution should develop a mechanism to evaluate the teachers' performance and it should be triangulated by assigning responsibilities to the mentor, school teacher and teacher educator to assess the performance of the trainee for the purpose of further improvement and, in some cases, for accreditation. The SETP aims to give the best professional support to the trainee during the teaching component so that they can understand the child and school culture as 'whole' and in their career they can keep pace with the students' needs.