Teaching Practice In The Greater Vaal Triangle Area: The Student Teachers Experience

Abstract

Teaching Practice as observed by (Ngidi and Sibaya 2003) forms an integral part of teacher training. It exposes the students to a teaching environment in which they will contextualise their theoretical knowledge gained during their training. It also grants student teachers experience in the actual teaching and learning environment. Given the importance of teaching practice, the researcher sought to investigate the experiences of student teachers doing their teaching practice. This paper examines of the positive experiences and challenges faced by Vaal University of Technology (VUT) Post Graduate Certificate Education (PGCE) student teachers (n=24) during their 10 week teaching practice in the Vaal area. A qualitative research design was followed. Semi-structured interviews with all student teachers were used to collect the data while content analysis was used to identify themes and analyse the data. The research established that despite the enriching experiences during teaching practice, student teachers experienced many challenges which significantly affected their ability to fully achieve the desired outcomes from the exercise. Based on the findings of this study, measures were suggested on how to improve teaching Practice in order to enable the student teachers to accrue maximum benefits/ outcomes from the experience.