A Self-Study on the Challenges a University Supervisor Faced in Online Teaching Practicum and How She Met Them

Introduction

Teaching practicum constitutes a fundamental component of the pre-service teacher education program in that it offers opportunities to the pre-service teacher for experiencing teaching in a real classroom environment (Ellen & Wright, 2014), thereby appealing enormously to them. To what extent the pre-service teacher benefits from teaching practicum is contingent upon a set of factors such as the strength of the relationship between the mentor teacher (Gray et al., 2019), the university supervisor and the pre-service teacher, the amount of support provided to the pre-service teacher by both the mentor teacher and the university supervisor, and the usefulness of the courses they have taken in the department in their teaching practicum. The university supervisor plays a vital role in endorsing the pre-service teacher in making the most of the teaching practicum (Barahona, 2019; Heggen et al., 2018) and in establishing a strong tie between the mentor teacher and the pre-service teacher.

Face-to-face teaching practicum requires the university supervisor to supervise the pre-service teacher face-to-face in the placement school and on the campus. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 pandemic has obliged the initial pre-service English language teacher education program in the context of the study to conduct teaching practicum online, which has compelled the university supervisor to make adaptations to their duties of supervising the pre-service teacher and communicating with the mentor teacher and the pre-service teacher. Such a drastic change has brought along a range of challenges for all the parties actively involved in conducting teaching practicum. The university supervisor who is supposed to be the thread connecting the mentor teacher and the pre-service teacher to each other needs to shoulder weighty responsibility for helping the student teacher gain rewarding online teaching practicum experiences. I, having been a part of online teaching practicum for the first time, conducted this study with a view to sharing the challenges I faced in my online teaching practicum experiences and the steps I took to rise to them to enhance the effectiveness of online teaching practicum for the pre-service English teacher.