Multiple-Site Practicum: Opportunities for Diverse Learning and Teaching Experiences

✍ Scribed by Dilin Liu

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 67 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1056-7941
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1949-3533.2000.tb00222.x

✦ Synopsis

ost TESOL students conduct their practicum at one site (s ee, e.g., Gebhard, 1990;Polio & Wilson-Duffy, 1998). A sin gle-s it e pr acti cum affords these teacher trainees a great in-depth experience in one teaching milieu and, with creative support from administrators and instructors, may even offer a variety of learning and teaching opportunities (Gebhard, 1995; Stoynoff, 1999;Stoynoff & Sayavedra, 1995). Such a practicum is also ver y us eful i n pre paring teacher trainees whose career goals and students' profiles do not change over time. However, a single-site practicum generally does not expose teacher trai nees to the dive rse ESL/EFL settings or the range of learners many of them will encounter during the course of their careers. A multiple-site practicum, on the other hand, is one way of accomplishing this goal.

Freeman and Johnson (1998) challenged the traditional assumption underlying TESOL teacher education: "Teacher education programs generally operated under the assumption that teachers needed discrete amounts of