CP 92-3 Learning to teach the elementary field experience course at a teachers' junior college in Taiwan.
Abstract
The importance of personal history in influencing teacher learning and the value of autobiography writing and analysis in facilitating teacher learning have more often been acknowledged in recent years. As part of an effort to learn from reflecting on his own personal history and from autobiography writing and analysis, the author shares a significant segment of how he learned to teach and became a teacher and a teacher educator. He reflects on how he has learned to teach and what he has learned to teach in the field experience course in the elementary teacher preparation program in Taiwan through preparing for and teaching it. He traces the evolution of his thoughts and experience in the process of preparing for and teaching the course and identifies two major dimensions of consideration during the process: how to teach the course and what to teach in the course. He acknowledges that personal background and interpretations of experience, collegial collaboration, formal scholarship in education, official documents, and practical wisdom have all played an important part in shaping his learning in various aspects. In addition, he highlights his learning with and from his students in conducting this course as one of the most significant parts of his learning. Labor-intensive and time consuming as it is, he has found the task of reviewing and reflecting on personal history rewarding as each time he tries to reflect on the experience systematically he learns something new. Considered to be an important and valuable component in preservice teacher education programs in both the United States and in Taiwan, field experience is organized and taught in Taiwan in ways that are significantly different from the way it is taught in most American teacher education programs. The author hopes that the thoughts and experience he shares in this paper would be of interest and use to his colleagues in the United States and elsewhere.