Cooperating Teachers' Practices in Handling Pre-service Teachers in Elementary Schools of Davao City

Abstract

Cooperating teachers' (CT) capability to handle preservice teachers (PST) is viewed as a critical collaborating role in teacher education program. This study investigated cooperating teachers' practices in handling pre-service teachers, their bases for these practices, and implications for professional enhancement. Qualitative thematic-deductive analysis under the consensual qualitative research (CQR) was used in the study, using semi-structured interview as instrument for drawing out constructs and narratives from the purposive samples. Practices performed by the cooperating teachers, as shown by the results, were categorized as mentoring and supervisory. Practices such as soliciting feedback from daily experiences, providing simple or modest physical resources or accommodation, and demonstrating ways in building collegial skills fall under mentoring practices. Supervisory practices consisted of assessing the readiness of the PSTs to handle classroom responsibilities, checking and approving the lesson plan, conducting class observation, honing the PSTs' skills in holding co-curricular activities, conducting conferences to elicit agreement and feedback, and monitoring progress in teaching. These said practices were anchored on experiential insights, practical applications, colleague consultation, pre-service teachers' manual, and orientations from the sending school. Based on the findings, cooperating teachers are still wanting of competencies from in-service training to augment their personalized practical practices. This study recommends that an enhancement training program be provided to enrich practices in handling future PSTs who are soon graduates of the new teacher education curriculum.