Re-defining the role of the teacher-consultants in the Primary Teacher-Consultant Scheme

The Primary Teacher-Consultant Scheme is an attempt in the 4-year Bachelor of Education Programme to support the student-teachers in their field experience. In this form of field experience, the schools take up a more active and supportive role by assigning teachers to become teacher-consultants for the student-teachers during the teaching practice period. The aim of this paper is to describe the learning experience of the student-teachers during this period with an aim to define the supportive role of the teacher-consultants. Student-teachers randomly sampled from the year 2 cohort were interviewed after the teaching practice period. Moreover, the teacher-consultants who supervised these student-teachers were also interviewed. The interview questions were focused to find out the learning experience of the student-teachers in the field experience, the support that they received from the teacher-consultants, how the teacher-consultants perceived the needs of the student-teachers, and the experience of the teacher-consultants in the Scheme. Based on the findings, the learning experience of the student-teachers and the role of the teacher-consultants in the Scheme or in field experiences is defined.