Student-teachers' perceptions of their learnings in the field experience

In view of the recent movement for increasing the schools' involvement in the school experience, the Hong Kong Institute of Education has introduced a new form of school experience in its 4-year full-time Bachelor of education programme. The schools take up a more active and supportive role, which aim to facilitate the development of the student-teachers. During these periods, the schools, the peers and the lecturers have significant influence on the learning experience of the student-teachers. In the programme, the field experience in year 1 includes a one-week attachment period to the kindergarten and a two-week attachment to the primary school. The aim of this paper is to describe the learning experience of the student-teachers during the early stages of the programme. Twenty student-teachers who were randomly sampled from the year 1 cohort were interviewed at the end of their first year of study in the programme. The interview questions were focused to find out the learning experience of the student-teachers in the field experience; the interactions between the student-teachers with their peers; the support that they perceived from the school and the lecturers; their perception about being a primary teacher in school. The findings of the study were interpreted with a sociocultural view of learning which defines learning to teach as influenced by the interactions between the participants of the system including those between student-teachers themselves, those between the student-teachers and the lecturers and those between the school (the teachers, pupils and administrators) and the student-teachers. Implications on teacher education are drawn from the experience and support from the school context to the student-teachers in learning to teach is recommended.