Preservice Practicum Of Teacher Education

Preservice practicum of teacher education is the subject investigated in this article. By analyzing the development history of preservice practicum, the article studies the reform of it in China from an international perspective and trys to find the way to the transformative vision in our country.The preservice practicum is an important part of teacher education curriculum system and its object is to cultivate the practical literacy of prospective teachers. The meaning of teachers'practical literacy has been changed during the course of professionalization of teachers and teacher education. In the peorid of pre-professionalization, teachers'practical literacy meant "the art without theories" and it also meant "skills guided by theories" in the quasi-professionalization peorid. While in the professionalization peorid, teachers'practical literacy has become to have the meaning of "integration of knowledge, skills and affection based on practice and theory", which is the result of fundamental transformation on those three levels of its knowledge base, skill base and culture base.According to the change of curriculum object with the different meaning of teachers' practical literacy, the evolution of preservice practicum has showed two orientations——"Application of Theory " and "Theory in Practice". By Exploring the development of foreign preservice practicum, it indicates that the former is included two subpatterns of the "University/College-based" and the "School-based". After 1980s, the preservice practicum of "Theory in Practice" orientation emerged with its noteble features of systematic and cultural enviornment being shaped and clinical supervision or mentoring being attached importance to. Meanwhile, the cases of preservice practicum of "Theory in Practice" orientation abroad depict the main curriculum factors which are involved in its content and organization, its implementation and its evaluation. Based on the development history of preservice practicum policy in China and taking the preservice practicum of three teacher education institutions in Zhejiang province as examples, this article examined the status quo of preservice practicum in China by using questionaires and unstructured in-depth interviews. According to the data, the article pionts out not only the "Application of Theory" orientation in the Chineses policy history and the main curriculum factors at present, but also the lacking of "Theory in Practice" orientation from the dimension of noteble curriculum features.Finally, the article put forward five key projects to be constructed to achieve the success of preservice practicum reform in China, which include:(1) changing its orientation and re-identifying the components of preservice practicum; (2) transforming its arrangements to be more dispersed; (3) strengthening clinical supervision or mentoring to facilitate reflection of teacher candidates; (4) improving collaboration system and cultivating collaboration culture; (5) altering the assessment methods to develop developmental evaluation.