Exploring what student teachers do when preparing their lessons: four planning profiles

ABSTRACT

Planning is an essential task in the work of a teacher. Very little research has been carried out on the way that student teachers understand this preparatory phase, nor on the way that professional competence for planning is developed. Our research aims to understand what student teachers do about planning at the point when their professors expect them to be able to put their knowledge into practice. Using a new system to record the traces of student teachers’ planning activity based on photos taken by the 12 participants, this qualitative doctoral research highlights four distinct planning profiles.

KEYWORDS:

• Planning
• student teacher
• decision making
• professional development
• professional identity
• profiles

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In what follows, we refer to these 3 years of training as B1 (Bachelor Year 1), B2 (Bachelor Year 2), and B3 (Bachelor Year 3).

2. Readers can find out more about the API approach in the authors’ article (2021b).

3. The quotes in this article have been translated from French. Student names are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Agnès Deprit

Agnès Deprit is a PhD in educational sciences, at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium. Her thesis focuses on the development of planning skills in future primary school teachers throughout their training. She is also a trainer in initial training for primary school teachers and a research pedagogue at UCLouvain’s Faculty of Medicine. She has also worked as a primary school teacher.

Virginie März

Virginie März is an associate professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Main areas in het research are beginning teachers, teacher induction, teacher preparation, network learning, and educational innovation.

Catherine Van Nieuwenhoven

Catherine Van Nieuwenhoven is professor of Teacher Education at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. She is a member of GIRSEF (Interdisciplinary research group on socialisation, education and training) and chairs GRAPPE (Research group on supporting professional teaching practices). She is interested in supporting internships in teaching and other fields such as the health sector, the development of reflective practice in initial and in-service training, and the use of videoscopy as a training tool. She is currently coordinating the reform of initial teacher training at UCLouvain and is responsible for the EFEL (teacher training school in Louvain). She teaches courses for the master’s degree in educational science and the agrégation in secondary and higher education.