Pre-Service Experiences and Performance of Southeast Asian Student Teachers in the SEA Teacher Project

Abstract

With transnational education becoming more relevant as ASEAN seeks to become an integrated community, the SEA Teacher Project seeks to provide opportunities for Southeast Asian student teachers to learn the best practices in the teaching-learning process in the region. This quantitative and qualitative study sought to determine the pre-service teaching experiences and performance of 52 Southeast Asian student teachers who participated in the said project of SEAMEO. Data were gathered through self-reports, observation, in-depth interviews, and evaluation reports. Salient findings of the study show that various tasks were assigned to the student teachers during the three phases of the project. The most challenging experiences they had during the said phases are adjusting to cultural barriers of the host country (observation), difficulty among students to follow instructions due to language barrier (teaching assistantship), and preparation of lesson plan using the host school’s format (teaching period). Moreover, most of the student teachers were rated by their cooperating teachers or mentors as proficient in terms of their level of competence in the areas of content and organization of instruction and strategies and skills for effective instruction. The main strength of the student teachers is their ability to understand the subject matter by making it a point to study the lesson given to them while improving their grasp of English as the medium of instruction is considered the primary area that needs to be enhanced. With these findings, it is recommended that the SEA Teacher Project be extended from one to two months to provide ample time for the student teachers to undergo pre-service training and they should also undergo stringent orientation on their host country’s educational system before they commence their training.