A commitment to building and implementing an outcome based practicum for teacher education majors: Experience from China

Abstract

To comprehensively guarantee and improve the quality of teacher education, China is currently carrying out a teacher education major professional certification program throughout the country. The basic concept of this program includes three aspects: Student-centered focus, Outcome-based Education, and Continuous Quality Improvement. The standards and assessment requirements of the Teacher Education Major Professional Certification attach great importance to the construction and implementation of a practicum for students majoring in teacher education. The core requirements in the Cooperation and Practicum section include: establishment and operation of the threefold collaborative training mechanism; establishment and management of the evaluation of the teaching practice system; and the implementation of the “dual instructor” system in education practice. This mainly involves and examines the five aspects of collaborative education, education base construction, practical teaching, instructor team, and management evaluation. Shanghai Normal University is presented in this paper as a typical example. Many of its teacher education majors have now passed the second level professional certification. We believe that our professional experience and the example of our practicum for teacher education majors may serve as a reference for other countries in the world.

Keywords: Practicum, teacher education majors, professional certification, teacher education, professional experience, China.