Introduction and Purpose
The school practicum is an important contributor to pre-service teacher’s professionalization process and the quality development of PETE, because it is an arena for collaboration between mentor teachers in school, teacher educators at university and pre-service teachers undertaking the teacher education. However, PETE practicum is characterized by longstanding challenges such as lack of integration between practicum experiences and university courses, dialogue between actors and collaborative structures. The purpose of this project is to 1) explore participant’s experiences with the practicum, 2) develop and try out democratic and collaborative approaches to practicum through participatory action research and 3) give suggestions about guiding principles for democratic practicum and collaborative quality development between schools and university.
Affiliation
Department of Teacher Education and Outdoor Studies. Partially funded by the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-Dir).
Project Description
Participants and Methodology
The participants in DEMPRA are actors in ‘the practicum triad’: seven pre-service teachers, nine practice supervisors, and six teacher educators from the university. Our approach is Participatory Action Research by Stephen Kemmis et al. (2014), a recognized method for quality development in education. The method involves the practicum triad conducting several action cycles to develop, try out and evaluate their democratic approaches. Each action cycle involves five phases: thinking, planning, acting, evaluating, and reflecting. The design and research activities are characterized by dialogue and co-production of knowledge, with the voices of the actors at the forefront.
In 2025 we finalized activities for generating data. We have done two focus groups, four physical and two digital seminars, three periods of practicum and participant observation.
Theoretical concepts
Theory of Practice Architectures by Stephen Kemmis and Peter Grootenboer (2008) is used to examine and understand how different arrangements surrounding practices in PETE practicum and in the Participatory Action Research shape participants’ ideas and thoughts, use of resources and relationships.
Understandings of participatory and deliberative democracy (Sant, 2019) is used to explore and develop the participants’ involvement and agency, and the social structures between them.
Theories of professional learning communities (Parker et al., 2022) has contributed in planning and organizing the Participatory Action Research and understanding the interaction between actors.
Results
Background and methodology for the project have been presented at UHR-LUs Lærerutdanningskonferanse 2024 (Universities Norway’s Teacher Education conference). Preliminary results have been presented at the AIESEP 2025 conference in St. Petersburg, Florida.
More information about the results will be updated continuously.
