This section reports the findings by illustrating participants’ practicum experiences in terms of the three characteristics emerged from data analysis: complexity, dynamism and self-organization. In the description of their experiences, the focus remains on how they coped with the practicum environment, what resources they drew on for learning and the socio-contextual variables influencing their learning systems. To illustrate the findings in fine detail, interview excerpts are selected as in-field evidence to provide a trustworthy description of the participates’ experiences. Each excerpt is label, such as “WI1” representing Wang’s first interview and “CI2” for Chen’s second interview.
4.1 Complexity
Complexity is an obvious feature of pre-service teachers’ learning to teach when shifting from university setting to school environment. Before entering the practicum, Chen and Wang were excited: “I’ve been looking forward to it for long. It said that practicum is the best opportunity for us to apply what we learnt into practice” (WI1). “Finally, I will enter the real classroom […] I want to improve my teaching abilities” (CI1). For the school mentor, they also had some hope: “I heard he is an expert teacher in the school and is the leader of the teaching team. I hope I can learn a lot from him” (WI1). At the end of the first month, they articulated some different feelings: “I have to work as a head teacher (banzhuren). […] I have to get up at 6 o’clock every morning because I must arrive the classroom before 7:20 to check the morning session. I now can fall into sleep even when standing” (WI2). “The head teacher often assigned me some tasks but he didn’t tell me how to do them. Even when I was preparing my teaching plan, he came to ask me to observe students’ physical practice just because he had something else to do. […] I feel being treated as a free worker” (CI2).
Coping with the mentor also consumed Wang and Chen much time and energy: “He was afraid that we might disturb his normal teaching order and affect the students’ preparation for the university entrance exams (gaokao)” (WI2). “I thought I would teach for at least one month since the practicum has three months. But he only allowed me to teach just two weeks. It’s totally out of my expectation. I feel frustrated” (CI2). The most important is they found there existed dissonance between the mentor and themselves in the views about language teaching. Although Wang and Chen sensed that the school was highly exam-oriented and everything revolved around the gaokao, they still held the belief that the mentor was an expert teacher and his teaching could be the model for them to follow. However, after observing the mentor’s teaching, they said: “I cannot believe his teaching is so out-of-date. […] in his lesson, little time is devoted to developing students’ listening and speaking” (CI2). “He repeatedly emphasized the assessable items that might appear on the gaokao. […] He uses grammar translation method to teach grammar. […] Mechanical drills are used as the main exercises” (WI2). After submitting their lesson plans to the mentor, Wang and Chen received his feedback that all small group works focusing on speaking should be deleted and teacher-student interaction should be conducted in whole-class asking and answering. “He told us this way can save class time since time is very limited. Our focus should be on the introduction and explanation of language items” (WI2). Facing the conflict between the mentor’s traditional teaching ideas and their reform-based views, Wang and Chen felt they were caught in a dilemma: “I’m at a crossroad. Should I follow his teaching or hang on my own ideas?” (WI2) “If I follow his advice, what I have learnt would be a waste” (CI2). Chen wrote in his monthly reflection report: “He is not the model I can learn from. […] He asked me to grade students’ homework every day. I’m so frustrated now that I don’t know what is the meaning of being here”.
The two pre-service EFL teachers’ experiences showed that their learning systems seemed interwoven with other complex systems, including the mentor’s system (such as his reluctance for allowing pre-service teacher to teach), the head teacher’s system (such as transferring workload to pre-service teachers) and the school’s system (such as exam-oriented teaching environment), as well as the impact of the conflicts between systems, such as the conflicts of language teaching ideas between the mentor and pre-service teachers. Therefore the pre-service teachers’ experiences of learning-to-teach in the practicum can be seen as situated in tensions between disruptions in relation to the contextual factors. Among the relationships among the factors, individual pre-service teachers and their uniqueness of learning-to-teach worked as “one dimension of the complex interactions of mutually influencing and recursively co-constructing systems” (Phantharakphong & Liyanage, 2021, p. 4). The nested systems consisting of the psychological, social, discursive and material dimensions and structures of practicum environment resulted in the complexity of pre-service teachers’ learning process and final learning outcomes.
The factors interconnected within the systems, including interpersonal, contextual and social ones, functioned in complex ways to generate dynamic states of pre-service EFL teachers’ experiences, which is converged with the recognition that learning to teach is essentially a situated and contextual activity (Zeichner, 2010). Driven by their learning expectations, the degree of the pre-service teachers’ motivation of learning-to-teach in the practicum was high. However, when interacting with the immediate contextual factors, the stability of their expected learning was affected when the degree of complexity went beyond their expectation. Their learning system was thus under the impact of interconnections of factors. At the same time, pre-service teachers’ systems as learners were open to contextual factors because when exposed to the practicum environment, they were at a comparatively lower status within the school’s hierarchical system and received information from the context in a passive way. As such, the degree of complexity of pre-service teachers’ practicum experienced inevitably increased. Among the factors mentioned in this study, the connections between pre-service teachers and the mentor made a larger contribution in the complex process of learning-to-teach and increased its degree of complexity which was crucial for the complex feature of pre-service teachers’ experiences (Hong, 2010).
4.2 Dynamism
In the early phase of the practicum, the pre-service teachers held expectations for the mentor of learning from his teaching experiences. However, when realizing the differences between the mentor and themselves in educational views, Chen and Wang expressed their disappointment as mentioned above. This disrupted their expected learning trajectory and thereby generated chaos and tension. In the following lesson preparation and classroom teaching, Wang and Chen felt reluctant to follow the mentor’s guidance. However, considering the mentor would observe all their classroom teaching and give final score on their practicum performance, Wang and Chen had to revise their lesson plans based on his feedback and conduct their teaching in the exam-oriented way. This showed that the pre-service EFL teachers adjusted their previous learning purposes considering the practical constraints and appeared to be obedient to the mentor.
On the other hand, Wang admitted their lack of experiences in classroom management: “when students don’t give me response, I feel worried” (WI2). And they felt the mentor did well in controlling the class and keeping the pace of teaching: “I observed he could call the ‘right’ students to answer his questions when he found the students were absent-minded and catch their attention back to the class” (WI2). “He is very experienced in controlling the teaching time. […] he can finish the lesson at the last minute” (CI2). So, although Wang and Chen did not agree with the mentor’s teaching ideas, they felt they should not reject all his advice. They could filter his words and choose the useful information for their teaching practice. This showed that the pre-service EFL teachers shifted what they wanted to learn from the mentor from class teaching to classroom management.
Within the practicum team, Wang and Chen found other pre-service teachers also experienced similar confusion. Chen expressed his disappointment: “I’m so confused. […] feel everything is beyond our control. But the practicum has to continue” (CI3). After a short period of feeling frustrated, Wang and Chen paid much time to think about how to solve the problems, especially how to practice their teaching ideas in practice: “The time should’ve be spent on textbook analysis and teaching preparation. […] We have to survive” (WI3). Meanwhile, Wang and Chen found peer communication was useful for their learning. In weekly inquiry seminars, they worked together to analyze textbook according the new curriculum standards: “We sit together to discuss what the unit teaching goals are and how are the goals can be allocated in each lesson” (WI2) “We do micro-teaching in groups and reflect together on what can be improved” (CI3). At the end of the practicum, both pre-service EFL teachers felt peer communication provided them much support during the practicum.
From the analysis above, it can be seen that what Wang and Chen encountered in the practicum resulted in the dynamics of their complex systems of learning which led to their different states of learning. This is in line with Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008)’s statement about non-linearity that “change that is not proportional to input”(p.31). Such change often takes place unexpectedly and leads to unpredictable results. Among the changes, the fact that there existed dissonant teaching views brought huge shock to the pre-service teachers and resulted in a chaotic state, just as Kostoulas and Lämmerer (2020) states that “a larger perturbation, such as a professional crisis or a major transition, might lead to a radical restructuring of the system” (p.95).
Pre-service teachers’ learning to teach is regarded as a construction of the teaching self in the profession of teaching (Tang, 2003; Tang, Wong, Li, & Cheng, 2019) where teachers seek to develop both personally and professionally. In this study, the two pre-service EFL teachers brought their cognitions formed in the university into the practicum. Their pre-established understandings about the practicum and learning expectations played as the basis of their learning system. When confronted with the realities of teaching, their “self”-oriented practice of learning-to-teach had to interweave with the external factors and form their “teaching self”. During this process, dissonance and resonance between pre-service teachers’ existing cognitions and school-based experiences became necessary and affected their learning. The process was non-linear where pre-service teachers had to, on the one hand, consider and reconsider their former understandings and beliefs of teaching, and on the other hand, selectively choose learning sources in terms of their learning purposes. This revealed that dynamism is embodied in the process of learning-to-teach. Although pre-service teachers’ learning started from their internal (psychological) factors (e,g, determination to learning how to teach in real classroom, expectation of the practicum experiences), contextual factors inherent in the complex system of learning played important role in how the system might support teacher learning and accordingly influence how the learning outcomes might be like.
4.3 Self-organization
When realizing the dissonance between the mentor and themselves had hindered their learning-to-teach, the two pre-service EFL teachers decided to make some changes to their expected learning trajectory.
They did not agree with the mentor’ language teaching ideas. After a short period of feeling confused and frustrated, they figured out the ways to cope with the mentor. First, they critically analyzed the mentor’s observed teaching and filtered his feedback on their lesson plans. They felt the mentor’s clear instruction and good classroom management impressed them, so they decided to learn from him in these aspects: “He told me to make the teaching steps in a clear way in case I forget what to do next when the students don’t give any response” (CI2) “When teaching grammar, he used the whole classroom question-answer method. It did save class time. I can use it for grammar teaching” (WI3). But Wang also thought this method rarely allowed for monitoring individual students’ comprehension, so he wrote in his monthly reflection report: “I need to keep a balance. Group work or pair work should be used after whole class work to give students opportunities for more practice and I can check their use of the new structure”. Through taking a critical view for the mentor’s feedback, Chen thought it as a kind of their learning outcome: “I think I can see the reality in a better way” (CI4).
At the same time, Wang and Chen turned to the university supervisor for help when their lesson plans were criticized by the mentor because of the lack of emphasis on memorizing of English language elements. “She (the university supervisor) told us it was natural that we had different ideas with the mentor. […] because we had different educational backgrounds. He (the mentor) did not receive any formal training of the new curriculum and might have been strongly influenced by the exam-oriented teaching orientation” (WI3). “She encouraged us to find out the root of the problems and make a record of them. Then we can know better about the reality and figure out the direction we will develop in the future” (CI3).With the supervisor’s help, both pre-service EFL teachers regained confidence in teaching and confirmed their ideas on language teaching. “Reading the new curriculum standards again is useful. […] now I’m sure what I think is right. I don’t need to ‘surrender’ to his (the mentor) way” (WI3). “The new curriculum standards were not as idealistic as he (the mentor) said and could be really implemented in classroom as long as I want do it” (CI3).
Wang and Chen discussed their lesson plans with peers in weekly inquiry seminars where all the pre-service teachers asked questions and engaged in critical thinking. Wang and Chen shared their own understandings of the textbook contents and lesson plans as well as the feedback of the mentor. Peers also shared their teaching ideas with them based on their feelings of classroom teaching. Such interaction gave Wang much confidence: “My ideas are supported by them. We all are equipped with the reform ideas” (WI4). Chen also felt strength from peers: “We shared textbook analysis based on the new curriculum standards. […] We think small group activities can promote students’ learning and add joy to their learning” (CI4). Through peer interaction, Wang and Chen also found that “we are all experiencing similar dilemma” (WI3) because of the difference between the “ideal” and the “real” world of teaching, so they wrote two versions of plans for each lesson. One was revised based on the mentor’s feedback and the other was the original one they designed: “I have to satisfy his demands. […] but I’m not teaching for now. These plans will be working for my future job” (WI4) “My current understandings of the textbook will be useful for my future job” (CI4).
It can be seen that the pre-service EFL teachers’ adjustment to the practicum environment highlighted the adaptability and self-organization to shift the trajectory of their learning-to-teach. During this process, teacher agency, mainly their will and capacity to act, played the key role through complex negotiation with the context (Tao & Gao, 2021).
First, the pre-service EFL teachers exercised agency through dialogic feedback and conversation with the mentor, the university supervisor and peers. Such interaction was assumed as a complex system in which the pre-service EFL teachers received comments and feedback from others responded respectively based on their capabilities. These contextual factors facilitated the process of practicum and, with the pre-service teachers’ agency, worked towards their learning goals, which echoed the statement that agency makes people take concrete action to reach their goals (Brodie, 2019; Carson, Hontvedt, & Lund, 2021; Cong-Lem, 2021)
Second, the orientation of pre-service EFL teachers’ learning, originated from their personal needs, reflected teachers’ personalized characteristics which affected the overall process of learning. The pre-service EFL teachers utilized their learnt knowledge in the situated context of practicum, combining learning and application, and conducted reflection and (re)practice. In this way, they realized the transition from external learning based on social activities to their own self-learning. In this process where internalization took place, under the influence of external factors (such as the requirements of the curriculum reform and future career needs), both pre-service EFL teachers gradually formed the adjustment of self-organizing after adjusting the medium for learning. Although chaotic interactions emerged (such as the dissonant views in language teaching between the mentor and pre-service teachers, the different educational orientations between the school and the new curriculum), they remained the order of learning process through self-organizing. Such adjustment was closely related to their individual learning orientation which was believed to be the main source of their agency. With their exercise of agency, the pre-service EFL teachers kept the balance between the ideal and reality, and fulfilled one of their learning expectations of preparing for future career.