Overview - Practicum Teaching in the Year ONE Technological Education Program

The Bachelor of Education program builds on the Faculty’s belief that where there is education, there is also powerful transformation.  We strive to provide passionate, creative people with an inspiring environment in which they can cultivate their interests, gain the tools they need to motivate students and engage communities, actively contribute to the evolution of education, and become powerful catalysts for change. The B.Ed. is infused with strong principles including equity, diversity, collaboration, interdisciplinarity, sustainability and social justice.

Overview of the program

The program is structured around four broad themes:

  1. Orientation to the profession in community
  2. Learners
  3. Classroom and Curriculum
  4. Schooling, Society and Research

The B.Ed. is designed to be a place where theory and practice are deeply linked. Foundations and methods courses, school and community speak to one another through practicum experiences that value critical analysis, engagement, collaborative conversations, focused participant observation, advancement of skills and knowledge, and immersion in an environment that respects a shared process of growth and development. The practicum experiences will create spaces where teacher candidates enact education in pursuit of a more humane and equitable world.

The practicum experience in Semester One will facilitate a broadening of teacher candidates’ understandings of the role of the community, the profession, teachers, learners and schools in creating and sustaining engaging, inclusive, safe and equitable learning environments.

Building on Semester One, the practicum experience in Semester Two will facilitate teacher candidates’ introduction to the complex dimensions of learning, and the interrelationship between learner, teacher and curriculum.

What does this mean in practice?

ED1(the first year of the 2-year program) will focus on the development of professional understandings and relationships within the school and the community. During the fall and winter academic terms, teacher candidates  will attend placement at the host school for one day per week and a community practicum one day per week, where they will have responsibility for participating actively for the whole day, and undertaking a range of experiences such as working with small groups and/or individual students, and deconstructing their understandings of teaching and learning with a focus on links between theory and practice, school and community, facilitating classroom transitions, co-planning and co-teaching with the mentor teacher, and engaging in lesson study. Community organizations and schools are encouraged to welcome a cohort of teacher candidates who will have the opportunity to experience different learning environments (activities, programmes, divisions, non-classroom settings, rotary, ELL, special education, etc.) throughout the year.

There will not be a teaching block in the first year, nor will there be a requirement to independently teach and plan during the one-day-per-week school-based placement. At the end of Year One, having immersed themselves in the work of the school and community each week, and having developed strong professional relationships and understandings, teacher candidates will be well prepared to take on independent planning and teaching in the fall semester of ED2 (Year Two).

In ED2, teacher candidates will continue to attend placement throughout the fall and winter semesters. They will also complete a 2-week block in the fall semester and a 6-week block in the winter semester.