2002 Volume 25 Issue 2 Pages 21-30
The aim of this research is to investigate how student-teachers and experienced teachers, who belong to national university attached secondary schools, think about practical teaching experience and what they expect from each other during this experience. We have undertaken the quantitative and qualitative surveys to achieve the above mentioned research aim. The surveys show that most experienced teachers regard practical teaching experience as the beginning of continuing professional development, and they engage in reflection through coaching and showing models to their student-teachers. On the other hand, most student-teachers recognize that the practical teaching experience is good opportunity to become aware of themselves as teachers by intercommunication with experienced teachers and other student-teachers. Finally, we have tried to investigate the possibility of mentoring as part of the practical teaching experience and comparing it with England. We have found out that there are some obstacles to the development of the mentoring system in Japan.
