Abstract:

This study examined student teaching program in college of education at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). Student teaching program is very vital for teacher preparation because it allows candidates to put theory into practice, thus employing all the knowledge, skills, and values which they learned during the program in real-life situation. The aim of study examined the effectiveness features of teachers’ preparation on teachers’ value added to student performance‎. The targeted population was the teachers who were graduated from the program within the last five years and they are working now as teachers in schools. The study utilized exploratory sequential mixed methods design. Using three teachers interviews and 22 teachers survey responses data, this study found that the agreement among participants on the effectiveness of the program is higher than disagreement. However, there are still rooms for improvement. This includes, enabling students to be ready to communicate their educational knowledge by the dominant language where they are prospected to work, which is Arabic. In addition, it was obvious from the participants responses the importance to link the theory they study in subjects directly to practice. Furthermore, the participants responses clarified the significance of choosing the school and associate teacher wittingly to enrich the teacher candidate practicum experience. The survey results revealed that 45% of participants disagreed that the program support teacher candidate ‎communication skills with students’ ‎parents and 40% disagreed that the practicum period is enough to ‎prepare the teacher candidate to work in ‎schools. Moreover, only 27% of participants agreed that the program enables teacher candidate to possess the ‎enough and in-depth subject knowledge. ‎ ‎ The results hoped to help the policymakers of UAEU reach informed decisions on the changes needed to improve the teacher preparation program.

Keywords:

Student teaching program.