Abstract:

The presence and action of some limiting factors lead to a critical perspective on the extent to which graduates of teacher training programmes are prepared to become vectors of change in their profession. Recent trends in initial teacher education, the continuing need to change and adapt the teaching process to respond to the peculiarities of students, and care for the students and an orientation towards learning how to teach create a challenging teaching career debut. This study aims to explore the state of readiness experienced by pre-service engineering teachers, in order to identify the critical areas faced in their transition to teaching profession. To achieve the proposed goal, a qualitative approach was followed. Three focus groups were organised with 18 students from the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, Romania, in their final year of study within the initial Psycho-pedagogical training programme for teaching career. The obtained results revealed three critical areas that pre-service engineering teachers faced in practical activities carried out during the initial training program: classroom management, self-management of emotions, and management of relationships with students’ parents. Beside these critical areas the results also highlight certain “sensitive” areas, but which are not necessarily critical: personal well-being, knowing the students, knowing the content, designing teaching activities, assessment, feedback, and teaching career path. Thus, fostering the development of a set competencies related to classroom management, self-management of emotions, and management of relationships with students’ parents can prove a key aspect that can be addressed in initial teacher education. The results can be a benchmark for practitioners in the field towards making improvements in teaching techniques and/or ongoing training programmes and towards developing professional standards to help ensure a high-performance education system.

Keywords:

Teacher readiness, intrapersonal skills, well-being, teaching career, self management.